Viral Ad Network

There’s been much chitter-chatter recently about the Viral Ad Network #icecreamcrawl and last week the eagerly anticipated delivery van hit agencies in London and Bristol, spreading icecream love among the masses.

One of the first questions people asked us was, why ice cream? We say, why not? (And also, don’t question a good thing, sometimes life is just nice to you!) We love to share joy and smiles and who doesn’t like treats? Well, as it turned out, it seems that our friends love ice cream as much as we do, with over 1,000 delicious cones of joy handed out!

First of all we have to say a big thank you to all the lovely folk in Bristol on Friday. It was great to have so many people come out to join us, (even though a few individuals got a bit over excited by it all and tried to lick our poor ice cream boys face!) Especially since the weather was less than kind and there was a lot of umbrella action – all the more reason for ice cream we think!

To see where we went on Friday check out the Bristol Map of Joy and of course not forgetting all the awesome London agencies, have a peek at the London #Icecreamcrawl Round Up to see what we got up to on Thursday!

One more thing… we know that there was a lot of disappointed tweeting coming from the agencies that weren’t lucky enough to make it onto the Map of Joy, so we would like to say sorry for any sad faces inflicted upon you. The good news is that we have many more fun activities in the pipelines and your tweets have been noted. If you want to keep up to date with goings on at VAN head quarters sign up to Van Viral Scoop and be the first to get in on the action next time!

Check out our Flickr gallery for the full album of pictures from the day!

Following on from “Making Friends”, this post gives some advice on changing those friends to customers…

So you have a following of people who have engaged with your brand and are happy to listen to what you are saying and enter conversation. The next step is to try and develop these relationships to sales. How to nudge your brands digital following (e.g. Facebook fans, Twitter followers) from friends to customers is currently the million dollar question in social media.

The best approach depends a lot on the sort of brand you are, and the purchase frequency of your customers. For example, for luxury brands, such as car firms, even committed customers may very rarely be in a position to actually buy your product. In this case, you can either try and increase the frequency of purchase or make sure you are front of mind when people are looking to buy.

- How can you increase purchase frequency?

Much like sending out an email newsletter, adding prompts to your Facebook page is one way of increasing purchase frequency. For example, Crooked Tongues (an online trainer store) will announce each new product that comes in, tempting their fans to increase their purchase frequency (trust me, my empty wallet proves this works!). They also do this on Twitter, mixing industry news with their own shop launches.

- How do you stay front of mind

A good way to stay front of mind is to keep creating interesting content for your fans. Try to not make all of your communication sales based – mix it up with entertainment like viral videos, alongside opinion and discussion on your industry. This will enable you to connect more with your followers as it shows more of a passion for your industry and not just for your sales.

There are also other ways of bridging the gap between Friendship and purchase, for example Easyjet now let you buy flights straight from their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/easyJet), cutting down the number of steps between Facebook (a space for friendship) and point of sale.

A good rule is, make it as easy as you can for your friends to become your customers – keep them entertained so they remain your friends, then make it easy to purchase your product/service and easy to justify that purchase.