Retailer Has Set-up Facebook Group to Promote Back to School
Walmart does not always do everything right, but you have to admire their willingness to try out bleeding edge marketing initiatives to drive sales. With the launch of their Roommate Style Match group on Facebook, Walmart is hoping to leverage the legions of college aged Facebook users to drive sales during the back to school season.
The premise behind the Facebook group is simple; members of the group can take a quiz that will give them their decorating style and get a list of recommend products based that will flow well with their style and that of their roommate. From there they can print out a list of products to buy at a local Walmart. Short, simple, and potentially financially sweet.
This is exactly the same sort of initiative that just about any company can launch within Facebook. While you might not be able to have some of the intricate features that Walmart does, starting a Facebook group and creating a way to keep users coming back to it (with your product at the forefront) is possible.
For more Facebook Marketing tips, check out Ten Ways to Market Products or Services on Facebook.
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2 comments ↓
I don’t know if you have been to this Walmart profile recently but it seems to have been hijacked by anti-Walmart protestors - showing what can happen when you hand over control of your brand in a social network.
I wrote a blog post about retailing in social networks after Hitwise analysed data from Facebook and found that over 1,900 retailers received traffic from Facebook in August - much of this generated by related groups and applications.
I think applications like Visual Bookshelf are great and I have also been impressed by some of the things other retailers are doing.
I wrote a piece recently called ‘5 great examples of retailers on Facebook’ with examples from Tesco, comment on this Wal-mart example and others - you can read it at www.nickburcher.com or see this specific post here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2007/09/5-great-examples-of-retailers-using.html
Yes, I have visited the profile recently and I did report on the mutiny that occurred. I agree with you that with social networks it is many times a crap shoot for any high profile company, especially if consumers have mixed emotions about your company.
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