The key to Facebook success is localised marketing, says Facebook

Facebook June 5, 2011 5 Comments

Many global brands face an issue when marketing on Facebook, of whether to keep activity under the control of one centralised Facebook Page, or to relinquish control to local markets to carry  out Facebook activity for their own, particular audiences. You can argue that there is merit in both ways, but with content being such an important driving force in any brand’s social media activity, whether on Facebook or not, the way to success is through localised campaigns that allow brands to respond to market particularities and aspects specific to certain regions. This is exactly what Facebook themselves seem to be proposing, as VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson argues that the brands that do well in Facebook are those that carry out campaigns on a country by country basis, in a recent interview with Clickz.

Organise globally, act locally

Everson brings up a very valid and often overlooked point by global brands on Facebook, when she stresses the importance of organising your efforts at a global level, but using this as the backbone to carry out campaigns locally. She says ‘”The real trick is organizing globally but being locally relevant. And you want all of your Facebook creative to be optimized to get the best reaction. And that takes local input.”. This is perhaps a lot easier than it sounds. There is a real challenge for global brands to ensure that campaigns are carried out in individual markets while still adhering to the true global brand key messages. There is real organisation needed by brands to ensure this works well and that you still remain relevant no what the particular campaign or marketing initiative. Of course the real challenge is in the brand owner allowing flexibility for each market. The social differences online between different regions shouldn’t be underestimated and brands might have a problem on their hands if they try and get each market to adhere to the same principles, without allowing the market itself to dictate what might be right.

Develop a supportive global infrastructure

The way in which brands can support this local marketing effort is by providing and sustaining the right infrastructure to facilitate this. It is essential for example, for global brands to have a set of social media guidelines that contain key information not only on the branding side of things and how fonts, images or colour schemes are adhered to, but more importantly how you are conversing with each local market. If you’re a global brand active on Facebook, at some point you are almost certainly going to have to face a PR crisis that will become very public, very quickly. If you haven’t developed the right infrastructure or communication system to co-ordinate efforts, you could find individual markets putting out conflicting messages at a  time that calls for consistency. And while the concept of a ‘group’ marketing initiative is by no means new to global brands ; they have had to support local marketing initatives for a long time, this can often be lost when it comes to social media. The speed in which to act and the need to remain adaptable is still a very new concept for a lot of brands and the need for a formalised infrastructure shouldn’t be underestimated.

Interestingly, Everson touched on the fact that some brands still have a way to go in how local marketing initatives are carried out. She explained that the commitment by global brands towards developing location-specific campaigns had varied somewhat, with the decision often being determined by the situation itself, such as whether there was a truly global initiative in play, such as the World Cup or Olympics. This in itself presents a new challenge for brands. There could well be a global campaign in place that can translate seamlessly through a static ad format, perhaps with a language or image change needed for each market, but when it comes to creating or fostering a conversation around this campaign, in reality it could require a lot more effort and focused strategy for it to easily translate. Take a sporting event for example – on one country’s Facebook Page there’s going to be clear support for one team, which can completely contradict the support for the other team on your other Facebook Page. The reality of this situation is that you need trusted community managers who can respect the nuances of the brand in conjunction with their very real community.

Heineken move away from local Pages

As reported in social bakers towards the end of last year, Heineken are actually going the other way and are moving their localised Facebook Pages under the main umbrella of the Heineken brand Page. A look at their current global Page shows this in action, and the complications this could present. If you take a look at their current tabs on the side of the Page, you have English language content alongside other languages, with some tabs being named as region specific, such as ‘Tiesto – Canada’.

This is certainly a different strategy to most local brands, who seem to be offering local Facebook Pages that are offshoots from the main brand Page. Though Facebook can support a Page like this up to a point, such as with the ability to target wall updates geographically, the way that the Heineken Facebook Page appears with the tabs on the side, offers a confusing user experience. We expect to land on a Page and be greeted with content that is all relevant to us. When landing on the Heinken Page, it’s hard to know which tabs are relevant to you. The risk here of course, is that you decide the Page contains too much irrelevant content and decide not to Like it, or unsubscribe. It’s likely that Heinken took this approach to consolidate their numbers and talk to one large audience. But when those numbers of fans aren’t engaged with you, it brings the strategy into question.

A much more logical step for a global brand to take, is to use their ‘umbrella’ Page to house global content, while clearly linking out to region specific Pages. In this way the global Page becomes the hub for international initiatives, but with the overall aim of supporting localised campaigns. This strategy may require more effort on the brand manager’s part, to ensure that each local Page is ultimately in line with the brand, but the pay off is that you have more engaged consumers, more avenues to push ROI activities such as commerce on Facebook, and increasingly relevant connections on the Page between fans, who will feel part of the same community.

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