Web Business Woman

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna’s Promo Talk

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend. Many of us Americans take an extended holiday and use up some vacation time taking the whole week off. So it does appear to be a bit quieter than normal online this week. I have to admit myself that I haven’t posted on my blog since last week and I’ve done very little on Facebook and Twitter.

I did however spend two wonderful days at Canandaguia Lake, one of the beautiful Finger Lakes in Western New York. It’s been a tradition for the past several years to spend the holiday with some good friends who are gracious enough to share their lake cottage with our family, including our dogs.

Anyhow, I read about a new online promotion before I signed off for the weekend and wanted to write about it then and didn’t, so instead I’m writing it post forth of July. The brand is Procter & Gamble’s Pepto-Bismol, not one that I immediately associated with the 4th of July, but now I do. I over-indulged this weekend by eating and drinking too much on top of swallowing some lake water. So come Monday evening I was feeling a little queasy.

Pepto-Bismol launched it’s new Facebook page on June 25 with a goal to introduce it “with a bang” heading into Fourth of July weekend. On July 1st they ran a one-day advertising campaign on Facebook that served five different ads to all U.S. users and then concluded with a hot dog eating contest on the 4th.

On the first day that they launched the page Pepto got 600 fans or people that “Like” the page.” By close to the end of the day on Thursday their fan community had risen to 39,300. As of today the page is showing a fan base of 42,619. I don’t know what Pepto’s goal was, but I’d say that’s a pretty good number for being on  on Facebook less than two weeks. Elizabeth Ming, a P&G spokesperson, said that the marketing team at P&G is developing plans to keep the new audience engaged. “Once we have our fan base, we hope to continue to provide value to the people who ‘like’ Pepto,” she said.

Pepto utilized it’s official sponsorship of the
“Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest” which took place at the Coney
Island boardwalk in Brooklyn. Pepto had a booth at the event where staffers instructed attendees on
how to share photos from the contest on Facebook and how to “Like” Pepto
on the site. The event was televised live by
ESPN at 12 p.m. EDT on Sunday.

Pepto integrated the event on their Facebook page by running a contest that invited fans to “Guess and Win”. Participants are instructed to visit the page today to find out if they guessed correctly. Their Facebook ads promoted the event with one reading: “How many hot
dogs will the winner of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest eat? Give us
your guess and you could win a free Pepto t-shirt.” Fans could also meet the eaters by clicking on their photo that links to their Facebook page.

Also to keep fans engaged, Pepto posted a two-question quiz on June 25 that featured the questions, “What’s your summer slogan?” and “What would you do for a free t-shirt?”

So not all of us can run such an aggressive ad campaign on Facebook as Pepto did, however there are some simple, inexpensive ideas here that can be implemented on any Facebook page to help engage fans. If you have any examples of how you are engaging fans on your Facebook page, please pass along.

Oh and if you’re interested, Joey Chestnut retained his title and won the contest by eating 68 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, 3 1/2 more than Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, his arch-rival. Not something that I really want to watch, but a record crowd of some 40,000 people showed up at this event!

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