Why using Facebook will enhance your marketing efforts
If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the
world right after China and India. That is how fast Facebook is
growing and is the most visited website on the planet.
If you do not tap into this massive source of traffic immediately, you
would potentially be missing out of tons of new leads and traffic for
your business.
Before there was Facebook, there were other online social
networking sites. Yes, social networking sites were the next hot thing in
the web 2.0 era, where not only could people pour out tons of user
generated content with ease, they could share it with their “friends”
or online social contacts.
As the number of users increased and the growth of Facebook
boomed, so did the number of applications for Facebook. You could
install apps, play games, chat and even share and upload photos to
Facebook.
The business minded people began to see the potential in Facebook.
They began looking into ways one can monetize or grow one’s
business through the Facebook platform.
Now, with over 500 million users, Facebook’s potential for businesses
to grow cannot be ignored. With the recent introduction of Facebook
Advertising and Facebook pages, businesses can list their own official
fan pages on Facebook to connect with their customers and grow
their businesses.
Facebook marketing is literally means using Facebook
to market your business, build traffic and grow your leads.
Answering the question: Why Facebook For Marketing?
It is a branch of Social Media Marketing, where marketers tap into a multitude
of social media platforms such as social networking sites, video sharing sites
or micro-blogging platforms to grow their business.
Fan Pages
As mentioned earlier, Facebook has a useful feature called Fan Pages
where any business can list their business on one of these pages, add
fans and provide content to them.
Once you have created a huge following, you can use your fan page to
connect with your customers and prospects through a wide variety of
functions such as posting on your “wall”, asking them questions or
posting up videos, photos and content of interest to your niche.
The best thing is, whenever you post something on your Fan page
wall, all the users who “liked” your Fan page will see it on their news
updates.
Any actions which a fan takes on the fan page such as post on the wall
will be seen by all their friends, so there is huge potential for viral
marketing
The fact is this… If you fail to tap into the power of Facebook
marketing, you’ll potentially be leaving tons of money on the table!
So how do you grow your business using Facebook Fan Pages?
Well, the first thing you must do is sign up for a page. If you already
have a Facebook profile, scroll down to the bottom of the page and
select “Create A Page”.
Once you have created a page, fill in all the necessary details of your
business such as contact information, maps, post up a photo of your
company logo etc.
The next thing you must do is get your customers and followers onto
your Facebook Fan Page. You can do so by encouraging them,
whether through email or your website to join and “Like” your
Facebook Fan Page.
Getting more fans
Besides asking your existing fan base or email list to join you on
Facebook, another option is to advertise using Facebook’s advertising
system. You can either send them to your Facebook page or send
them to your website, but usually sending them to your Facebook
page is the cheaper alternative.
Once you’ve got a page set up and a fan base up and running, you
should focus on providing targeted, valuable content to your fans. By
encouraging them to interact on your page, you create more hype on
the page and they would be more likely to share it with their friends,
thus getting you more followers.
Landing Page
Have you heard of a landing page or opt in page? Marketers online
use them to get leads for their email marketing campaign.
Did you know that it is possible to set up a “Facebook Landing Page”
using Facebook? Search for the “Facebook land page app” and install
it in your Facebook Fan Page settings.
Then, you’ll have to add in html code into your “before liking” box
and “after liking” box.
Basically, how a Facebook Landing Page works
is you attempt to “bribe” people to “Like” your Facebook page in
exchange for access to a free gift.
This free gift could be something like a free e-book or an online video
course.
Combine this with your Facebook Advertising funnel, it’s like you are
typically paying for leads! This can be a quick way to build your list
fast and cheap with highly qualified subscribers.
Another simpler way of getting leads fast is simply promoting your
landing page on your fan wall, since the fan wall is always the most
popular and has a lot of eyeballs; the potential of growing your list
fast through there is very big.
One of the reasons why Facebook has picked up so fast as the largest
and one of the fastest growing websites in the world is because it is
viral in nature. Things spread easily via word of mouth with
Facebook. That is why many big corporations have recognized this
power and have been finding ways to tap into this power.
Integrating Facebook With Other Websites
Having tons of Facebook traffic is good, but it won’t be of any use
unless you get them to your online business websites.
Remember, the Facebook Fan Page serves as an “outpost” for
providing useful updates and letting the fans interact with one
another. But ultimately, your profits will not directly come from your
Facebook traffic unless you know how to monetize them.
Here are some ways you can monetize your Facebook traffic:
1) Send them to your landing page if you don’t have a Facebook
landing page to build your list of prospects.
2) Promote offers and send them to your sales page.
3) Give excerpts to articles of interest and link the full article to
your blog.
4) Ask them to follow you on Twitter and get them to tweet about
your content for a prize.
5) Post up videos on YouTube, share them on your Facebook Fan
Page and ask them to share it with their friends! (Or subscribe
to your YouTube fan page)
So as you can see, The Facebook Fan page acts like a simple hub
where all your marketing activities can revolve around it. Ultimately,
you have to determine your most desired result (e.g. getting new
leads, making profits) and structure your Facebook marketing
activities to lead to these sort of responses.