If the numbers have anything to say about it, yes.

Colloquy reports that U.S. companies that use social media primarily to deepen customer loyalty spend almost twice as much as competitors who use it for brand awareness, customer acquisition and other core marketing purposes. Specifically, their survey results show the average social media spend for marketers whose primary objective is to obtain customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for brand awareness and $30,000 for customer acquisition, the objectives that attracted the next highest spending levels…and the spend is increasing…by nearly 300% over the last year.

So companies must be seeing some strong return from these dollars and initiatives. What are some social media loyalty programs that you’ve seen?

1. Best Buy

Best Buy engages in a simple F-commerce set up, where users can directly browse categories of products and make online purchases. The page also encourages the user to share content and products with those they know.

2. BMW

The automotive industry usually has an active creative presence. Here, BMW has a large call-to-action that’s hard for the user to miss…

3. Honda

Due to its wide range of cars, Honda has opted for its official corporate page to redirect users to model-specific fan pages. There’s also a large piece of creative which is focused around an ongoing advertising campaign.

4. Red Bull

The creative speaks for itself…

5. Toyota (USA)

Toyota is taking the product-personal story stance on its Facebook page, similarly to Samsung.

6. Windows

Microsoft encourages users to “Like” them by offering specific content and discounts, which is emphasised by the blurred-out creative.

And if you’re interested, here are the Top 20 social networking brands by the numbers (via Consumer Goods):

The campaign involved using this inconspicuous and familiar little bit of branding turf for a visual experiment: instead of the familiar logo, the stickers carried bold and whimsical iconish face imagery — a monkey, a happy Cyclops, a vaguely anime-style girl, a luchador and so on. Using the same colors as the familiar Chiquita logo, the designs were genuine eye-catchers.

And they may have caught even more eyes online than they did in the store: Chiquita set up a Web tool for people to whip up their own sticker drag-and-drop mixes, and an obliging public created more than 25,000 of them in less than five months, according to the company. This enthusiasm has led to a competition — 1,355 entries were submitted over several months, and online voting starts tomorrow at eatachiquita.com to pick 18 designs that will be stuck onto actual bananas.

By actually contributing to the defamiliarizing of something familiar, the contestants layer new “intrigue” onto one company’s supply of what is, after all, a pure commodity.

It’s an amazing campaign of community and letting go of the control of your brand to bring emotion to it. Or as Chiquita reps put it, the campaign is “designed to re-engage that emotional connection with consumers.” So many brands try to this, but with little success. The attempts are usually fairly meaningless, because adding your words to a coffee cup isn’t nearly as interesting as genuinely engaging, re-working and re-imagining an iconic brand to include your ideas, not your ideas of what you think the brand will like. Way to go, Chiquita.

Word of mouth works best when you hear a piece of advice or recommendation from a friend or family member, perhaps a neighbor – anyone that you actually know and trust. Facebook has made it their business to connect you to the people you engage with often offline and take those relationships online. And in the world of consumer trust, that makes them the winner.

According to a study by Invoke Solutions, reports Meghan Keane, “the most trusted information online is posted by people’s real world friends. Blog posts by said friends were more likely to be trusted ‘completely’ than posts on Facebook. But posts on Twitter were even less trustworthy.”

“Invoke asked frequent social media users what sources they trusted online. 26% completely trusted blogs written by their friends. 23% trusted their friends’ Facebook posts. But only about half that (12%) completely trusted messages from friends on Twitter.”

Photo Credit: Laughing Squid.

But “CPG companies on average spend six percent of their marketing budgets on online media, half of what other companies in other industries are spending,” Douglas Brooks reports.  “Clearly, there is an enormous untapped opportunity for the CPG marketer who gets it right. And that means having a clear, holistic view of your digital marketing spend across your entire organization.”

Brooks urges that marketers start with the following basic questions to get it right:

• Over the short term, what are the goals of the digital campaign and how do they tie with those of the broader advertising and marketing program?
• Over the longer term, how does this campaign contribute to brand goals such as share of shelf, sales and market share uplift?
• What specific consumer actions does the company want to drive—do you want them to visit a Web site, print a coupon, buy online, go to the store?
• How will the team track information disseminated and measure the success of the campaign, both in terms of direct consumer response as well as the effect on offline activity

Brooks later suggests that what’s great about digital is that it allows for – and requires constant experimentation and refinement. Indeed, the area is still so new it is ripe for innovation, particularly by the CPG industry, where consumers are pleading for products and conversations that respond to their modern lifestyles.

The pizza brand Papa Johns recently released the details of it’s social media campaign, designed to “welcome customers into its R&D and marketing departments via a promotion on Facebook and Twitter.” The impressive contest allows the winner to get one percent of the sales of her creation, up to $10,000, plus $480 worth of free pizza a year for 50 years and a visit to Papa John’s headquarters.

“By mid-June, more than 12,000 recipes were submitted,” Papa John’s reported. “The company chose 10 semifinalists, based on taste, creativity and the quality of the description.”

To pull off such a integrated campaign, Papa John’s admits they had to break through some traditional silos. “The PR and research and development departments are working together with marketing on this,” says Jim Ensign, Papa John’s VP of digital marketing. “Our corporate chef is backing these [customer-created pizzas] as passionately as he backs his own creations.”

Papa John’s insists the campaign isn’t a gimmick, but rather that the social media elements are a “natural evolution of our use of word-of-mouth. The technology gives us more tools,” Ensign says.

And as more companies, particularly CPG brands, are looking to get insight into their customer’s minds and habits, social media holds a particular – and quick – allure. CPG brands have traditionally spent thousands, if not millions, on surveys and sampling without ever having receiving the full picture because retailers have always held onto the majority of data. Now, technology – as Papa John’s points out – is allowing brands to disintermediate and get rid of those layers so they can more effectively have a direct conversation with their customer. Through online marketplaces, social media outlets and more, CPG brands have more options than ever for customer feedback… let’s hope they use it!

BrandWeek reports, “Sixty-four percent of Americans wash their sheets at least once per week and they usually celebrate with some small (and quirky) act of happiness. As some new TV spots from Grey and this longer Web video, via Digitas, show, that can range anywhere from making a “snow angel” on the bed to parachuting with the (freshly cleaned) sheets. The ads promote a new formula upgrade available on Ultra Downy April Fresh and Sun Blossom, which purport to deliver a week’s worth of clean sheet freshness, all in one wash. (The technology lies in new scent pearls, per P&G.)”

It’s great to see brands making their creative available online, especially with such a compelling theme. Who doesn’t like clean sheets?! The online video, however, points Downy fans to the brands Facebook page, which at time of writing had 242 fans, most of whom were not happy. Instead, they are complaining about how Downy has changed the smell of their favorite products. Apparently, the upgrade on Ultra Downy April Fresh and Sun Blossom also changes the smell – and users would prefer to have a smell they love for a few days than I smell they hate for one week. One customer writes:

How on earth could they change the original smell of Downy? We pay extra (even when something else is on sale) for that smell! What is the point of doing that now? BRING BACK OUR ORIGINAL APRIL FRESH SMELL! It is what Downy is all about! Yikes!

Some comments are close to outrage:

It’s rather distressing to have to LIKE this page when I don’t like the new scent… I HATE IT!!! I’ve used it for more than 20 years and this new stuff is disgusting! Yes, I’ve griped on the Downy website and will continue to sound off until you change it back… until then I am not purchasing any Downy products… …I don’t need the copy and paste reply w/ the 800# – just communicate the frustration all the way to the top, please? Thank you!

This commenter is referring to the fact that the Downy Facebook manager is using a mostly form reply that suggests customers call the customer service line to find a new scent that better meets their needs. But as one commenter points out, “Um, why would a loyal Downy user want to try a new scent? Isn’t that why they call consumers loyal, because they are loyal to a specific brand / scent?”

Hopefully, brands will realize that Facebook and other social media outlets are a common place to build and extend consumer relationships – not a funnel to the customer service line. Social media is the platform for customer service, product innovation and more.  Social media should be a place where brands and customers meet and have a cup of coffee together. The more brands stop making customers travel all the way to their house (toll free number, contact forms) and instead meet at a mutual location (Twitter, Facebook, live chat, etc), the more return they will get from their efforts. It’s not enough to show up and monitor anymore. You must engage.

Except for many consumers, any incident with a brand is an emergency. If you can’t hang your curtains properly – whether through product defect or your lack of handyman skills – a tweet to West Elm might be fired off angrily. You would probably expect an answer. And in not getting one, you would probably only get angrier. Even when you love a product, getting affirmation from a brand that they hear you and are appreciative is incredibly powerful.

I suspect that consumers not only demand to be answered within an hour if there’s an emergency, but expect fast and efficient communication with brands no matter what. While your customer service may have specific hours, community brand managers and social media brand leaders are constantly checking Twitter or company Facebook pages at night, in the morning before work and throughout the day to ensure customers’ needs are met.

In a way, this makes the brand more human. There is obviously someone who cares if they’re replying to you at 11:39 pm. But it also raises the expectations mightily, and brands need to expand their product definition from not just what the consumer can hold or use, but the entire experience around the product.

1. The Offer Matters Most. “Moms are most likely to purchase an item they generally wouldn’t if offered a coupon that saves them more than 50%. Moms find these discounts more valuable than other offers including “buy one, get one,” instant coupons attached to products, and bulk discounts (i.e., saving by purchasing more than three items at once).”

2. Moms Clip & Go Online. Though many still prefer clipping coupons (72%), marketers should diversify offers, as 70% of Moms find coupons online and 73% subscribe to couponing emails or newsletters.

3. Moms are Loyal. 82% of moms reported brand loyalty to certain items, citing the perceived quality (71%) and value (51%) of the brand for its price as their primary reasons, and wouldn’t switch to a couponed product in these cases.

4. Social Media Drives Conversion. “Influencer marketing drives awareness. 52% of Moms say they use social media to find discounts and 45% read couponing blogs. Tapping into these communities gives coupons added exposure to support long-term conversion and brand awareness.”

“The number of special product promotions featuring digital coupons increased 84% between the first half of 2009 and the first half of 2010 — largely thanks to new marketing initiatives via retailer Web sites and social media, according to Kantar Media, which operates a Web site-tracking service called Marx,” reports Erik Sass.

“Focusing in on retailer Web sites specifically, Kantar-Marx found that the number of manufacturers staging promotion events with digital coupons (268) surpassed the number using traditional print freestanding inserts (213) — another sign of their growing popularity.”

Part of the increase of digital coupons is a CPG brand’s willingness to use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to spread the word and gain exposure. And for consumers who no longer want to take the time and energy to clip coupons, digital coupon events are a great way to increase customer loyalty.