Unless you have been living in a cave without any contact with the outside world you can’t have failed to notice that Facebook is the largest and most popular social media network in the world.
It has over a one billion active users who log into their Facebook account many times each day, and it has made even easier thanks to the popularity of Smart phones. Smartphones mean people can log in anytime time they want, any place they are, and the majority of your customers will be part of this socially aware group.
Businesses that are internet savvy have realized the importance of Facebook and are benefiting from joining the social network revolution. Learning how to harness the power of Facebook and other social media marketing has resulted in increased sales and given their profits a real boost.
Unfortunately, some businesses have been a bit slower to catch on. Their attempts to join the Facebook revolution have failed because they have not known the best way to master it.
Even though Facebook is incredibly powerful for business, finding the right information about marketing and advertising on the social site can be time consuming. If you do a quick online search, you will find there is so much advice out there about Facebook marketing. But for every good tip you read, you will be bombarded with misleading or outdated information which will add to your frustration – and worse – hinder your marketing campaign.
The good news is that finding and mastering the techniques behind a solid and effect Facebook marketing campaign is not difficult. Once you put these techniques in place, your efforts will be rewarded. You will be a Facebook convert and will finally discover what all of the fuss has been about.
So let’s look at some strategies you need to know to harness the true power behind advertising and marketing on Facebook:
Get Acquainted With Facebook
As we mentioned earlier, Facebook is a relatively new marketing medium for businesses. Some businesses heard how amazing Facebook is and just tried to dive head first into their marketing campaigns, assuming it is just the same as owning another web page or another form of email list.
What some businesses fail to remember is that Facebook is a marketing medium in its own right with its own set of rules. There are some unique differences available on Facebook that can help their marketing efforts in a way that their own regular site can’t.
Once a business has set up a Facebook fan page, they might fill in their info tab with some basic information and add some posts…and that’s about it. They think it is as easy as that – just spending the minimum time and effort on their fan page will bring them huge results.
Yes, they might get a few people hitting the ‘Like’ button but recent statistics have shown that only around 1% of total fans who ‘Like’ a page ever go back to view it more than once.
So although it is a powerful marketing site, your Facebook page should never be your website replacement. It should be recognized for what it is; a social media platform used by people who wish to do socialize and hangout online.
Because of that, you need to keep in mind that visitors to your Facebook page are not there to support your business. All they are interested in is learning more about what you offer, via reading the posts on your Facebook wall.
Facebook and other social media sites have re-written all of the rules regarding traditional marketing. Once you learn about the differences involved in marketing directly to people using a social networking platform and do your best to incorporate these tactics in your own marketing plans you will grow your businesses significantly and turn over huge profits, just as you hoped you would.
Don’t Send Out Sales Pitches
There are some business owners who think that the whole idea of having a presence on Facebook is to bombard members with details of their products and services. So that is what they do… relentlessly! They tell people how wonderful they are and how great their product and service is.
That is the wrong way to market on Facebook. Genuine savvy business owners still manage to get their message across, but in a more subtle and entertaining way, which is what you need to do.
Why is this important? Recent polls show that business owners who constantly broadcast sales hype over Facebook end up losing fans (and sales) rather than gaining them. They forget that fans are seeking a way to connect and interact with you. They want to see that there is a real person behind the marketing hype who cares about what customers think and want and need.
Rather than broadcasting sales pitches to people who follow your page, engage them. Think of ways to offer your fans genuine, relevant content that they are interested in. Your job is to interact with them and give them irresistible and compelling reasons to want to connect with you. You can draw inspiration from investigating examples of really successful Facebook pages, like Coca Cola and Pizza Hut, to see how they go about things. Posting engaging content like this will keep your fans loyal and increase their interaction with you.
Can you see how, by changing your perception about what Facebook can do for you and your profits, and by starting to think more about what you can offer your customers, you now have the key to running a successful Facebook campaign? If you focus on offering good quality content that doesn’t constantly push your products or services into people’s faces, you stand a much better chance of succeeding on Facebook, AND it will give your fans a more authentic online experience that builds trust and loyalty.
Don’t Focus on Fan Numbers
Just because you have a huge number of fans on Facebook, it doesn’t mean you are going to see huge profits. You might be very proud to have a large fan base, but what does that really mean for your business? Not a lot, because as we stated earlier, statistics show that less than 1% of your fans are likely to return to view your page. This means the only time they will hear from you is when your post appears in their news feed, once you have posted something for them to read.
Quite often we will see companies trying to attract new fans with one-off contests and competitions, but these are not always as productive as they might seem. Once the contest is over there is no real motivation for those people to interact with the company any more.
It is not enough to focus solely on attracting a large army of fans. Once you have a fan, you need to give them reasons to stay with you. It is far more productive to concentrate on giving your fans compelling reasons to interact and become part of the community that you are trying to put together.
Attracting a high number of fans doesn’t automatically mean that you have a captive audience, but with a bit of effort it does provide you with the perfect opportunity to find ways to capture and retain their interest. If you don’t do that, the page will lose its value. If that happens, you and your business will become irrelevant to them. That is much worse than having no fans at all.
Focus on what your fans want and not what you want.
The main reason behind going into business is to make a profit. In order to do that and keep your business moving forward, you need to find new and creative ways to keep bringing in new customers. That is what Facebook allows you to do.
When advertising in the offline world, your marketing tactics are usually centered on trying to spread your sales message as far and as wide as you possibly can. The sole aim is to try and reach even small potential new prospects that might just turn into paying customers, so your sales pitch is more aggressive in order to convert the general public to buy from you.
Marketing on Facebook is completely different. Trying to focus on and drive more sales to your business simply doesn’t work on Facebook. Facebook is a Social Network – that means that it is more about conversation and interaction than providing businesses with another platform for advertising. So if all you talk to others about is yourself and how great your business is to the exclusion of everything and everybody else, your audience will quickly become bored and disinterested with you. After all, they can hear that type of advertising message anywhere.
You need to take some time to think carefully about the potential audience you have on Facebook and why people log into Facebook in the first place. People use Facebook because they want to interact with their friends, their family and make new acquaintances. They simply want to hang out, learn some interesting information, read fun wall posts as well as seeing what is going on in their online communities and generally, just be a social creature.
What they are not logging on for is to hear you tell them over and over how amazing your business is or why they should buy from you. To be honest, they don’t care. If what they hear from you doesn’t sound like one of their reasons for using Facebook and so they can’t relate to you, everything you do will be in vain. Constantly trying hard to capture their attention by telling them all about you isn’t actually a good way to get them to listen or interact with you at all. So stop focusing on what you want from Facebook and start to think about what your Facebook fans want. By adapting your marketing to your Facebook fan’s outlook, you will naturally increase your sales without even trying.
Planning Your Social Media Campaigns
Marketing on Facebook really can offer you a fantastic opportunity to grow and enhance your business. The sheer power and popularity of social media networking in general really does broaden your customer base and increase brand awareness for your product or service.
However, as you have just read, it is not something that you can dive into head first without thinking of a solid marketing plan that will work well on Facebook.
You need to forget all the things you know about marketing in the offline world and start learning how unique and different marketing is in the world of social media.
Unfortunately not all businesses have the time, as they are so busy running their bricks and mortar business. The good news is that we provide a great range of services designed to help businesses, like you, get to grips with the changing face of Social Media. Rather than having to try and figure it all out for yourself and then attempt to put a Facebook marketing campaign together, our team can do this for you.
We have been in the industry for a number of years and know it well. With our marketing strategies and well-managed campaigns, we can dramatically increase your online presence and help you to gain all the extra sales and profits that you read and hear about.
We will make sure that when customers search for a product or service that you provide, they will find YOU first, and not your competitor.
So what do you do next? Simply give us a call or email us. You will be relieved and amazed at how friendly we are and we guarantee you will be excited when you hear what we can do for your business. We look forward to hearing from you.
