Facebook Deals: An Ad Unit with the Buy Button Integrated.

I am still unsure about Facebook Deals: - just how fully baked the idea / effort is. - how Deals are suggested to me and dispersed throughout the Facebook experience / flow. - what Facebook Deals becomes? Is it an extension of Facebook Places + Pages? Is it effectively a new Facebook Ad Format? (by the way - this is my strong feeling of what it should be) And although many Facebook users share my ambivalence / confusion / lack of passion about the Deals product... it is profoundly important for the reason mentioned above: this is effectively a new ad format and a new way to buy.

Think about it: there are ads are appearing on Facebook where the only action item is to purchase... and that purchases occurs in-line because Facebook can tie your account and Credits together. That is powerful. The fact that it is a "Deal" is really irrelevant - it is an ad with familiar, compelling copy (ie 10% off or Free Shipping).

And for advertisers, it is one more reason why advertising on Facebook is powerful: there are ad units that support traffic, media consumption, fan acquisition, sampling distribution and now purchasing. It now represents the entire funnel: acquisition, conversion and engagement / retention.

Facebook Enables Photo Tagging For Pages. Some Marketing Opportunities.

Facebook quietly released an important product update for marketers and page-owners: the ability to tag images with pages (in addition to people). It's a simple update / change - but very meaningful and, in the short term, probably introduces an immediate first-mover opportunity for marketers. This is another opportunity to engage with your community and make existing content more visible / viral on Facebook (ie more traffic).

Here are a couple ideas / opportunities.

Tag products.

For instance, what is the celebrity wearing? What is the athlete using?

(related) Alter the way you think about Photos and Feed Posts.

This is a new opportunity for brands to engage via the newsfeed. Similarly, brands can feature photos from the community (yet another way to engage and reward).

Create contests.

Dunkin Donuts has run a daily contest on where fans drink their Iced Coffees. Entrants should be forced to tag the brand. That would be significantly more effective.

Combine tagging of places and pages.

Currently Facebook does not allow places to be tagged... but it should come and that will make the act of checking-in more robust. Photos from a place can be accessed via Places... but with tags, a user's friends will be able to happen upon the location from the feed and from photos.

Amazon's MyHabit Launches with "Exclusive Membership" Gimmick. Except for Amazon Users (eg everyone).

Remember when Gilt Group and Rue La La first launched and you had to be "invited"? It was a genius marketing effort that established a brand of high-end exclusivity. It also was important in jump-starting the early viral channels (referrals and rewards). Of course, if you didn't know a registered user, you could "request membership" and, within a day or two, your invite would arrive. It was great positioning and marketing. This week Amazon entered the flash sale space with MyHabit. It is very much like Gilt and Rue La La, etc (and, for what it's worth, is very much unlike how I think they should play in the space).

To position themselves as Gilt and Rue did at launch, they too ask users to register and "request membership". The word "request" obviously suggests membership is selective and not instant (despite the headline "become a member instantly"). There is your exclusive, premium positioning.

But that is entirely pointless because anyone with an Amazon account already has an account: "hint: if you already have an Amazon.com account, you may use that to sign in." And of course anyone visiting MyHabit has an Amazon account.

This makes the marketing / positioning effort insincere and beyond gimmicky (since its an extension of a proven gimmick). Just put a big sign-on button and optimize the hell out of it. Then focus on the products and the experience. That's worked for Groupon and LivingSocial. And with Amazon's brand and massive audience, it's the better way to launch / play.

ESPN Experiments with Facebook Ads for SportsNation.

Between on-air promotion and daily feed interactions, ESPN is aggressively ramping their Facebook usage (perhaps they are watching the NBA's success?). As an example, hit ESPN2 show SportsNation is quickly approaching 750,000 fans (was 600,000 April 1st). In fact, they are now advertising for the page:

It is unclear how much growth is from the campaign - but it is interesting because the page itself is not directly monetized. Clearly this is an opportunity to ESPN to understand:

- the relationship between on & off-air consumption - the ability to incorporate social activity in live airings - the beginning values of online, off-ESPN.com users

And perhaps it is something bigger: the roll-out of deeper social integrations on ESPN.com.

Facebook Testing Location Awareness

As Facebook Places, Events, Groups, Photos, Mobile, etc begin to interact with each other, it is clear that a common thread: location and proximity. That's why I was struck by the following test unit by Facebook, "Are You In This Location?"

First, I was not in Denver. Nor was I close (in Palo Alto). So I am not sure where exactly they are getting the suggested location.

Second, assuming they can intelligently understand location (particularly easy with mobile activity), what does this lead to? My gut is that location becomes a secondary social filter (obviously behind friends) and the uniting component between Facebook several new products.

Lastly, this suggests an attempt to automate the location field... otherwise it would be positioned as "Where are you?" and the input field would be open-ended rather than binary (correct / incorrect).

Three Reasons Why Facebook Deals is Important.

Three visual reason why Facebook Deals shouldn't be overlooked... despite being a day old and despite the large lead of Groupon and LivingSocial. 1. Facebook already has the distribution of consumers AND advertisers to kick-start the product. Raising awareness and driving adoption can be encouraged via promotion, feed virality, etc:

2. Advertisers are already on Facebook. And Facebook users are already used to interacting with brands and ads. In simplest terms, Deals is really just a different ad format... but rather than asking users to click or like, they can "buy" in-line. That's powerful. It has worked well for "liking" - which is both an in-line action and a social behavior... why shouldn't it work for purchases?

3. Facebook is the most used and downloaded mobile application. Mobile represents two important things for Deals: A) the ability to use location / proximity to deliver targeted deals B) a huge viral hook through push notifications and SMS (my phone buzzed all day as friends liked / bought related deals)

Twitter Promotes Mobile Apps & SMS To Logged-Out Users. Smart.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about Facebook's post-logout promotion of Facebook Mobile - which helped to significantly increase iPhone usage (+20% in a week).

Meanwhile, another giant social / mobile player is now doing the same. Twitter has recently redesigned their homepage and, in an effort to view it, I logged out of my account today. I was greeted with the following screen:

For Facebook, the unit's efficacy makes sense because, despite targeting logged out users, it is still highly targeted ... and therefore still counts as "in the river marketing". So why shouldn't this work with Twitter?

And Twitter's approach to showcasing their App across all platforms is equally compelling (and reminiscent to Amazon's marketing).

Also interesting is the dual action item of "download now" and "use via SMS". Both actions route content directly to your mobile device either by email or SMS. Once there, you are either directly engaged or Twitter is able to direct you to the appropriate application / app-store. Smart.

Bud Light Cleverly Runs Promotion on Facebook Page.

Brands have used all sorts of mechanisms and promotions to drive social activity (see Redbox example)... and Facebook's new page layout has complicated that. Here is Bud Light's approach: 1. Drive Like's

Bud Light is running a $10,000,000 promotion... and the only way to access and enter the page is to Like the Facebook page. Once you like the page, the promotion is no longer grayed out and it is accessible. Of course, to get access - you need to become a fan.

2. Improve Page Navigation / Findability

One of the complications for brands on Facebook is that users generally do not move across the page's various 'tabs' (formerlly were laid out more prominently across the top - now they are buried horizontally beneath the page logo). Bud Light defaults to landing visitors on the wall (my strong recommendation!) and, to drive awareness of their promotion has done something interesting: promote the "Best Round Ever" tab with prominent arrows in the logo.

#1 is probably more effective... but #2 is a clever, free way to drive awareness. Ultimately, the most effective action is to cleverly promote via the newsfeed (great, engaging content).

Twitter Promoted Tweets & Effective Real-Time, Event-Based Advertising

For much of today, my blog was unaccessible because Media Temple had a far-reaching outage.

After unsuccessfully trying to reach my site, I was made aware of this through Twitter (why no email correspondence?)... with a simple search of "Media Temple", there were endless tweets referencing the outage. This of course speaks to the power of Twitter's instantaneous news stream; but surprisingly, it also spoke to the potential power of Twitter's Promoted Tweets ad system. Media Temple competitor Storm On Demand saw this is a immediate opportunity to reach targeted searchers and acquire new users with a specialized coupon. Smart. And Twitter is the perfect system for this short-lived, real-time marketing opportunity.

Facebook is terrific for reaching hyper-targeted users (demographic, location, taste / preference, etc). And this is an example of Twitter's effectiveness around real-time, event-based advertising.