Marketing on Facebook is like attending a party: you politely introduce yourself, start a conversation, expose your personality and create a good impression.
At least that's the consumer-to-consumer marketing strategy the social media guru at the LHWH advertising agency recommends, and it's one the Wrightsville Beach Marketing Committee chose to align with on Tuesday, Feb. 9 to drum up tourism, spending $2,000 for four months of professional LHWH Facebook guidance.
Expanding the effectiveness of its social network advertising has been a major focus of the committee recently, a reflection of the increasingly broader role that social networking is playing in the overall marketing arena as businesses come to recognize the power of peer-to-peer recommendations.
Now with the help of a professional agency, Wrightsville Beach is hopeful to expand its social networking capabilities and drive the tourism industry out from under the economic recession.
The committee tasked LHWH with increasing its fan base, which now sits just over 4,100, a third of what Carolina Beach currently has (Carolina Beach, with a base of nearly 12,000 fans, is also a client of LHWH).
But the committee doesn't want just any fan base. It wants a base of Wrightsville Beach enthusiasts eager to share that enthusiasm with others.
That's what LHWH president Andy Lesnik recommends: getting consumers to recommend Wrightsville Beach to other consumers. After all, Lesnik said, "You trust your peers more than you trust a business."
One reason Facebook has become so popular among marketers is that each time a person interacts with a page on Facebook, their interaction is posted on their feed where it can be seen by all their friends, creating a ripple effect.
And despite popular belief, the average demographics using Facebook are women between the ages of 35 and 55 years old, LHWH interactive marketing director Lauren Cobb told the committee during a presentation Tuesday. That demographic, authorities suggest, is the one which usually creates the family’s travel plans.
As an example of how successful Facebook can be, LHWH points to Carolina Beach's page. There, the agency has posted 259 times since that page launched approximately 10 months ago. That page has received more than 4,700 interactions, including keyed comments or click-to "Likes," as a result of those posts, Cobb said.
That means Carolina Beach, in addition to its name appearing on the feed of all its fans, was marketed an additional 4,700 times.
A truly successful Facebook page, Cobb said, is one in which the fans have taken over the page. “It’s become their tribe, their community,” she said.
That’s the kind of energy Wrightsville Beach wants to generate, but first it will need some guidance, and that’s where LHWH comes into play. In addition to building its fan base, the agency, along with members of the committee, will be responsible for monitoring the Facebook page to avert any inappropriate (but not negative) comments and answer questions posed by potential customers.
Once a broader fan base is established, then “revenue enhancing interactions” are used to stimulate tourism activity. Offering special deals, holding contests and advertising events in Wrightsville Beach are all ways the committee can provoke tourism expenditures in the future.
