A family fun center in Tacoma, WA asked us to help them get more positive views, referrals and feedback on Facebook. They'd been hit with some unfavorable reviews from a very small (but vocal) minority of customers, while their fans and customers with positive experiences weren't leaving good reviews or posting about how much fun they'd had.
This left the family fun center with a weak reputation on Facebook, with the most buzz being around negative reviews or angry comments. It's estimated that it takes 12 positive reviews or posts to outweigh 1 negative review online, so this issue with only getting negative reviews was creating a big problem.
We came up with a creative solution to give happy customers an incentive to refer friends and post about how much fun they were having at the family fun center, to increase their organic and positive reach!
We used a 2-step approach for the family fun center's request.
Step 1. Set Up Slideshow
We built a tool that would find photos posted at Odyssey 1 Tacoma from customers and designed a page that would show those photos in a rotating slideshow. This webpage was optimized to show on a TV in the family fun center, and showed the most recent Odyssey 1 images in a frame that matched the family fun center's logo.
Step 2. Promote Contest to Visitors and Facebook Fans
Secondly, we started promoting posting pictures to Odyssey 1's Facebook page or checking in at Odyssey 1 on Facebook with a weekly contest. Whoever posted the best picture of the week would win a $20 certificate to Odyssey 1 the next week, they just needed to stop by the store to get their gift card.
We promoted the contest with text on the in-store slideshow, Facebook posts and banners in the store to promote this contest and remind happy customers to let us know how much fun they and their children were having at the family fun center. The average Facebook user has about 300 friends, so if we could get happy customers to post about their fun on Facebook we could reach thousands of people with positive and happy posts about Odyssey 1 from friends and family!
Odyssey 1's positive posts and feedback went up nearly six times as much as before! People loved seeing their photos appear on the slideshow and getting the chance to win a $20 certificate to Odyssey 1, and we found that Odyssey 1 had many loyal customers who had never checked in on Facebook before but were more than happy to once they had an incentive.
Additionally, Odyssey 1's organic reach on Facebook went up significantly after happy customers started posting about their positive experiences at Odyssey 1! Thousands of new people started seeing positive posts about the family fun center. While we can't easily remove old negative Facebook reviews, these personal referrals and recommendations from happy customers do more than enough to outweigh that negativity.