Advertising Case Study

markafoni
Background
markafoni is Turkeys leading private shopping website with around 10.000 items sold daily. Members are given access to exclusive sales of designer apparel, accessories and homewares at significantly discounted prices. In order to join, people must receive invitations or referrals from existing members. Founded in 2008, the company organizes around 200.000 sales every month. markafoni is the first and premier site of its kind in Turkey.

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

Agency:

Objective
markafoni wanted to jump start its Facebook community and increase its number of Facebook fans. The company began advertising mainly to direct traffic from Facebook in the summer of 2010 and had built a community of around 10,000 fans. As each fan represents a new member and potential customer of its private retail site, it was important to markafoni to develop a substantial audience on Facebook. markafoni aimed to reach 250,000 fans by the end of 2011. The exclusivity of markafonis online sales are one of its biggest selling points and word of mouth recommendations from friends are crucial to the growth of markafonis customer base. The companys agency, Promoqube, identified an opportunity when Facebook launched a new marketing product: Sponsored Stories.

Objective: Increase markafonis fan base on Facebook Solution: Facebook Sponsored Stories campaign, using Page Likes and Page posts Sponsored Stories Key Lessons: Sponsored Stories for Page Likes are a very effective and efficient method to grow a fan base quickly and dramatically Facebook users have an inherent trust in their friends activities and recommendations. This can translate into high engagement with Sponsored Stories

Our main objective for 2011 was 250,000 fans. Now we are already at 170,000, so markafoni will have to re-write its goals!
Hasan Basusta, Promoqube

Advertising Case Study

Approach
Sponsored Stories allow a company to surface word-of-mouth recommendations about its brand that exist organically in the Facebook News Feed. The types of stories that can be surfaced include: Page Likes, App interactions, Place check-ins and Page posts. Promoqube worked with markafoni to launch a Facebook campaign that took full advantage of Sponsored Stories. This campaign capitalises on peoples inherent trust and interest in what their friends are doing and what they like. On January 31st 2010, the company began running two kinds of Sponsored Stories: Pages Likes and Page Posts. The campaign lasted for three weeks. The majority of the Sponsored Stories were Page Likes and these were targeted to people who had friends who were already fans of markafoni. Once users became fans, markafoni directed Sponsored Stories Page Posts to them, to ensure that they saw the news and announcements that the company posted on its Facebook Page.

Results
markafoni reached 100,000 fans in less than three weeks after it started running Sponsored Stories. This represents a 1,000 percent increase in under three weeks. All of markafonis new fans came through the Sponsored Stories At the close of the campaign, the company had approximately 170,000 fans, seventeen times as many fans as it had when the campaign began. This equates to 170,000 new potential customers, with whom markafoni can communicate directly. Our main objective for 2011 was 250,000 fans, says Hasan Basusta of Promoqube. Now we are already at 170,000, so markafoni will have to re-write its goals! The campaign received a total of 221 million impressions and 401,000 clicks, for a clickthrough-rate of 0.181 percent

Advertising Case Study

markafonis fans on Facebook have already started to generate revenue for the company. We are satisfied with the increase in revenue that we have seen since we began the campaign, says Hakki Arikan, Marketing Director for markafoni. We are watching closely to see how it continues. The large fan base has turned the Facebook platform into a powerful communication channel for markafoni. It has enabled the company to interact directly with a new segment of customers

The Future
markafoni and Promoqube are incredibly pleased that they are very near to their goal of 250,000 fans in 2011 at only the first week of March, thanks to the Sponsored Stories campaign. One of the next steps is to engage this audience. markafoni and Promoqube are now planning to integrate Login with Facebook into markafoni.com, to enable members to engage more deeply with the site and share content quickly and easily. markafoni also plans to increase its Facebook advertising budget and continue to run Facebook Ad campaigns on a regular basis. After the success of its first Sponsored Stories campaign, markafoni is looking at how best to integrate Sponsored Stories with engagement ads for a more comprehensive campaign. markafoni has only just started to work with Facebook, says Hasan. It has only been four weeks but the company is already very happy with the results.