When Facebook first went online in 2005, founder Mark Zuckerberg didn’t have a clue that it would become one of the most useful tools that online marketers now use to promote their product and attract more customers.
He and his friends were probably thinking only of US universities when they decided to launch this education-oriented membership site, improving on the other smaller sites he had built as he was taking up psychology at Harvard and doing programming work on the side.
No, he wasn’t thinking that the world’ biggest corporations would jump in and use Facebook marketing strategies to expand their business, while at the same time engaging their customers and their employees as well.
It was later perhaps when he realized some people would be willing to spend billions of dollars just to get their brands seen on Facebook.
Today, Facebook is no longer just a social networking site, where anyone can post anything about himself and his interests, share ideas with the world, and make friends in the process.
It has become such an indispensable promotion tool, that any networker not using Facebook marketing strategies will be left behind in the marketing race.
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Aside from being an easily accessible site where almost everything is user-friendly, Facebook has many features that can be maximized as promotion and advertising tools. For example, anyone could produce a poster ad and then post it on Facebook as an image, free of charge.
Or he could post a picture of his product, if it’s something worth taking a photo of, and include a description. And then he could place a URL link in there for visitors to click so they can go to the product website. Still at no charge.
Some FB users allow visitors to post links on their timeline, which is another free feature that the online marketer could use to gather more leads. Using Facebook marketing strategies and other strategies you can learn from the MLM Lead Generation Bootcamp of Rob Fore can help you get all these valuable leads for free.
Paid Ads and Other Facebook Marketing Strategies
When the marketer feels that he has to reach out a bigger audience than his current friends list, Facebook offers paid options for ads, where you can actually target a particular geographic location and choose your demographics. Experienced users integrate these paid options with their Facebook marketing strategies and achieve a great deal of success in their promotion effort.
Now, assuming that you have your own FB fan page set up and your own product website up and running, it is time to plan your Facebook marketing strategies and implement them for your network expansion. Here are some of them:
Promote your Facebook presence as well as your product website anywhere you can. A good place to start is your e-mail. Do an e-mail blast every time you have something new on your FB page or your product site.
Don’t forget to improve your e-mail signature. Putting a link to Facebook on your e-mail signature will invite a couple more visitors to your FB site. They can also use this link to send their friends to your site. This is among the most effective Facebook marketing strategies.
Don’t overlook offline Facebook marketing strategies to tell people about your Facebook page. If you have a store, make sure you post your FB URL and product website somewhere visible, on your glass door or your display window. Print name cards with your URL’s on it and give them away while asking people to “Like” you.
Make sure your product site and your Facebook page are inter-connected. That can be done by putting your social media icons on your product page, which will encourage your site visitor to also visit your Facebook page. It pays to have your Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or RSS icons there too, because they leverage traffic to your product site. Whenever possible, write a post on your FB timeline that contains a link back to your product site.
Scheduling Ahead
Facebook offers the marketer a means to create a post and schedule it for posting at a later date, and even make the post appear several times a day for say, six months at the most. This is another one of the Facebook marketing strategies to look into especially if you are planning to go on vacation but don’t want people to think you’ve abandoned your daily status update on FB.
When you have some cash to spend for ads on Facebook, you can leverage your Facebook marketing strategies further by first being acquainted with how FB ads work well, and using them in the most effective way.
As mentioned earlier, Facebook ads can be configured to target specific audience demographics at specific locations. The configuration immediately tells you how much money you are going to spend for your specified target. Knowing this, you can easily plan and decide how to implement your ads for greater impact.
The good thing about social media is that once someone shares your status update or your image ad from your fan page, there is no telling how many more “shares” that will multiply into. That is the essence of your message going “viral” on social media.
Your Facebook marketing strategies must take this into consideration every time. It will help you decide too whether to buy more ads and spend more or save some money and post free updates depending on your need.
Being “viral” almost means getting into the other social media platforms out there aside from Facebook. When you share, share it on Twitter too, and on LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and make sure you have sharing buttons of these other social media on your website.
As a marketer, your Facebook marketing strategies must be guided by the principle that your FB page will be a sales funnel. If it doesn’t sell right away, at least you get new leads each time you do a campaign.
As a sales funnel, think of it as a tool to accomplish these objectives in relation to your audience: it should create awareness of your product, it should educate them about your product and you, it should engage them, and it should make them act – become a site member, write in their names and email addresses, or buy the product right away.
After you have convinced them to perform your desired action, you will have to continue to engage your customers through various means. Remember that it is not a one-time action that you want. You are looking for long lasting relationships with your customers. Even your most loyal customers can easily move to your competitor. You can to keep them excited about your products and services.
You have to constantly make your customers feel that they are valued. As business people, you should be building long-term relationships if you want to succeed. This is what Facebook marketing strategies can help you with. Facebook is indeed an optimal environment for building and solidifying relationships.
