In accordance to the table presented below, there are also several differences in outcomes. The first campaign launched in 2017 presents the larger amount of reached people, there are 55081 people reached in 2017 and 45239 people reached in 2018. Therefore, the difference in people reached leads to the differences in post clicks, for instance, there 5736 clicks, including photo views, link clicks and other clicks, on the 2017-year campaign, while on the new campaign the amount is 4717 clicks. The reactions on the post have different amount as well, October 2017 is 3950 reactions, and October 2018 gathered 3354 reactions (difference is 596 reactions). The amount of comments in the first case is 1929 and in the second case 1781, which means that these amounts of people were participating in promotional campaign. In relation to people reacted to promotional campaign there are 48,8% of people were participating in October 2017 and 53,1% in October 2018. Hidden posts are different due to the difference in amount of people reached. In accordance to the table, post shares have significant difference in numbers. There is a certain reason, which will be considered in the next chapter.
TABLE 1. Comparison of promotional campaigns (Facebook insights 2018)
4.2 Reasons of effect differences
The previous chapter shows significant difference in results of promotional campaign launched in October 2017 and October 2018. However, there are some reasons for these differences.
First of all, the post boosting gives additional opportunity to gather potential customers and followers for the organization. The first campaign made in October 2017 was boosted one time for one week, the price of promotion is 17 euro. The result of the post boosting is 2100 reached people, 408 engagements, 8 photo clicks, 25 page likes, 122comments and 14 shares. To generalize the result the total amount of participants of promotional campaign is 122 people.
IMAGE 13. Post boosting results October 2017 (Facebook 2018)
The next case of October 2018, faced problems with a boosting post, as Facebook reported a problem to launch it due to the inappropriate photo on the post. Thus, the post was launched for a limited period of time and then removed from the advertisement desk. Therefore, the total spent amount is 1 euro, 133 reached people, 17 post engagements and 5 likes.
IMAGE 14. Post boosting results October 2018 (Facebook 2018)
Finally, to get a true result, we have to remove bosting post results from the outcome. Thus, there are following results of two campaigns: 52981 reached people, 1807 comments (October 2017), 45106 reached people, 1776 comments (October 2018).
Secondly, there are different time of promotional campaign period, October 2017 (27.10.201720.11.2017) 25 days of promotion and October 2018 (10.10.2018-30.10.2018) 21 days of promotion. The amount of days also causes the difference in results. Thus, in the first case 52981 people reached in 25 days and in the second case 45106 reached people in 21 days (without boosting post). As the second case is lower by 4 days, we have to divide 45106 reached people by 21 days, then the average sum of reached people will be 2148 people per day.
Therefore, if the sum of 2148 multiply by 4 days and combine with the amount of 21 days will be about 53698 that is closer to case of October 2017.
Besides, Facebook does not allow to include shares of post into the competition, for example, the phrase “to participate in promotional campaign share the post on your page” is prohibited.
During the launching of the first campaign in October 2017 was made a mistake and one of the condition was to share the post on own page. After several hours the mistake was identified and the condition was removed. However, 198 shares were made by participants. If the amount of mistaken shares is excluded – the total amount of October 2017 shares is 31. Thus the difference between two campaign is not significant (9 shares).
Furthermore, there were made differences in campaign services provided for the winner. There is a probability that one combination of services is more suitable than other. However, there is no opportunity to observe this assumption.
The promotional campaign 2017 got better result regarding the followers which started to follow the page during the time of promotional campaign. This happened due to the fact that 2107 was the first year of launching organization on Facebook and there was extremely low amount of followers from the nearest areas. Thus, after launching campaign people and their friends who are interested in beauty services started to follow new salon as there were interesting activity in addition to the service innovations. However, the number of people which became customers is different, for instance, there are 25 people became salon customers in 2017, while after the promotional campaign in 2018 43 people became customers. This result means that the last campaign brought better result by 58% in terms of bringing new customers. There are could be
several reasons for this result. The campaign 2017 has obtained basis for the Facebook page, where customers have not only observed company’s page, but also liked photos and videos, wrote reviews and shared interesting posts. When 2018-year campaign was launched, people have already know about the firm and its quality, and company have had the background in terms of Facebook page. Thus, attracted people by promotional campaign were motivated to request service due to the existing opinion about the organization.
According to the experience, promotional campaigns bring success and attract new customers.
Therefore, such online promotions have to be conducted at least four times per one year. This amount is optimal, because the average duration is one month and there are about two months of time, when people are able to forget about the promotion and when it launched again – participate with new interest. Thus, in the future, company Silver LuxuryWorld will conduct promotional campaigns at least four times per year in order to obtain more customers and potential clients, which follow the page. Moreover, campaigns have not to be considered in terms of service, but there could be campaign, when the winning participant get, for instance, cosmetics, books, jewelry and so on.
5 CONCLUSION
At the present time the internet is growing rapidly and people daily using it even at work. There are different social media networks, which became popular nowadays and businesses actively use them, because it is an effective way for further development and highly interactive as it provides real time communication.
The research shows how to create and launch an effective promotional campaign. In addition, determines which key elements have to be considered in creating promotional campaign. To get answers to research questions, theoretical materials and real life examples of small and medium sized enterprises were analysed and collected in order to obtain profound basis of how to create, launch promotional campaign and find key elements which are significant in this case.
Therefore, it was necessary to include general information about Social Media, different definitions made by different scientists, theory of media richness and SM types. Through the statistics of the most popular social media platforms it was identified than Facebook has the highest activity and largest amount followers, which helped in determination of social media platform for methodological part. In addition, promotional campaign scope by Sissors and
Baron, AIDA marketing and examples of successful campaign in Facebook were utilized in order to create effective promotional campaign.
Thus, the thesis has practical nature, where the research is constructed profoundly as it is based on clearly collected theoretical part with real life examples. The promotional campaign launched in methodological art brought success to organization, for example, 43 new customers requested and ordered time in salon, amount of followers and likes were increased by 344 in both cases as well as activity of the page. In addition, the organization is expanding and searching for more two workers as the number of clients enlarging daily, because during the promotion campaign 45228 people were reached by campaign.
The thesis is useful for any entrepreneur as it is providing real life example of promotion campaign which can be placed in Facebook, bring results and help in developing of organization. There are many opportunities for the future research. As the topic is developing at the present period of time, information, social media platforms and internet as a whole are changing constantly. Thus, researches about advertisement for business promotion as well as new ways and types of it are relevant over the time. New studies about different business spheres are also welcome. In addition, the other research could be provided by a deeper understanding of which benefits retailers obtain from the social media advertising as well as what benefits companies get in return. Finally, future research could be conducted in other countries rather than Finland to compare and analyze difference of people’s involvement.