Written by ContentPowered.com
For starters, Facebook is an online social networking site where people can have an easier access to friends from afar. The site connects people from anywhere in the world. Almost everyone seems to be using Facebook nowadays for almost everything, and they spend a lot of time on it too, and these people could be your prospective market. Therefore, if you are going to market something, Facebook would be the right place to do it; but how?
Why are Facebook Fan Pages the Best choice for Businesses?
- The pages are public and made visible to search engines.
- Any new feed you make on your Page will automatically show up on your fan’s newsfeed.
- You can make a landing page for your Fan Page.
- You can add targeted ads to link on specialized tabs.
- Facebook provides a page analysis tool named Insights.
- Facebook is your launching pad and foundation.
- This is a community, where your fans get to know, like and trust you.
- This is where you must give 100% to build your authority, where your fans become quality leads
Define your Target Market
How do we define our target market? We simply identify the people or entities who are most likely to get interested in or acquire your products and/or services. This does not mean that you are limiting the availability of the product and/or service you are providing, but only to increase your cost efficiency, unless your marketing resources are unlimited. This is what we call demographic profiling. Classifying the customers using common characteristics like age, gender, race, income level, buying habits, profession, marital status, geographical location, ethnicity, political leanings, hobbies and interests. This is the key in making sure that you are presenting in the language that your target market can relate.
Creating a Facebook Fan (Business) Page
How do we create an account in Facebook? First, you should determine whether you are going to create a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Group, a Facebook Fan Page, or a Facebook Business Page. We use a Facebook Profile to represent an individual, a Facebook Group to represent clubs and organizations to engage their members, and a Facebook Fan (Business) Page to market businesses and your connections are your Fans.
Configure your Page’s settings
You cannot do anything on Facebook with a business page; the marketing has to come from somewhere else. Facebook created Fan Pages and offers business paid advertising opportunities for that reason. All you need to do is put money in Facebook’s pocket to get started with Facebook Ads (if you have the budget for that sort of thing). As a Page Administrator, you have the authority to grant other people to have the same administrative privileges as you. You also get to choose the tabs to display to your fans. Determine whether you want them to see your Wall, company information, photos, discussions, reviews, events, notes, videos, or the graphic designs to get their attention. You can also allow the fans to leave comments on your Wall.
Design a Fascinating Page to Get more Fans
You must be asking how you can compel your audience to like your Fan (Business) Page. Let me give you some tips and tricks. First of all, remove annoying stuff (like blatant promotional garbage), upload images, audio and videos to grab the users’ interest, use photo tagging, find friends to invite to your Page, and create lists so that when you receive a friend request you can choose which list a friend belongs in. Add your Page URL to your email signature, include it on your business cards, as well. Link your Facebook Profile to your Facebook Fan Page, and email your list and give them a reason to become a fan. Add a Like box to your website (if you have one) and to your Thank You Page (also if you have one).
Using Facebook’s Paid Advertising
Facebook has 2 types of ads; Traditional Ads and Sponsored Stories. Facebook Ads are the basic ads that show up on the right navigation of a user’s page that makes it easy for a user to envision. Sponsored Stories are new to Facebook; it helps you reach users on Facebook who fall on your target market list. They help advertise your page through word-of-mouth recommendations.
Getting Started on Advertising
Prior to advertising your page, you should name your campaign, then select a budget, and you are ready to choose a schedule for your campaign. Unless you chose the Advanced Options, you will pay for the impressions (CPM). These impressions are accumulated so that the advertisement shows to your targeted market; these will be the people who will most likely to help you succeed. Since you selected a budget for your campaign, rest assured that you will not be paying more than your set budget. At the same time, you will also not be paying more than the actual cost to reach your target market.
Trial and Error
Having multiple versions of your advertisement will help you define which advertisement your target market responds to the most. By doing this “A/B testing”, you can determine which version works best. First, do a test and control. You can use your original version of your ad as a control medium to test across the changes. Second, change things like the photo that you are using, as well as the text to describe your ad. This will help you determine which of your ads get the most clicks, and most importantly, lead to the most sales. Last but not the least, make multiple versions of your advertisement with small changes in-between each one. You can copy or replicate an ad by ticking on “Create a Similar Ad” when checking out ads in the Ads Manager. You’d be surprised how much difference a small change in your ad can make.
Best Practices:
Now that you already have an idea on how to use Facebook as a medium for advertising your business, do not let your competitors get ahead of you. Go ahead and make your first ad and remember to run multiple ads in your campaigns. By doing that, they will also apportion more of your budget to a higher performing ad, so you better assign your ads to different campaigns when you are testing them.
Now that you have your ad, do not forget to monitor their performance in the Ads Manager so that you will be informed as to which would work for your targeted market and to see how they perform against your calculated goals and investment.
