How to Generate Revenue from Facebook Apps

Facebook launched App Centre last year and made app development open for all. With the increasing use of social media to stay in the spot light, it is essential for brands to keep in pace with the advancements and improvements in this field.

According to the recent facebook guidelines, contests cannot be held on the wall. Owing to the significance of this social platform and it’s virality, most brands have already started using Facebook apps to their benefit. Either for promotions, contests or launch of products. Being a part of the rat race is not important, what’s more important is how you make a difference.

Facebook apps involves 4 basic stages:

• Plan, where you put down the purpose of creating the app, the relevance with your product and what it will feature.
• Design - making creatives, applying codes to build the app, structuring and placing it.
• Promote, the final stage where your app is ready to be used.
• Measure - The most important aspect in any campaign, Metrics, is often overlooked. Define your Key Performance Indicators and measure them from time to time. Track exposure, influence, engagement, conversations and finally action. Analyse your strategy in terms with ROI.

What you must remember:

• Landing page is the star of your app. Make it as attractive as you can to keep the user interested. Title should be relevant and easy to search. SEO applies here too.
• Create unique apps that define your product. Focus on your target audience and create engagement to attract more fans. Not just any “upload-picture-with-a-slogan” app.
• The creative used for the app must be of the right dimensions. Try to avoid the use of scroll bars, makes it annoying for a user.
• Don’t create a tab for a solo image or information. Make use of the app to its fullest extent.
• Keep the Share option in the end. If your app requires it to be shared even before it has been used, it will be considered as spam. Keep it optional to reduce the fall in traffic.
• Minimum reading, maximum images.
• If a contest is initiated, make sure the winners are announced and notified. Participants keep a close watch on your brand page for the same. If not done, they will create issues.

Promote:

Apps are created to gain consumers. You ultimately have to focus on what you want people to experience from the app. The amount you engage with costumers directly implies the viral nature of the app. See Pepsi's Oh Yes Abhi.

Build up excitement before its launch. Get people talking and waiting. Use existing metrics to understand your target audience and their interaction levels.

Apps can be used as an effective tool for market research and segmentation by drawing actionable insights.

Like in this case, Revlon India, leveraged social media to gain insight into the beauty habits of Indian woman, before driving a new campaign based upon those insights. The findings were then immediately used to tailor the campaign according to prevailing preferences. Read on : Here

Integrate Facebook app with all other social networks, mobile, commercials and advertisements. Integration gives enhanced results.

For example Samsung Galaxy Note II - Incredible Art Piece campaign was a well integrated campaign. Users could participate in the contest through Facebook, Microsite, Mobile, Tablet, as well as offline. It Invited consumers to visit any of the Samsung Digital Plazas, Samsung Smartphone Cafe’s and Samsung Experience Zones in order to participate in the campaign. Thus offline integration drives foot fall.

Apps should drive traffic to the website and the website should drive traffic to the app. The iwish application is a laudable application on the ICICI bank’s Facebook page which completes the whole digital loop.

Users can make a wish and share their it with family & friends who can contribute and help them achieve their goal faster. The application strategically taps on the potential customers by offering them a personalized saving plan with a social angle in it. It gains valuable insights about their wishes and drives the traffic to its website.

Use Newsfeeds, notifications, requests and invitations in a smart non-spam way. Word of mouth marketing is good but a strenuous task for the consumer. You can also form a database, send them free trials or subscriptions and further use it for sampling.

How you can use Facebook Apps:

• For a cosmetic brand or a fashion brand, you can use an app to show the application of the product, tips to do make up etc.
• E-commerce brands can use Apps as slideshows to showcase products
• Discount vouchers can be offered to highest app users.
• Contests, games, animations.

Finally the key to making viral and a revenue generating Facebook app is to make it addictive and interesting! Users log in for entertainment. Learn from the Top 10 Social Media Campaigns of 2012.

Image source: Master isolated