CORPORATE CASE STUDY
basic offline networking. And finally,
Visa wanted to create a platform to help
generate new business opportunities for
small business owners by bringing the
owners directly to the customers. With
all this in mind, Visa landed on social
networking.
Facebook launched its own Business
Pages in November 2007 so that company owners could reach out to existing
customers, friends and families by posting
news on special store events or use it as
a communications platform. Today, Facebook’s business community has 80,000
small business pages, and 300,000 owners
have a personal Facebook page.
“But what we did was go in and provide an application that can help them
[small business owners] find each other,”
says Craddock. “It’s a really rich criteria-driven search function. Finding a business
is as simple as looking for location, size,
revenue or employee numbers. Then you
connect around the world and put in your
profile what you’re looking for in a connection, advice, success stories, etc.”
Marketing Within the Community
So far, Craddock says that VBN’s
online community has exceeded expectations in becoming a “one-stop shop
resource.”
Part of the initial success may be tied
to Visa’s offer of a $100 advertising credit
on Facebook to the first 20,000 U.S.
small businesses that become members.
“The ad credit program has been very
well received and the businesses are using
their credits,” says Craddock. “There have
been some great anecdotal stories of the
response businesses have seen from the
advertising they have done in Facebook
as a result of the credit.” VBN exceeded
calendar target dates by signing up the
first 20,000 members in less than three
months.
“For a small business, it’s a risk to try
something new, so for them to make use
Alex Craddock, the head of small business
marketing at Visa, saw opportunities
to utilize DR marketing in online social
communities. Soon after, the Visa Business
Network application launched on Facebook.
of this Facebook trial is a great opportunity,” says Craddock. During launch,
Visa also advertised the application across
TV, print and radio channels. Plus very
