Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Well 'likes" became something more in todays online world, so people do care a LOT about their likes:
"Why you didn't like my photo/post/aritcle/etc"? "omg she has so many likes" most liked post get attention, most like photos get attention, etc etc. I could start explaining it via Mazlow's Hierachy of Needs, but i ll try it short version, "likes" are todays Self-esteem, even Self-actualization for others, in a way you need likes like you need respect from others, in fact they substitute each other. Well I hope you understand where I am going with this. Still need help..

P.s english is not my native language, nor do i live in an english environment or country, so sorry for any mistakes.

You both are sophisticated, intelligent people, you ARE NOT THE TARGET group for Facetop. I am asking your help, because as marketing professionals, I believe you should think like a 15 year old girl, with facebook and ask.fm being the sole interest of your daily life, and ALL the likes that come along.

For example, teenagers in Ask.fm ask each other to exchange likes for their questions, like "you like mine post and I will like yours". You really want to talk about the degradation of modern generation or maybe we can stay on the topic?

Facetop still needs a great catch phrase, for people to authorize...

Didn't answer your question:
"Who really cares? Isn't the purpose of the site to simply communicate with your friends and acquaintances? If this is so...why would you place such an importance on the direction you want to go?
"
- No, it's not, you do not interact with anyone. The website purpose is more like statistics for Facebook likes. Like count is the only importance of this website.

Well the main question is that I need a catch question to lure/tempt people to authorize (click login with facebook button) on main page. In order to create such question, we need the question itself to resemble the website concept.

"Have you actually spoken with, or interviewed, the people in your target audience, or is the premise something you are assuming based on a few online observations?"
- No, I have not. It is not possible for me at this point. By premise you meant the "question" for my target audience? If so, then, yes it is solely my own experience taken into account here. Not sure if I understood your question correctly :/



"From a marketing perspective, what seems to be missing is a compelling benefit for your target audience. How will a user be better off after using the product/service? ("WIIFM?")"
- Benefit is the entertainment user receives from using Facetop. I am trying to think of something else, with all the data I have.

Facebook did start from Facesmash, in a way I am thinking to play with that..

Mirror, Mirror On The Facebook Wall! / Who's The Most Likeable One Of All?
-----
Who's Got The Most Facebook Love?

That is actually quite clever, Sir Jay :)

The thing is that I am not only targeting the English speaking people, and since I cant translate website to every language in the world, I need to go with something everyone will understand.

Who's Got The most Facebook love? - is also good, but doesn't go with Login with Facebook after, don't you agree?

By the "premise" I was actually referring to the premise for the business -- the appeal of the basic idea for your primary target audience. Will young women think this is a good idea, or will they just ignore it as something that's irrelevant to them? (Or something inbetween.)

This is something that can be researched pretty easily, I would think. You simply present the concept to 1,000 Facebook regulars and ask them how likely they would be to use this feature, why/why not, what questions they would have, etc.

If you learn that only a small percentage would be interested, then you might save yourself from a lot of development and marketing work/expense. (Not sure what the business model is. How would you monetize the concept?) If you find that everybody loves the concept, you might have a business idea that could attract serious funding.

mgoodman and darcy.moen, well I guess you give quite same advice, about finding my target audience and asking them directly, that is indeed a good way to do it. thank you.

mgoodman the monitizing is actually quite clever. Not gonna reveal it here though.

darcy.moen I dont really have experience on how to create online focus group, why would people answer my questions, if takes their time, what incentive do i give them? If you can please give me few tips on how to start heading in that direction, I'd really appreciate.




Fellow professionals, talking to you really helped me, because I think i am tacking my issue from new angles. Now I realized the main three stumbling blocks of Facetop, here are some numbers from Google Analytics:

1) Get the person to website.
- That on is really easy, I just spent 50 euro on my first advertising, 7478 people viewed my ad*, 1387 unique people visited, 473 from them have authorized. Which is a great number I guess or maybe not? 1387 interested people joined, but only 30% of them authorized, maybe that is where my "key question" or landing page is somehow wrong or could be better. Please do tell which numbers are good and which I should work more upon. Going back to thread Topic, maybe my "key question" shouldn't be hard at all, it should be as easy as possible, so that person landing on facetop main page understand what the site is about from first seconds, therefore I am thinking to change "Would you like to know who is most popular from your Facebook friends? Login with Facebook" to --> "Female and Male Top on/from Facebook. Find out yours! Login with Facebook" or maybe i should use Men and Women, well tell me guys what you think..

*IMPORTANT remark: that website is visited mostly by boy teens in age from 16 to 26, because from 473 authorized 80% were males. All 7478 are not native English speakers.

2) Make that one person bring friends (start exponential growth). After 473 authorized, unfortunately only 6 people shared their TOP on Facebook wall with their referral URLs, but this 6 people brought 20 new people who authorized and not sure how many in total who didnt.

3) Keep people coming more then once and staying as much as possible. Well from 473 only 15 came back (accessed website more then one time), but stats are only 10 days old, so maybe more will come again. Still the number is bad.

I think the problem is stumblin block number "2". As long as I start exponential growth, number 3 and 1 will not have as much importance as number 2 (it doesnt mean i wont work on them, i ll just place my priorities on number 2), because if one person brings around 4 to authorize, then Facetop will start growing as by itself.


So, after all this said, I really should be concerned about how to make people share their TOP on their facebook wall, but it seems, people don't want to share it at all, everyone is so cautious about their timelines, since it represents them and everyone cares so much what people think.. I gotta play with this somehow, people got to share their TOPs, so that they get some kind of "reward/approval" from others by posting it...

I am very sorry for this wall text, I hope this conversation is as interesting for you guys as it is for me.

If you really want to conduct a series of online focus groups, I strongly recommend hiring a market research professional to plan and execute the study, and to analyze results. There are a number of not-so-obvious pitfalls, and you'll probably save enough time and money to more than offset the fee you'll pay.

The worse part would be if you unknowingly biased or misread the results of your research and actually made an important decision based on your conclusions from the [faulty] research ... and the decision caused the business to lose money instead of make money. That would be very expensive research indeed.

@Gary Gloomer, thank you for bringing the subject.

Facetop started as full copy of Facebook, just for the sake to look like it and get users approval. I know that was wrong, so there is new design coming in few days time. The blue you see is actually completely different from the Facebook blue. I try to change things as much as possible so there would be no connection to Facebook anymore. The new design will come in a week time.

There is this app called topface.com, Facebook doesn't ban them, so I guess I can use Facetop name. I do have right for domain name facetop.me

Btw, please do authorize, so you can check all the insights of the website, we will delete all your and your friends data after 48 hours, pinky promise! Pleas note again, the website design will change (since the inner page looks very much alike Facebook page)

You brought good point about the photos we use on landing page, I don't have permission for those, since I did not ask those people. However Facebook did grant me access to them, maybe there is facebook own policy, that if you are using facebook you give access to all your data through facebook API as well. Have so much stuff to do that did not really have time to check that. What would you suggest though? Well I can always make people accept my own policy, and agreeing that their photos will be displayed publicly, the problem is still with their friends since I can not ask every person ~300 friends for approval. I have currently ~600 people authorized and from them I have access to 120 000 other people's data including their photos and like count. So I can always go displaying TOP of 600, instead of displaying TOP of 120 000 people. I do hope though that I ll be able to switch when the app goes popular to top of only authorized people.

Overall I don't worry about trademark at all, since right now it just helps to get people attention, whenever the App goes big, I can really change everything, it wont matter at that point, even domain name and name itself, not even talking about some colors here :) The data and idea will only matter.


@mgoodman, do you know the market cost for such service, how much money are we talking about here? Facetop is a private start up and the funds are limited at the moment. I do agree this research should be conducted by professionals and not myself. Maybe you would like to invest your know-how into promising start up and conduct such research? :))))

Btw here is my skype: illusionamusant if smn would like to discuss or propose something.


P.S If smn could give opinion about the numbers I provided in previous post, that would help a lot.

Thanks to everyone again

You don't worry about trademarks? Well, in the unlikely event that Facebook issue a cease and desist notice, I wish you well.

I do not implement market research. I have a great market research contact who has never disappointed me, so I always go to her for stuff like this. And the cost can vary quite a bit depending on specifics, so I'm sure the cost will be a function of what you want (specifically) and how it will be used.

Ironically, the value of research like this is greatest to start-ups who can least afford it. Go figure!

@Gary Bloomer, I thought I was clear that I do. Reading your response was quite strange..

@mgoodman, so how do I get that contact?