How many ‘likes’ will they get?

I’ll be upfront: I really think that Social Media is a FAIL waiting to happen for any industrial B2B marketer who tries when it just doesn’t make sense.

Case in point is this email I received this morning, looking for Facebook ‘likes’:

So the best they can do is hang their hat on the most over-marketed charity (at a total donation of $2,500) to get folks like me who have NO IDEA about their company to follow them on Facebook.

The thing is, this marketing campaign itself isn’t well executed. Not horrible, but it gives me no confidence that their Facebook group is going to be active and interesting enough to ‘like’.

Well, I went ahead and clicked and ‘liked’ just to see what they were doing.

Bad news: I was Fan number 107. Looks like their page has been up for less than a month. (An hour after getting their email, the number has jumped to 109.)

Good news: The fan page ‘wall’ has been preloaded with active content from the last couple shows they supported. Even if most of the users are shills (other employees or family members), the activity may be of interest to folks going to shows frequently.

More likely, I think such a fan page may end up being of most interest to the employees of their company, and the folks that run trade-shows, who have a lot to chatter about at each event.

That said, this still begs the question: Why email people you don’t do business with? Why the charity hook? What is the real benefit to the fans? And is it all worth it to market to 109 people (minus the shills)?

5 Replies to “How many ‘likes’ will they get?”

  1. OK, so some poor associate marketing manager is given the task of getting an audience started on the company’s new Facebook page. Why? Because his/her boss has finally been told one time too many by some bigger boss that the company should avail itself of all the free marketing that you can get through social media. Eventually, someone will ask the important questions, like “How can we use this to provide value to our market?” Until they figure out the two prerequisites of social media marketing (have something to say, and know who you want to say it to) they’ll just pay the bribe a be disappointed with the results.

  2. B2B marketing involves a concept of selling products and services among various businesses and traders. These marketing activities are very important for every type of business. More and more companies are turning to specialist agencies for advice B2B  marketing strategy ideas.

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