Recently, Walmart launched a smart new Facebook application—CrowdSaver—that harnesses multiple customer desires for choice, control, and interaction, and can teach us—and businesses of all sizes—a bit about the social media marketing possibilities out there.

Here’s what they’re doing:

Basically, Walmart posts a handful of potential deals on their Facebook Fan Page—11 percent off an Olympus E-450 camera, 36 percent off a pair of headphones for a Sony DVD player, etc. Lucrative stuff, but it’s only available at a discount if enough followers of the Fan Page “Like” the deal. If a deal gets enough Likes—a target number set by the company—the deal kicks in.

Pretty simple, but the benefits are immediate.

For customers, they get a small bit of choice in what kinds of discounts become available to them (deal democracy!), and get to play the “game” aspect of it. And customers who never technically “Like” the deal on Facebook can still benefit it with discounts and savings.

Walmart gets excellent (and free) exposure, gives its customers reason to check in with the Facebook Fan Page often for further deals, and builds a sort of participatory relationship with its customers. The group incentive encourages customers to spread the word far and wide in order to unlock the deal, and check back over and over to see how it’s coming along. And they get instant marketing feedback about what kinds of deals customers prefer.

Of course, you don’t need to be Walmart to do this sort of thing. As Web Pro News points out:

The good news is that you don’t have to be a big brand to utilize this kind of strategy. A smaller brand might want to keep the like number goal a little bit lower, but there’s no reason why a business of any size can’t try this. It could be a good way to increase sales as well as fans. It’s also a good way to keep fans engaged with your brand, and the more fans you get, the more news feeds you’ll get into.

And that’s the larger point—social media marketing is utterly bursting with fun, creative, innovative opportunities like these. The key is to engage your customers in every way you can, give them incentive to keep checking back to your website or Facebook Fan Page, and use catchy, fun social media marketing strategies to draw their attention to your catchy products or services.

We’d love to help you come up with one that works for your small business. Contact one of our Dallas social media marketing experts for ideas and information.