How can Businesses Use Facebook to market?
While all aspects of Internet Marketing offer a wide range of exciting possibilities for small business owners, I believe that PPC campaigns and social interaction with customers conducted on the emerging social networks, specifically facebook offer some of the best opportunities for small businesses to increase their revenues over the next few years. Not only are the costs incredibly low when compared to other forms of traditional advertising, but the ability to target very specific demographic groups is something that small businesses have never been able to do before.
While the most popular social network (and the one that we will cover in this post) Facebook does have advertising “sponsorship” opportunities that can cost $150,000 just to get started, local small business can get up and running in as little as ten minutes for free on Facebook, they can even run small ads for just a few dollars a day. In fact, CNET News, a leading technology publisher has even called Facebook an “advertiser’s paradise”.
Of course you may be thinking to yourself, isn’t Facebook just for collage kids. Not so fast, Facebook has been quickly gaining a much older demographic while it continues to hold on to its younger user base. In this module we will go over the reasons why you and your business need to be a part of the social networks, and more importantly how you can use them to drive new customers in the door.
I understand that some may feel hesitant about using the social networks. Even though I have been involved with computers and specifically using the internet for over 13 years, it still took me a little while to get comfortable using the network for anything other than marketing purposes. And while I am constantly on Facebook in a marketing and research capacity, I rarely use it for its “social” features. I prefer “friends” who can share dinner with me and I bet you do as well. The bottom line is this: you don’t need to have a personal page on Facebook if that is not something you are comfortable with, but your business does need to have a presence to connect to potential customers.
There are two basic methods that you can use to reach potential customers using the power of Facebook. The first is the Facebook ad platform that functions much in the same way as the Search based PPC platforms such as gogle adwords, with a few important distinctions. We will refer to this method as ‘social network advertising’.
The second method is through direct engagement with your customers and potential customers using a Facebook Business Profile page. We will refer to this method as ‘social network marketing’.
Benefits of Facebook Marketing:
- Facebook PPC advertising allows you to target specific demographic groups by age, sex, and geographic location among other variables. This means that you can reach the exact audience that you want with your marketing message.
- Facebook PPC advertising has the unique ability to show ads to users whose friends have recently engaged with your Facebook Page in their mini feeds and news feed. These social stories, such as friends becoming a fan of your Facebook Page, make your ad more interesting and more relevant to your target audience.
- The ability to create a Facebook profile for your business allows unprecedented interactivity with your customers and potential customers.
- Local ads seem to do very well on the social networks because users are generally mindful and eager to use local vendors to service their needs.
- In the very near future, potential customers will increasingly look towards the social networks for referrals and information regarding which products and services to purchase as well as which vendors to buy from.
