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Our platform actually connects business owners with an automated referral generator that allows Facebook and text messaging to do all the work for them.

Atlanta, GA May 16, 2012

What is the true impact of Facebook’s IPO and their latest upgrades in their platform on small brick & mortar businesses? Social Club Rewards feels that "the impact is dismal and having a negative financial impact on these businesses. In their latest upgrade, Facebook has taken away the fan gate and the ability to control where someone lands on the page. With these changes, small business owners are forced to spend more time doing status updates or spend more money on advertising to get the same results. Then, if a business owner needs support with advertising, Facebook will only assign them a rep if they spend $10,000 or more. Are they making all of these changes purely for the benefit of large corporations and to enhance their own IPO? This may cause some to wonder.”

Brick & mortar businesses have been some of the hardest hit during the latest economic crunch, making creative marketing a must in today’s world. Facebook has developed a strong platform but it is proving to be a costly venture for small business.

Yet when you look at large corporations’ results with Facebook marketing, the results are certainly impressive.

• The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.
• ABCNews.com and the Washington Post both are said to have more than doubled their referral traffic from Facebook by adding social plug-ins.
• Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook.
• American Eagle found Facebook referred visitors spend on average 57% more than non- referred visitors.

Social Club Rewards has found that the large companies can afford to put the staff behind social media management and their Facebook pages. If brick & mortar business could just experience a fraction of the results, the impact on their business and the overall economy would be significant.

Social Club Rewards believes local brick & mortar businesses deserve the same competitive advantage as large corporations. They developed their patent-pending solution to provide business owners with the ability to cost-effectively integrate text messaging, Facebook and email into one simple, easy to use, done-for-you solution.

“Facebook has created a great platform for solution providers such as Social Club Rewards. They bring everyone together and it allows companies like ours to bridge the gap and become the missing link between brick & mortar business, new customers and Facebook. Our platform actually connects business owners with an automated referral generator that allows Facebook and text messaging to do all the work for them. Our solution acts as a virtual sales force and businesses are seeing results instantly, from the moment they hang their banners,” said Greg Pitstick, Co-Founder and CEO of Social Club Rewards.

It is a fact that 56% of Facebook fan pages have less than 256 fans and of those 85% of the fans are from outside the business’ local area (considered “out of towners”). It’s no wonder business owners are not motivated to do twice the work, spend more time and money just to reach an additional 28 people, which could account for why 92% of all Facebook pages are ignored.

“It is great that there is finally a company like Social Club Rewards that provides the benefits of Facebook and integrated marketing for small business owners. The platform they have created is designed specifically to help a struggling brick & mortar businesses grow. In tough economic times, every customer counts and to be able to convert more sales and increase referrals instantly, while a customer is standing in a business, is ideal. Finally, a company has taken Zuckerberg’s big business approach and made it affordable, practical and a revenue generator for small business,” said Ron Ipach, President of CinRon Marketing Group, the leading provider of marketing solutions for the Auto Repair Industry.

Social Club Rewards has experienced over 1,000 percent growth in the past 12-months. They have turned Facebook’s inability to focus on small business owners into a distinct revenue generator for brick & mortar businesses. They are certainly a company to watch as they now serve brick & mortar business owners in eight countries and are in over 450 cities throughout the world since their inception in early 2011.

About
Social Club Rewards helps brick & mortar businesses grow through a PATENT-PENDING referral based rewards platform. They are headquartered in Atlanta, with offices in Cincinnati and Toronto. They have strategically integrated social marketing via Facebook, email marketing and text message marketing (SMS) into a single platform for marketing to a business's customer base. The platform enables traditional brick & mortar businesses to create customizable membership clubs that rewards customers for becoming members and referring the business to others they know, turning a business’s customers into a dedicated sales force resulting in repeat customers, new customers and increased sales. This solution is ideal for the typically non-technical SMALL business owner and is cloud based so it requires no software expenditure for a business. It instantly allows customers to be part of a community and easily tell their friends about the business. For more information, visit Social Club Rewards at http://www.SocialClubRewards.com or contact Sheila Stewart at 303-378-2022.

Sources
http://searchengineland.com/by-the-numbers-how-facebook-says-likes-social-plugins-help-websites-76061
http://searchengineland.com/has-facebook-become-the-master-key-to-unlocking-the-web-75139
http://baruchnewmedia.com/wiki/How_Business_is_Using_Social_Networking
http://socialtimes.com/socials-impact-on-search-its-all-about-content_b87568
(http://blogs.wsj.com/in-charge/2011/08/01/most-facebook-fans-not-local/)

Visit Social Club Rewards at: http://www.facebook.com/SocialClubRewards