“We actually drove over 55% conversion rates in some of these cases… You don’t get anything close to that when you put up traditional ads…” — Jon Siegel, Fan Appz CEO
Businesses everywhere are utilizing social media as a compelling new area in their word of mouth marketing strategy, and engaging an online audience through apps is a critical part of that strategy. Fan Appz Professional is a suite of applications geared toward small and medium-sized businesses that helps them grow their online audience, keep them engaged, and monetize that fan base. Since then they have worked with brands like NASCAR, the NBA, NBC/Universal and the Tonight Show.
I had the pleasure of catching up with Jon, whose previous Siebel Systems business was acquired by Oracle in 2006, at the Ad:tech 2010 Speakers Lounge at Ad:tech 2010 in San Francisco last week, where he gave me some insight into what Fan Appz does and how Fan Appz Professional can help small business owners with their online social media strategy.
“As I looked at social media, the conclusion that I reached was that it was going to be transformational. The techniques that people had been familiar with using email marketing, buying pay-per-click ads, display ads, or means of driving traffic or acquiring new customers- that social media was going to present a whole new series of opportunities and challenges that people need to learn to adapt to. That meant we build a suite of applications that helps businesses use social media to attract and retain an online audience.”
Siegel explained that Fan Appz began working with larger brands, but that he wanted to develop an suite of applications aimed at smaller clients.
“It’s very simple. It’s a $50 subscription, they get a subset of our functionalities, and if they have support issues they email us at our support and we respond within 24 hours. The application itself is customizable in the sense that you can upload your content, your brand, and you can customize certain areas with your look and feel so that it looks like an extension of your social media presence. We built the platform with the notion that you can’t wait 3 weeks for a developer to go and build a platform for you. You have to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m going to do today.’ It doesn’t work- things are moving too quickly. Facebook literally changes something everyday. It’s our job to go and figure that out.”
And that sounds like the biggest advantage to Fan Appz- they figure out all of the technical issues while you, the small business owner, get to reap the benefits of uploading your content and seeing it transform into a customized poll or other content that you can post within minutes.
Fan Appz Professional:
Siegel broke down the 3 key things that Fan Appz Professional does that he heard small and medium-sized businesses asking for:
1. Build and Grow Audience. “If they had 50 people following them they wanted 1000. If they had 1000 they wanted 10,000.”
2. Engagement: “Whatever audience they had, they wanted to keep them engaged, otherwise they would become disinterested and lose them.”
3. Make Money: “How do we take this audience that we’ve built and turn it into money? And that means different things to different clients.”
What About that 55% Conversion Rate?
For this particular example, Siegel explained that a comedian on Comedy Central wanted to see who were the super-fans. He used Fan Appz to create a series of quizzes, and at the end of each quiz invited fans to enter a Sweepstakes to win a signed DVD and other prizes. During that campaign, over 50% of the people who took the quizzes provided their email addresses. Those email addresses were then used to announce the premiere of his show, and that show became the #1 rated show on Comedy Central of the year.
“At the end of the day, so many of the traditional ads that you see may or may not be relevant to you. [Social media content] is highly relevant, and they’re already passionate about that brand, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that conversion rates should go up.”
Jon also pointed out how Fan Appz enable fan engagement to grow exponentially through the inherent virality of Facebook.
“The way our platform works is that the fan in most every case will post on their wall their actions as it’s related to their content. Nielsen and Facebook did a story about about content that comes from peoples’ friends and the recall and the more positive impression that comes from it. So now, if I post my favorite of a brand on my wall and all my friends see it, these are potentially hundreds of extra positive impressions that the brand receives, and this is a key part of what our platform does to leverage the potential viral nature of the social media area.”
Impressive statistics and a great opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to take advantage of technologies and strategies that are working for big brands. You can find out more at Fan Appz. They even have a 7 day Free trial.
“The key message is: We’ve built a lot of best practices into our suite of applications to help them do just that. A lot of it is just getting out there and trying it, experimenting with it and figuring out what works for them.”
– Scott James
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