We have shared this blog post a few years back with a grand marketing strategy for Facebook pages. A lot has changed since then. Therefore, we have decided to update this post with the latest information along with an emphasis on social media advertising. Online advertising has been an integral part of marketing strategy for quite some time. In this update we have shared our learning and experiences with Facebook advertising, feel free to share yours, through comments and feedback. You may find the update at the end of this post.
We have talked a lot about the importance of social media networking for businesses and how important it is for a business to have a Facebook fan page in the current era of technology. Today, we are going to talk about the top techniques a business should use to promote their product. So, what should be the strategies a business should use to get the expected results, or should we say more than expected results?
We have manipulated some stuff and came up with 8 different categories available on Facebook, and to help the businesses achieve their targets we have developed some strategies for each of the categories available.
1 – Fans:
The most important, we should say, for creating a grand strategy to market your product on Facebook. Fans are the people who decide if the way of your working is useful for your business or not, in our opinion they are the Ultimate Bosses of all the business in the world. So the important question here is how you would get more fans on your page and how would you create interest for the current fans of the page to interact with you on regular basis. Well, below mentioned strategies might help to answer all your concerns:
- Feature a Fan of the Month
- Ask questions of your fans
- Do market research
- Ask for fan content
- Ask fans to share your content
- Ask fans to share on same day
- Ask for their biggest challenge
2 – Events:
You must be familiar about this feature on Facebook. Events, a simple and creative concept to gather people under one roof. We have come up with the following strategies for events:
- Debut a product launch
- Throw an online party
- Stream a press conference
- Stream a panel webinar
- Guest post on other pages
- Host a scavenger hunt
- Coordinate a joint challenge
- Add a media room
3 – Contest:
A fun and exciting way to attract fans, initiating the fans interest by contests is very popular on Facebook. Contests usually attracts more as people like challenges and contest give the users exactly what they require. The strategies are:
- Award a prize to fans who share
- Integrate contests on all social platforms
- Host a joint contest
- Crowd source new product ideas
- Crowd source content and videos
- Host a reality-television-type competition
- Issue a fan challenge
- Hold a favorite things contest
4 – Ads:
The beneficial part of Facebook ads is that you are not bound to a region, or a country. You can market your product throughout the world, which makes your marketing strategy very effective as you can apply niche marketing technique. Strategies for ads:
- Ask a question
- Include a person’s photo
- Add a call to action
- Target your add to interests and likes
- Local? Target geographically
- Have ad clicks link to custom landing tab
- Advertise an event
- Include a video in ad
5 – Share:
A business need to use the viral feature of Facebook. The word to mouth advertisement example is best suited with the concept of sharing on Facebook. Strategies:
- Reward fans who tag your biz
- Link to an article, video or resource
- Give away a checklist
- Offer a fan contest for sharing
- Sponsor contest for charity
- Add a Like box to your website
- Host a video contest
- Ask face-to-face contacts to share
QR Codes:
Quick Response codes, the two dimensional barcodes, which helps to allow the contents to be decoded at very high speed. These are the strategies we came up for QR codes:
- Display on trade show signage
- Link to page with product line
- Show product options
- Link to your website URL
- Map to store location
- Link to welcome video
- Display custom landing tab
- Take buyers to virtual tour
- Use on product packaging
Collaboration:
Joining hands with others is always helpful. You can use the following strategies in collaboration:
- Guest posts on client’s pages
- Review colleagues’ products
- Host a panel chat
- Joint contest and giveaways
- Host a Facebook Shop Hop
- Use Featured Likes
- QR code link to joint info
- Host a blog tour and integrate it
Ongoing:
Includes ads, sharing, coupons, and discounts for the page’s fans. The strategies, which might be useful, are:
- Offer coupons for fans only
- Display QR code on profile photo
- Ask how you’re doing
- Host a photo contest
- Use photo profile strip to display specials
- Share, share, share
- Hold a monthly contest
- Add special events to your page
Now, the question is how to use these strategies to get the results you expect from your business fan page. Take one strategy from each of the eight categories and make one Grand Strategy for your business according to your requirements. Below is one example how to make a strategy for your business:
- Fans: Ask fans to share your content
- Events: Add a media room
- Contests: Issue a fan challenge
- Ads: Add a call to action
- Share: Reward fans who tag your business
- QR Codes: Show product options
- Collaboration: Joint contest and giveaways
- Ongoing: Ask how you are doing
By collaboration of all the strategies you identified, which are necessary for your business requirements, make a grand strategy for your business fan page on Facebook.
Facebook Advertising
Paid advertising is one of the finest tools in online marketing strategy. With the advent of paid advertising on Facebook, we have got a few more options to reach our target audience other than traditional techniques. It is very easy to run and manage a Facebook advertising campaign. Unlike Google Adwords, it is very easy to set up and manage an advertising campaign on Facebook. All you need is a Facebook page, a credit/debit card, target keywords and target audience. There are a few fantastic tools available for ad management. Qwaya and Adespresso are two fantastic ad management tools.
Although most advertisers are aware of the importance of target audience and keyword selection, some of them still miss a very important thing when it comes to advertising on social media. It is the famous hash tag (#). If you are aware of this phenomenon, then you must be thinking how naïve one can be to miss such an important thing, yet people miss this trick. This trick can increase the reach exponentially. However, it is wise to use it carefully as this practice consumes budget more quickly and may result in 0 conversions if not used with the right keyword.
Overall, social media advertising can turn you Facebook page into a good source of lead generation. With the good keywords & carefully selected target audience, you can do wonders with Facebook advertising.
It is not important that you use every category from the list. It is up to your business requirement. By using this approach we are sure that you can make a very lucrative marketing strategy for your business.
Do let us know your feedback and share this post to help us achieve our targets as set forth in our strategy.
