1. INTRODUCTION.
2. Avoiding Suspension.
3. Marketing Research.
4. Banner Ad Tool.
5. Campaign Setup.
Why is Facebook great for marketing?
Facebook has been around for over a decade now and is the most used social media platform to this day. This huge and diverse audience makes it a great playground for marketers who are looking to drive traffic to their website or affiliate offers. In recent years Facebook has been experiencing a trend of older users joining the platform, raising the average user age significantly. This is generally beneficial to us as marketers because older generations have more disposable income and are less sophisticated when it comes to technology. This means that often they are easier to sell to.
While Twitter is also a huge social platform is doesn’t have the same group and page system that Facebook has. These groups are amazing from a marketing perspective because your target audience is making is super obvious that they are affiliated with a certain product or activity. Marketers of the past had to try and guess their audience; we have the luxury of them tagging themselves with certain labels to allow us to market to them.
Facebook also has a very intuitive ad system. Compared to platforms like AdWords, Facebooks Ad center is extremely easy to use and friendly to beginners. Just as groups and pages outline niches, Facebooks ad system allows you to segment audiences and focus in on the exact kind of person who is likely to want your product or system. This is great for marketing because it increases our efficiency substantially, by reducing the money we waste on people who simply won’t be interested in our offering.
The large amount of information that each Facebook user puts online is something that we as marketers should be making use of. Each piece of information tells us something more about our customers and allows us to build up a clear image of our most common and ideal customers. This means that we can then adapt our offering to them and improve our conversion rate.
With more and more people joining Facebook each day it’s not surprising that marketers are keeping Facebook at the top of their priority list when it comes to social media. While newer platforms like Twitter and Pinterest offer a completely different connection with your audience, the vast amount of information that Facebook users upload is unparalleled. Facebook will be one of the best marketing platforms for many years to come, so if you haven’t got your Facebook game down yet then you better start now.
Facebook pages for Business
Often we see local businesses starting Facebook pages because they’ve been told by their marketing agency or read online that it’s a good way to get new customers. But more often than not these pages are almost barren and have a handful of likes at most. Using Facebook to promote your local business is different in many ways to using it to promote a website or online service, but you can still use similar tactics.
Obviously the local factor means that the business is generally only targeting people within a particular area. This limits the effectiveness of some methods just as commenting on related groups, as many of them aren’t specific to a location. But it opens up others, such as partnering with other local businesses and running competitions.
One method that I’ve seen work well is for businesses that are related but not in the same niche to work together to cross promote each other both online and offline. For example; we might see that a taxi company can work with a nightclub or a bar. People need taxis to and from these places so both businesses can succeed. As the business owner or marketing agency you can reach out to local businesses and suggest that they post a link to your Facebook page and vice versa.
Another thing that local companies can use successfully is local competitions. This could be in the form of a giveaway for those that like and share your page, or a gift for a random customer of the month. If you want to take it to the next level you can run the giveaway and then ask other local businesses to link to your giveaway post in return for you sharing their page.
As a local company you need to try and appeal to the population that your business operates in. If you are based in a low income area then sharing photos and creating content around social welfare may be more appropriate than if you operate in a higher income republican area. You as a business owner know your locale better than most so you should try and appeal to that. Another advantage is that you can use Facebook ads even more specifically, aiming ads only at those within your local area. This can reduce cost greatly in many cases and increase your return on investment. Just make sure that if you’re going to use Facebook to promote your business that you do it properly. It doesn’t have to take long, just a few minutes each day and you’ll be using Facebook better than the large majority of your competitors.