Smart marketing is the key to any successful entrepreneurial take up, be it tiny or mammoth. There are numerous channels to market a product or service; one such being social media. With the steep rise in social networking user account enrollments, it has become one of the prime marketing platforms.
Facebook, being the mother of all social networks, is inevitable if you plan on deploying social media marketing. It has incorporated many tools for marketers in the late 2012 and early 2013 – like sponsored stories, promoted posts and graph search, to name a few. Using these advertising tools effectively, one can reap humongous brand exposure and leads that convert easily.
Many small and big brands have learned the tactics and have generated great results proving that Facebook marketing is a must opt-in for any marketing blueprint. The recent notable case was that of Penguin Books India; they successfully promoted their Spring fever 2013 book festival and racked in profits on over 7000 passes to the 10 days event. Well if Penguin Books India could do it, so can you; but how?
1. Have a Fan Page
Establishing a dedicated Facebook fan page is the first step towards using Facebook for marketing. The fan page gives the double perk of letting you imprint a brand identity and showing your human side at the same time, thus letting you take your brand closer to your existing and potential customers.
You can accomplish this by consistently posting updates on the page. Keep the posts divergent, some for promoting your products/services and others for building rapport by starting a conversation with your fans. Posting only and solely for the sake of promoting services makes your page look akin to a newsletter which people don’t really prefer subscribing to. If you could manage to post things that your fans would like to see, you can be sure of more likes (subscriptions).
However, though this sounds quite simple, it isn’t that easy. It indeed is a tough task to generate likes in the initial days when there are less or no likes for the page. But a trick many fan page admins incorporate is that they buy some Likes initially to make the page/brand look more likable to prospective fans.
2. Adverts
This is a classic form of Facebook advertising where a business pays Facebook to show its ad to a specified set of users. Targeting can be done on the basis of demography, age group, location, interests, etc. These adverts include a thumbnail, a link to a Facebook page/app or an external website and a suitable title.
3. Promoted Posts
Promoted posts are a way to ensure that your fans are reading your posts in their news feeds even among hundreds of other subscribed page’s posts. Furthermore, promoted posts let your feeds reach to the friends of your fans.
4. Sponsored Stories
Here is a famous quote from Mark Zuckerberg:
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”
This is exactly what sponsored stories are all about. If a fan engages with your fan page in any way, say liking it, then all of his/her friends get a scoop of her activity in newsfeeds, which indirectly is a recommendation to all his/her friends. This encourages his/her friends to check out your page.
The above 4 ways are the prevailing favorites among the various marketing tools made available on Facebook. Do let us know your experiences and opinions on Facebook marketing through comments below. We would love to learn from you.
Facebook is evolving each day an so is the marketing strategy. But before anything else before starting a fan page you should ask your self if you can maintain it at least two or three time/ week. An idle fan page or business page can actually hurt your online business presence. Make sure you watch out for costumer inquiries and rants and solve it immediately.
Now facebook has become one of the biggest social networking sites. Thanks for sharing this valuable information about facebook.
nice posts, i got some idea from here, thanks and keep posting..
I have been looking seriously at Facebook as a business asset, and have taken to heart the comments that I would have to be sure to devote enough time to maintaining a business page, but… am I alone in thinking that the design and architecture of FB leaves a huge amount to be desired? I find that navigating within even one’s own page to be extremely confusing, and that it’s only the iconic status of FB that allows it to get away with such a site structure. Is it just me?
Facebook being one of the most important social network portals, more than a friendship website, has emerged as a great tool in business strategy worldwide. The growth of Facebook itself was mostly linked with this business development process of companies which began in the recent past all over the world. The online advertising has become very popular with Facebook and other classified sites. Students using Facebook for friendship gradually become business professionals in their career-path.
Now a day’s facebook is the main part of social media. And it helps a lot to grow an online business. And here you describe about the basic of facebook marketing, that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing such useful things.
facebook marketing nowadays is major part in marketing the brands and it play major role in marketing your brand
Social media can be a completely media, but it’s still exactly the same basic table manners which our parents taught.
If you truly wish to differentiate yourself from the bulk of marketers which might be using
social media marketing the wrong method its vital
that you talk with people and turn personable. I don’t believe the founding of Google is probably the most interesting story.
Facebook is the biggest social media platform where we can get more leads and increase business conversion and get more traffic in our website.
If you launch any new product or service it is good to promote via Facebook and run the sponsored ads.