GameStop recently joined the ranks of retailers with a fully integrated Facebook store. I asked GameStop Vice President of E-Commerce Kelly Mulroney to explain how the company is approaching Facebook as part its larger sales strategy.
What made GameStop decide that it needed a Facebook retail store? What roles will the store play in the company’s retail strategy?
We launched our Facebook page last year, and the growth of the community has been nothing short of remarkable.
Access to GameStop anywhere, anytime is one of the core principles of our cross-channel, digital strategy. Each of our channels — be they physical, Web, e-mail, mobile or social — has a role in bringing that principle to life. As the Facebook community grew, we saw some of our most loyal customers engaging with us and one another on our fan page. Providing commerce as an option within the overall experience is simply an extension of our cross-channel strategy.
Are you doing anything to promote the Facebook store using non-Facebook channels? How does the Facebook store fit into your broader social media strategy?
Having easy access to what’s happening in gaming is important to our customers. We’re using Facebook as a way to keep our customers up to date on new games, big announcements and the best deals we have to offer. On GameStop.com, we provide opportunities for gamers to follow or fan us; they can also share or like games, reviews and pre-release buzz. That activity is then pushed out to their friends on Facebook. Just as we provide community and social commerce features within GameStop.com, we offer commerce on Facebook as an option for customers who would like to buy without leaving Facebook.
What is your Facebook store’s relationship to your physical stores and your e-commerce site? Are you doing anything to build synergy between them? How does your Facebook audience compare with your e-retail and physical-store customers? Do you need to market to them differently?
Our Facebook community is highly aligned with the audience that shops in our stores. In fact, our Facebook fans represent some of our most loyal customers; most of them have joined our loyalty program, PowerUp Rewards. Our plan for physical-store integration is focused on generating awareness about what we’re doing on Facebook. Because our associates have such rich interactions with customers in store, the dialog between our store associates and our customers is among the most authentic and effective marketing tools we have as a retailer.
What’s the role of social content — reviews, debates, conversations — in GameStop’s Facebook commerce strategy? How are you using discussions to drive sales, and vice-versa?
Social content on Facebook and on GameStop.com are both extremely important to launching the big new games and consoles. We’ve seen social content — reviews and preview buzz — improve our search-engine ranking. Quite honestly, it’s unthinkable for us not to provide gamers with an outlet for sharing pre-release buzz and post-release discussion and reviews. GameStop.com offers gamers the opportunity to discuss any game that is available for sale on the site. On Facebook, we engage users in dialogue around upcoming or recent releases. In some cases, we create dedicated Facebook tabs for upcoming games, which are fully integrated with the cross-channel marketing campaigns for those titles.
Can we expect to see GameStop using Facebook to experiment with digital sales or digital content? What will you do to make this sales platform unique?
Absolutely. GameStop is already offering digital content for sale on GameStop.com and in our retail stores. Facebook is no exception to our cross-channel strategy focused on providing gamers great selection combined with the easiest way to discover the quality games and digital add-ons that meet their interests. We see the Facebook store as a place to feature some of the best games of interest to the community.
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