Black Friday Promotions Drive Big Facebook Numbers for Aggressive Retailers
In the 10 days leading up to Black Friday, the biggest retailers on Facebook – those with the most Likers – grew their fan bases by an average of 10%. Respectable.
But more aggressive retailers on Facebook grew their fan bases at twice that rate! (See data below.)
Through a combination of Black Friday and other seasonal offers, discounts, contests, games and simple “Like us” pleas, the top 10 fastest growing retailers on Media Logic’s survey list saw their Liker bases soar by an average of 20% between 11/16 and 11/26/2010.*
Media Logic has been tracking the growth and use of social media by 100 national retailers since July 2010. See related article, data and whitepaper: 2010 Retail Marketing Report.
Explicit Black Friday offers helped Macy’s add 172,261 Likers (a 25.6% increase) and Target add 426,401 Likers (a 17% increase). A more general seasonal offer helped Toys ‘R’ Us add 244,612 Likers (a remarkable 30.6% increase, pushing the brand past the magic million Liker mark).
Cost Plus World Market’s holiday themed $5K contest, Office Max’s “Elfmas Town” game and Pier One’s “Toys for Tots” charity pitch also proved strong fan attractors. And a simple 40% off coupon helped Justice grow its base a whopping 62.7%.
Big numbers were also posted by Party City, Bebe and Lowe’s. In fact, Lowe’s more than doubled its fan base between September and November with an early Black Friday promotion that got lots of press (not all of which was good, though that didn’t seem to matter).
In contrast, the bottom 10 retailers, 7 out of 10 of which offered no Facebook promotion of any sort, averaged only 1.8% growth.
TAKEAWAYS
It continues to be a miracle year for retailers on Facebook. Victoria’s Secret has broken through the 10 million Liker mark, having added more than a half-million fans in the 10 days ahead of Black Friday alone. Specialty Apparel in general remains the hottest sector. Bebe, Aeropostale and Justice, among others, have been posting amazing numbers since September. But Department/Discount retailers are almost as well Liked. Kohl’s, Target and Wal-Mart are now all being followed by between 2.5 to 5.5 million fans. And the big Recreation brands are doing well too, with Micheal’s Crafts growing almost 100% between mid-September and mid-November, placing it in the top-10 fastest growing for that period.
How are retailers attracting fans? Most are simply asking to be Liked. Those that said “Like us” during the 10-day run up to Black Friday saw their fan bases grow by an average of almost 14%. Retailers that combined a seasonal promotion with a “Like us” saw their fan bases grow by an average of over 17.5%. In contrast, retailers that just dropped visitors to their Facebook wall averaged only 4.1% growth.
How any of this is translating to sales, particularly at physical stores, is uncertain at the moment. ShopperTrak, according to this article in the Wall Street Journal, reported a slight uptick in traffic compared to last year, but flat comp sales. But at the very least, the fact that consumers, by the millions, are inviting retailers into that most intimate of online spaces, their Facebook pages, is as a branding opportunity (and probably a promotional opportunity) the likes of which we have never seen before.
The chart below sorts 100 national retail brands, with Facebook Liker totals for mid-September, mid-November and Black Friday (11/26), as well as growth stats from mid-November to Black Friday, both in absolute numbers and as a relative percentage. The last two columns indicate whether a brand landed new visitors during the measured period on a promotions tab (P), if the promotions tab explicitly invited users to Like the page (P!) and if the promotion was seasonal (Black Friday, Holiday or related).
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* The two fastest-growing retailers for the 10 days leading up to Black Friday, Burlington Coat Factory (1106.7%) and Bed Bath & Beyond (149.2%), are not included in these averages since their low Liker numbers, 726 and 1,507 respectively, skew the percentage data.
