Digital Addicts by Adhiyanto Goen

Anyone can start a Facebook page, the question remains on how do you grow them. The most common steps any company would take is to send out their company fan page to the internal team, asking their immediate friends and family to like them. This often followed by a boasting press release of reaching an X amount of fans on the page, but…

Does this help the company at all, getting your friends to like your page or even your content maybe great on the surface, but defeats the purpose of truly reaching out and creating a set of direct conversation with your audience.

After a long time experimenting on Facebook (and still am until today), I’ve discovered some of the following that might help your fan page:

• Leverage the power of Facebook advertising, but don’t take on an approach of traditional advertising.
• Running contest and giving away free items maybe great, but how to convert them into your customers.
• Take your online effort, to an offline effort (e.g. a flashmob to introduce your new Facebook page, a door stopper campaign, etc).
• I found ShortStack to be the best and affordable tool to create and manage the content via the easily editable CMS. It is also one of the platform that has rich integration with third party systems. They have ready made template, but I recommend setting aside a budget to get it designed properly.

More notes on how to use Facebook advertising (first I think its a different approach on what you call advertising on Facebook):

• I found conversion for acquiring fans are traditionally low or slow sometimes, but the figures is between 5-10% or could be more depending on what you are offering.
• Leverage on the power of your existing fans (when I say this, this only works when you have organic fans).
• It doesn’t work like Google Ads, there are no keywords. Instead its interest, gender, age, language, etc (having said this always take into account that no one will ever complete their full interest or what they like on Facebook, the most basic or common targeting you can use are - age, gender and location).
• Start with a small budget, I normally start with USD50-100 a day.
• Always conduct A/B testing on your ads, find out which one works best and then roll out with that one on a bigger budget/scale.
• If you are intending to lead the ad outside of Facebook, make sure you have a well designed landing page with capture form or conversion point (but take note normally it will be a one time visit only and the conversion is even lower once they’ve left Facebook environment).
• The best Facebook ads that works are to direct them to your own Facebook page, it can be a post story, promoting an event to capture RSVP, sponsored stories, etc.
• Before you start the ad however, make sure you have designed a proper landing page. It should be no less than fan gating, introducing who or what you are, what’s your product or service and why they should like you. Try to provide fans reward and best not be a cheapskeat, as they are your fans after all.
• There is a good reason why you need a landing page, imagine your new fans landing on your wall, where the conversation has happened. You can see why they can get confused.
• The chance of your fans unliking your page after they became a fan is less than 1%, so no worries there.
• Focus on engaging ads, something that will draw their attention from the wall for a split second. Maximize and design a great image that demands attention.
• Got a special announcement or story to tell, use Facebook ad to spread the words to the people or audience that matters to you.
• Rotate your ads as much as possible and localize.
• “Great artists steal” go to Facebook Ad Board for some inspiration - https://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/
• The minimum threshold for your targeting should not drop below 20,000 otherwise it will not go anywhere.
• Always go for CPC model, even when there is no click your ads will keep on appearing until the end of your campaign.

Final note, keep on experimenting :)

I will try to keep on updating the ads and share how it works out.

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I still remember it was around 98, when Nokia was the cool phone, the one you need to have. It was (if I’m not mistaken) the first to go without antenna and came out with sleek plastic color designs that can be customized. It used to be a great product, a great phone that everyone loves. I think these days it may need to focus on low to middle market as “how the mighty have fallen”. After years of success, in fact I think they are retracing the Apple path right before 1997.

Their product line has become very confusing, they keep on rolling different models and sub-series for each line. And they only have minor details upgrade or some extra features. Their UI is also not as good or has become more confusing, it used to be really simple. Then there is pre-Windows phone version where they try to come up with “their own” UI but really just copy Apple. The result was not impressive at all, the scroll was just way to weird and no smoothness in transition at all. It just became middle of the road product.

Then came in the desperate partnership between Nokia and Microsoft to launch their latest smartphone. The UI is better, but its not Nokia’s and have stray even further from where they use to be. Whether Nokia-Windows phone will take off, not sure. They still have a lot of groundwork to do and far from Apple or Android.

Anyway, I was picking up a phone for my mum and I noticed several things when I was doing research on which product to get her. Nokia website has just undergo renovation and… it copied Apple layout? It became a lot simpler, with all the navigation bar on the top, search bar on the right, big photos and 3 main sub-promo… it all just look too familiar and did a comparison and yup it is the same.

Next (and I’m still an iPhone user by the way, is just that my mum operates simple phone) I decided to pick-up a Nokia Asha 300 at their official retail stores which is couple days ago. Service and experience was just not great, there was no salesmanship, no excitement about technology and enquiring what type of phone am I looking. Instead I was just left alone until I picked a phone and still no part of it convinced me, I had to go around to several other phone store and decided to came back and convince myself. Worse, its holiday season, no gift wrap, no holiday specials. No wonder the company is in trouble, its not inventing anything anymore, its just contempt going in circles.

And that’s why Nokia’s stock market has slumped from their highest of 39.71 (Nov 2007) to today’s 4.95, that’s a whooping fall down. Pity, for a company that used to be leading the phone industry.

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You can read the details of their IPO offering here.

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Yesterday the world lost an innovator and a dear friend. Someone that has inspired me and hopefully the rest of the world. He works tirelessly and shows what a love on what you do, could change the world. He has not only revolutionize his company, but also created opportunities for others outside and globally. Donald Trump once said “as long as you’re thinking, think BIG”. I believe this is true for him, he believed he could, will and has changed the world. The world is still talking about the Einstein of the Millennium or the third Apple that changed the world. The news reached out globally via news, print, radio, tv, online, social media and just about everywhere. I think the news about his passing is probably bigger than anything else. I first bought my Mac in 2002, what I bought was the salesmanship and was swayed away. I’ve not turn my back to PC ever since (aside from company requirement). Thanks Steve.

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My apology for not updating the blog for some time, my current project takes up my time than I liked.

For the past 3 months, I’ve observed the rise of Group Buying deal in Malaysia and it is quite amazing, I believe by now there are at least more than 100-200 companies with similar concepts. Here are several I’ve encountered and know of so far:
- Everyday, that was recently acquired by Korean based Ticket Monster is probably one of the early adopters of Groupon model and has been really successful in the market with strong database.
- Groupon, originally called GroupsMore was acquired by Groupon and ranks number 2 probably.
- Others like JigoCity, CouponHouz.com (collects zero commission from merchant, instead collects from members), WeBuy.com.my, Deal4Real.Asia, MyDeal.com.my, etc.

I have also noticed a lot of other sites that would always display “wait until new deals are announced”, this translate into they have not secured a strong merchant database or merchant are just simply refusing to cooperate with them. You’ll notice a lot of sites in Malaysia will have this.I do have concerns on the competitive edge and also the limited amount of merchant in the market that are constantly being lured to do deals with these companies. Their profit margin must take a deep whenever they do this, especially for the smaller business owners. I’ve observed that the average group buying deals that can be reached per deal is between 500-3000 which is relatively small for a country this size and pretty decent Internet penetration. Then comes the customer quality with it, are they just looking for cheap price and huge discount or are they quality is something that can be argued from both side of the fence. Malaysia is also a very price sensitive market, if you look at Hong Kong the average group buying deal price there is anything but cheap, which what I believe is good for both sides - group buying deal company collects more money, merchant pricing is not compromised and also doesn’t have to dance around the cost, at the same time the customers get a great value-for-money deal.

If you also noticed at the business sustainability, you should run between 3-5 deals per day. But the sites in Malaysia runs between 3-10 deals a day and the original concept was supposed to be 1 special deal per day, so you can see their business also needs a certain amount of deals to be bought for them to break-even I imagine from the ads they are spending, staffing and other operations.Then we look at the commission percentages these company will take from the merchant, it varies between 20-50% based on the discounted price (thank god its not based on the original price). But this still means a lot of money for both side, by the way this commission is a lot more than what I have encountered in China which is a lot lower (of course China has the buying power and also the numbers).

My advise before you “make a deal with them” is to look at your business model first, the size and your financial capability. As Group Buying Deals is not about profit at all, it is “trying” new customers (when I say trying as in really trying your hardest to at least attain 5-10% of the clientele, as remembering as it is a price that is sliced in half it of course impact the client quality at the same time, not that all is on the discount hunter side, but you get some of them). Smaller business do need to 三思而行 before deciding anything as your Profit & Loss is very sensitive, especially in Malaysia market.Remembering these are the rule when you go into group buying deal:
- It has to be 50% otherwise there will be no buy, its not about profit but you can’t loose money either. Look at your cost and slightly increase it just to be on the safe side.
- Check what is the commission percentage the group buying company wants, this is where you loose a bit more money. Negotiate!
- Predict what the sale will be and if you are in food/restaurant (which most of deal are), allocate your voucher consumption per day. As you need to balance out between current/old customer with Groupon customer.
- Think of a program and a campaign under-layering it to try and capture and convert them into your business ends in the long run.
- Capture database, mobile, email or even get them to like your Facebook is just some I would run side-by-side the group buying deal.

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