Building a successful Facebook app goes beyond making the app look good. Of course design helps: A clean look that's branded and clearly displays your promotion or strategy looks better than an app that has been thrown together. However, an app that is executed well involves a variety of elements, and we'll outline them here.
Mrs. Butterworth's is one of the world's leading syrup brands. Recently they decided to run a Facebook promotion to drive engagement and increase excitement about their products.
Their execution of their promotion was flawless for five reasons:
1. They did their research
Prior to running their promotion, Mrs. Butterworth's did extensive research about their consumers. What they discovered was that one in three Mrs. Butterworth's syrup consumers is likely to visit theme parks (talk about finding unusual statistics about your consumers!). This led them to narrow their target audience to moms. The brand has also enjoyed success from offering limited-edition collectible Mrs. Butterworth's bottle designs. Both of these factors led them to create a promotion that offered a theme-park related prize and provide the opportunity to offer up a different bottle design for the duration of the campaign.
"By creating memorable experiences for families, Mrs. Butterworth's can drive consumer engagement and brand loyalty, while further building our category leadership," said Eric Hintz, vice president of marketing for Mrs. Butterworth's. Their research led them to launch the Family Fun Sweet Stakes campaign where they would give away a trip to four to either Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Va. or Busch Gardens Tampa, Fla.
2. They partnered with a like-minded business
Once Mrs. Butterworth's discovered that their consumers loved theme parks they went straight to one of the top companies in the world, Busch Gardens® to propose a partnership. By partnering with a brand like Busch Gardens, Mrs. Butterworth's gave their promotion the power to reach a large number of potential customers. Busch Gardens has anywhere from 30,000 to 420,000 Fans across their numerous Facebook Pages. The partnership was a win-win for both companies. Mrs. Butterworth's received the support of the Busch Gardens community and some awesome prize options for their fans while Busch Gardens received a Busch Gardens-themed wrapping on the latest Mrs. Butterworth's syrup bottle. The prize included airfare, hotel accommodations for two nights/three days, admission into the theme park and an exclusive in-park experience.
3. They used a third-party app provider
Mrs. Butterworth's chose to run their promotion through a Facebook Page app using ShortStack. By using a custom Facebook Page app they were able to design it to fit their and Busch Garden's branding guidelines, collect data, and offer a central point for fans to enter the competition. Using a Smart URL (which is provided by ShortStack), fans are able to enter the Mrs. Butterworth's competition through their desktop or mobile device. Once the competition is over, Mrs. Butterworth's can easily choose a random winner and then export details about all of the entries for future marketing efforts.
The company took full advantage of the power of collecting data from their fans during this promotion.
Their entry form includes some easy-to-answer questions such as:
• What flavors do you wish Mrs. Butterworth's syrup came in?
• Fill in the blank: I love that Mrs. Butterworth's is thick-n-rich because ______.
They also give fans a chance to opt-in to their news and special offers as well as newsletters from Busch Gardens.
4. They included all the elements of their Facebook Page
As we mentioned earlier, a beautifully built app is one step in the right direction. However, there are numerous supporting elements on a Facebook Page that support an app. Mrs. Butterworth's did a great job of branding their entire Page around their promotion. They updated their cover photo and profile picture and built a great looking app. They even utilized the fan-gating feature so that new fans would have to Like their Page before having the ability to enter the contest. In addition they continually posted about their promotion on their Facebook Page, linking back to the app. This is a crucial part of running a successful Facebook app seeing as a majority of users are discovering apps from News Feed posts on their desktop and mobile devices.
5. They promoted outside of Facebook
Even though Mrs. Butterworth's was running their promotion within Facebook, they promoted it outside of the platform. As we mentioned earlier they created a special syrup bottle with a Busch Gardens-themed wrapping that was sold in stores starting in January 2014 through the end of the campaign, April 2014. They put advertising dollars behind the promotion, wrote a press release about it, and their partnership and received publicity, including an article in Examiner. In addition, they highlighted the promotion on the home screen of their website, opening the competition to their website viewers and increasing it's reach.
The Mrs. Butterworth's Family Fun Sweet-Stakes will be live on their Facebook Page through April 2014.