It’s generally agreed by Facebook marketing pundits that linking from external sites to a dedicated tab better provides a better landing experience than a link to a Wall tab. Idea Challenges from Bulbstorm is all about helping brands create compelling content for the landing tab with the goals of driving up fan numbers, encouraging return visits to the page, increasing band loyalty and impacting sales.
Just rolling out, Idea Challenges is described by Bulbstorm as low cost and easy to implement. It’s a hybrid game, contest and promotional vehicle, giving companies (and agencies) the opportunity to create multi-faceted contests and events without programming expertise. Fans are granted points for their participation in the application and when their referred friends sign up. Those points can be exchanged for virtual or real goods from a Prize Vault of goodies stocked by the brand.
Idea Challenges allows fans to contribute original content, as well as work with content contributed by other fans and the brand. “A fan’s ideas for a brand are important, not only to the fan but also to the brand itself,” said Matt Simpson, marketing director of Bulbstorm “Idea Challenges enables brands to simultaneously grow their Facebook presence and engage with fans in a meaningful way – around their ideas.” Bulbstorm touts the application’s ease of implementation and low cost as differentiators.
Facebook users are attracted to brand pages that give them something in exchange for their visit. “We’re still early in the process here,” observes Simpson, “But our consumer packaged goods (CPG) clients are seeing much higher redemption rates from these coupons than from newspaper distribution. The number of coupons distributed is obviously lower, but the cost per coupon distributed is lower than print. But our app offers much greater depth of interaction and engagement than your standard “like us to get a coupon” approach.
There are insufficient metrics – due, in part, to the young age of the social media platform upon which this category of applications is based – to quantify return on investment. When asked about supporting data, Simpson replied, “We really see our app as a next step in social marketing beyond simple brand awareness and ‘participation in the conversation.’ Through the integration of e-coupons and e-commerce discount codes, we look forward to helping corporate marketers attach real ROI figures to their social campaigns.”
Even with little supporting research, engagement activities make intuitive sense to marketers and are increasingly found on brand pages. One may expect developers to release many new options to “liven up” brand pages in the coming months.
A demo of Idea Challenges may be found on Bulbstorm’s Facebook page.
