Increase Sales Through MySpace?

Want to tap into the myspace community and create your own company page? This social marketing site should certainly be considered as part of the Internet Marketing mix for companies wishing to build relationships with young consumers. However, winning friends in this community can be difficult especially for traditional companies that may be thought of as “uncool” by the young myspace crowd.

Musicians, artists, and celebrities all gather huge numbers of friends on myspace, as their talents can easily be showcased using the website, but how does a more traditional, less sexy company get in on the action?

There are certain types of companies that seem to be a more natural fit in the myspace community. Trendy brands like Redbull, or Mini appeal to the young myspace community and are likely to win friends. Popular nightclubs, shops, and restaurants would all easily have success. Charities have lots of young supporters who will be happy to provide their backing through myspace.

The key to success on myspace is to write good content. This content should be creative, unusual – off the wall – anything to get people talking about your company.

This content should provide either (a) some information that the myspace community would find useful or (b) just simply entertain them by providing unusual videos or animated games for example. Offering friends on myspace some sort of discount or promotion is another way of getting noticed.

Companies that currently use informative and entertaining content to win friends on myspace include:

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Apple – the company created 3 separate Myspace pages to market the IPOD Nano range – green, blue, and pink. Apple has been using social networking effectively to market itself on other sites, including Facebook, where the company offered 10 million free itunes samplers to friends on the site.
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Wendy’s – the American fast food chain created a character called “Smart” for the Myspace community. Smart is a 28 year old male from New York who is “square”. He likes all things square and “has no hair”. Smart has 67055 friends on Myspace. Check out http://www.myspace.com/wendysquare
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Proctor and Gamble – the company tries to be more subtle about promoting their “Secret Body Spray” by focusing their myspace page on pop star, Rihanna and peppering the text with references to the “Secret Body Spray” tour. Rihanna mentions her favourite scent of body spray – Vanilla and also promotes their full range of scents from Peach Shimmer to Tropical Radiance. Secret body spray has over 31,000 friends in the Myspace community.

Objections have been voiced by consumer groups because it is difficult to tell the difference between a genuine member and a marketer. Fooling potential customers may win you friends in the short term, but consumers value honesty and it is best for companies to come clean about who they are and what they are promoting.

Creating a simple ugly page with basic company information on myspace won’t do your company any favours. If you are willing to put in some time and effort however myspace offers a tremendous marketing opportunity that your company can’t ignore.

Myspace is not right for everyone – especially businesses that sell to the B2B market. For the business to business market you may want to consider other social marketing sites where the focus is more on business relationships. For example www.linkedin.com is a popular medium for business networks amongst others.