Introduction

Consumers use Facebook to interact with friends, be entertained and express themselves through their public affiliation with brands - factors that combine to create a potent viral marketing platform. By engaging consumers on Facebook in a way that keeps them informed and entertained, brands have an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize Fans and get introduced to their friends. The beginning of engagement is ‘liking’ a brand. This is how we developed a social media marketing campaign to get customers to ‘like’ Stena Line.

Objectives

1. To raise Stena Line’s profile using a very simple to implement competition to get customers engaged enough to log on to Facebook and "Like" Stena Line.
2. To capture customer contact information from those who are likely to use ferry travel and create a central hub for Stena Line on Facebook.
3. To acquire and engage new facebook fans with a view to continuing the dialogue with them, thereby nurturing and converting them.

Strategic Approach

By selecting a ferry related gift as the prize fund (Free Ferry travel for an entire year) the aim was to only attract entrants who would consider travelling by ferry and therefore are more likely to have future revenue generating potential for Stena Line.

We also created a unique competition tab within the company pages as the fixed landing points for the user, rather than the standard Facebook Wall. This tab would allow more expression of the brand, a profile image of the competition to appear on new users walls, and a simple presentation of Stena Line’s Facebook benefits.

We also understood that a Facebook ‘like’, although an accomplishment, is just the beginning, not the end of a relationship. That inspiring Stena Line’s audience to action, post ‘like’ would be the only way to see a positive return on investment. The strategy to engage users, and nurture them to become customers and advocates would be a much longer phase 2.

Emails, Ad banners and Pop-up stands onboard ferries were used to raise awareness of the ‘Like us’ on Facebook campaign.

   Email marketing campaign

Mechanics

The Stena Line Competition Tab was built as a Facebook Application for both the Stena Line UK and ROI Facebook accounts. Housed on the Being web server, along with the database for storing competition entry details, this web-page provided advanced functionality, based on the status and actions of the user.

The user journey we employed allowed users to ‘like’ the Stena Line page without being automatically faced with a competition entry form, whether they intended to enter or not. It also provided a clear differentiation between the competition and the "like" functionality as required by the Facebook Promotions Guidelines.

The competition was set to run for 1 month.

The various user journeys are illustrated by visuals below and summarised as follows:

1. New User View of Competition Tab
   If a Facebook user who doesn’t already "Like" the Stena Line account page clicks upon the competition tab, an introduction to the competition is displayed. This introduction also displayed prominent sign-posting to encourage the user to click the "Like" button and become a follower of the Stena Line page.
   
2. Existing Follower View of Competition Tab
   When a new user clicked on the "Like" button, or an existing follower clicked on the competition tab, then that user was served the entry form. This view also provided more detail about how to enter and what the prize was, as some users had not seen the information which was available to new users.
   
3. New User View and Existing Follower View of Terms & Conditions
   The entry form included a link to view the Terms and Conditions of the competition. Clicking this link opened the T&Cs in a pop-up window.
   
4. New User View and Existing Follower View of Entry Completion
   When the follower had completed the entry form and submitted their details, they were shown a "Thank You" message.

   New User View of Competition Tab

   Existing Follower View of Registration Tab to enter competition

Results

The campaign captured the broadest appeal; from Students to Silver Surfers it quickly broadcast across users’ social networks generating rising spikes of ‘Likes’ and Entries.

The Stena Line UK Facebook account rose from 970 ‘likes’ to over 9,000 over the course of the month – a 10 fold increase. And total UK competition entries exceeded 5,800.

The Stena Line IE Facebook account rose from 560 ‘likes’ to over 3,000 over the course of the month – a 5 fold increase. And total IE competition entries topped 1,500.

Objectives met, the dialogue continues with equally pleasing results. Active users increased to 15,000 over the month and there were 1100 wall post feedbacks over the 4 weeks of the competition.

The deluge of customer comments continue; matched by Stena Line’s customer services team responding online and taking action offline.....phase 2 is in full swing.