How Facebook Helped MegaRed Improve Market Share

Yesterday's New York Times has a detailed article about how Facebook worked with Reckitt Benckiser to create a targeted FB ad campaign for MegaRed, which competes with fish oil pills. The fish oil market rings up $1.2 billion in annual US sales, so market share matters.

A number of advertisers say FB has helped them achieve results and get returns on their ad investments. In fact, FB is investing heavily to be able to present more interactive and more creative ads, giving mobile marketing a particular emphasis because so many FB users access their pages on the "third screen."

In the case of MegaRed, one communications objective was to achieve 100,000 Facebook fans. The financial objective was to increase sales and improve market share by orchestrating the ads within a campaign that included point-of-purchase marketing, TV ads, and sampling.

Facebook recommended advertising MegaRed to every US woman aged 45 and up--approximately 32 million people who use FB. Reckitt Benckiser had a more precise targeting process in mind: It wanted to target current users of fish oil and consumers who have "heart concerns."

FB said its demographically-targeted ads would be measurable and, by analyzing who in the broad female audience responded early in the campaign, FB could refine the targeting when placing more ads. Reckitt Benckiser gave the go-ahead to test the demographic targeting and the targeting to fish-oil users. A big part of the process involved testing different creative executions, including both emotional appeals and rational appeals.

The results: MegaRed added more than a full percentage point of market share during the campaign and generated much more revenue than the campaign's cost. MegaRed fell short of the 100,000 FB fans it hoped to attract, but with 240,000 likes (as of today), the brand's FB page has a solid fan base. "Facebook is a fantastic tool for doing personalized marketing at scale," says Reckitt Benckiser's global marketing head.