Building a Fan Base: Lessons From 5th Street Market

Fifth Street Public Market is a collection of delightful shops in a European environment. We talked to Somer Deck about her social media strategy
. Kim: Did Twitter start about the same time as Facebook?
Somer: Yes. I had (the marketing assistant) Lindsey do Twitter the same time that we did Facebook. She is pretty much the one who drives that right now. We’ll always kind of remind her of things. We have lists of things to hit every time we have something that comes up. That’s really, I would say, the biggest word of mouth for us, even to a lot of degree more than traditional advertising, because people see things here when they’re walking through here, and then they go out and spread it. Whereas you don’t always know how many people are going to see (local newspapers such as) the Register-Guard, or see the Eugene Weekly, or hear a radio ad. br> I think more and more these days, we’re tuned out to any of that sort of thing, because we’re bombarded with it so much that it’s more the things that we choose on our own. Facebook is about choosing what you want to see. People become a fan of the Fifth Street Market, because they’re actually interested in it, not because it’s being forced upon them. I think that’s a really important element of it. I know that it is for me. I have so many things coming at me all day long, from emails to notes and ads and papers, and all sorts of things, that it’s nice when I know that I have control over the things that I want to see, rather than always what people want me to see. So that’s one of the things that I really like about the social media, is that it’s people’s choice.br> Kim: We notice that on Facebook and on Twitter that it’s a mix of messages about the market, and about the individual stores. Then we also noted that some stores also do Twitter and Facebook on their own. The big question is, how does it all fit togetherbr> Somer: We have monthly marketing meetings. We call them our “MAC” meetings, and it’s invitation to any tenant that wants to join them and to be a part of it, to have a say as far as what we do marketing-wise for the market. But when I started here, that was one of the things that I really tried to do, is to implement kind of some systems, as far as how things happen, what we hit when we’re doing things, instead of always trying to kind of like, “Oh, let’s...” all over the place. So that was one of them. We made a list of all the things that we do as the market that we can offer as the market to our tenants, and those are stanchion signs, advertising things within the market. We have backlit lightboxes that are down here in the hallways so people can do advertisements there for whatever-- their store, for whatever event they’re having. Facebook, our website-- all of our tenants have a page on our website. So really, we reach out to them all the time, via the newsletter, via just random emails, via our MAC meetings, any kind of outlet we really can, reminding them always that, “If you have information, we’ll double it for you,.”br> They are absolutely responsible for their own stores and their own advertising, and that’s constantly a battle for us, because a lot of people feel like, “Oh, the market should bring them already what they need,” and that’s not always the case. We know that there needs to be aggressive action on both ends. So that’s really what that stems from, is that I want to encourage them, “Okay, you need to be doing A, B, C, D and E for the life of your business and the health of it, but we’re also going to back that up with whatever we can do,” and that is from the Facebook to the MySpace to our website to Twitter, to stanchion signs, to our newsletter, to our eBlast. That’s another big thing that we have been doing recently, much heavier than we ever have in the past. So I try and do that as actively as I can for anyone. We do have to rely on them getting the information to us, which is definitely the tough part about it.

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