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UncleNicksPizza

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Hey everyone, thought I’d share something I’ve been doing that has really generated a lot more activity for my Facebook Fan Page (http://www.unclenickspizza.com/facebook).

A while back I tried a lot of different ways to promote my Facebook page for the shop, including putting links on boxtoppers, receipts, door hangers, mail outs, etc. What I found was that the rate of people liking our Facebook page was very low, primarily due to timing. When they would get our materials, it was usually an inconvenient time for them to log in to their Facebook account and go like our page. The key was to get them while they were on Facebook.

Now I have tried the Facebook ads, and while I did see some result, it was very costly in the long run, and most of the people that liked my page took months to give us a try. Obviously I could not maintain this form of advertisement, so I tried something new.

For one day I decided to give away a free pizza to a Facebook fan, and all they had to do was “Like” the status. Then I would go to http://www.random.org and put the range for the number of likes I had, count down to that number on my “Likes” list, and they were the winner. The result? I gave away 1 14" Cheese Pizza ($1.75 in cost) and received 4 new page likes from people who saw the status in news feeds of their friends that liked the status.

Rinse and repeat for an entire month, my views for each status were nearing 1,000 each time. I gained on average 2 - 3 likes per day of doing it, not to mention I was up selling toppings and X Large upgrades on 60% of my orders, so even my free pizzas were making me a small profit.

Most recently now, I started doing it again but on random status. What I will do is put a status up, and at the end put, “Like this status for a chance to win a free pizza.” Of course I get a good amount of likes on it, my advertisement (it is usually a special, or something along those lines) gets seen my a large number of non-fans, and still at the end of the day my cost is $1.75. Which is in my opinion very cost effective since not only am I getting a lot of publicity in it, and putting product into the mouths of people who have never tried it (because a lot of my winners end up being new people) or reward loyal customers (they love me when they win a free pizza), but I also get them to sign up for our rewards program to receive their certificate for the free pizza, so I get their name, address, phone number, e-mail etc to build my database. All for $1.75 each time I do the event.

Now I have notice that doing it every day I see diminishing returns, but doing it once every couple of days on a continual basis keeps things fresh, and continues building my brand.

Just a thought for other operators looking for a cost effective way to build a database, increase facebook presence, or create a little hype!
 
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OK, so what do you do if the person that is selected does not respond. I did this today,(actually yesterday and today) with the winner being selected and posted at 4PM today. I posted winner on our FB page and she never acknowledged. According to the post I put up she was to order and pick up her pizza tonight.
I know Bogedahwy does this type of thing frequently too. I wasn’t ready for the person to not respond. I guess I can’t give my pizza away. 😦
 
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Rick G,

There are a couple of ways to look at it. The first and probably easiest would be to leave it as, “you snooze you lose”. Part of the idea is hyping people up to constantly view your page. But assume for a moment that for one of a variety of reasons you don’t want to do that (that is what I do, I don’t have a limit on the time frame, I just write them down in a book so if they message me later I know it’s legit), but if you don’t want to do that you can contact them via your personal Facebook page, or create a separate Facebook profile for your business as a person, send them a friend request and message them that way (This would be my recommendation).
 
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Brad,

Thanks for sharing that information, I definitely wasn’t aware of that. Although judging by the amounts of large fan pages that use liking for entries, and the everyday use of people saying, “The first xx people to Like, Share, Comment, etc will win” leads me to believe that it is a very loose policy there either for their protection to pursue at their leisure if and when an event does occur causing problems, or something that was initially expected to be an issue but later was decided not to be of concern and just never changed.

As always though when taking terms of service lightly, you do run that risk. But as I said with all the national brands using the like and share button in a similar fashion, I personally don’t give much consideration to it.
 
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This is a great idea! I convinced our GM to create a Facebook page for our store a couple of months ago and we’ve had SOME people liking the page, but nothing even close to what I was hoping for. We’re definitely going to have to give this a try. Thanks!
 
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I just did this contest on our BennyspizzaBeardstown facebook page.I did a free medium 2 topping to the 5th NEW like.I got 5 in 30 minutes already.imo if anyone else tries this do it with 10 new like at least because 5 isnt much.live and learn…next week when I do it again I will know better.if anyone from pmq would like our page that would be great!
Antonio
 
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