Today, the easiest and the most effective way to make yourself known to your target customers is to reach out to them through a Facebook page. Of all the online social networks, Facebook is the largest and the most popular. According to the latest figures, it has over a billion users worldwide, 50% of who log in at least once a day and spend an average of 20 minutes per visit. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses to communicate directly with their target customers.
It has become imperative for every business to have a Facebook page. Do you have one? You should if you don’t already have one because not having one is likely one of the top reason’s you are not getting visitor traffic to your website. A growing number of businesses are embracing Facebook as their primary marketing tool and reaping rich dividends. And you should do the same. Here is how successful businesses do it:
Create a marketing strategy: The first thing that they do is to identify their customers. They eavesdrop on their online shopping habits, research how they use Facebook, how active they are and the type of content they like. They then create a marketing strategy based on the findings of their research.
Create a business page: They create a Facebook page that reflects the look and feel of their website. They encourage their target customers to like and share their page. The more “likes” and “shares” there are the higher the chances of making sales.
Communicate with customers: They communicate directly with their customers from time to time with a view to share information, answer questions and provide solutions to problems. They post regular updates of their activities and events on their wall to familiarize their customers with the products and services being offered.
Create their own applications: Facebook has a powerful API that lets users write their own programs. Successful businesses take advantage of this to create applications and games to promote their business. You can do the same for your business.
Advertise on Facebook: Facebook has a powerful advertising engine that allows businesses to advertise their products to a specific demographic group in specific geographical areas. This enables them to drive quality traffic to their websites.
Connect their website to Facebook: A feature called Facebook Connect enables your website to connect to your Facebook account. Businesses take advantage of this to integrate Facebook into their customers’ login process, to retrieve useful data and to post messages on the users’ timeline.
Facebook has been focusing on helping small businesses grow. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said in an interview, “My dream is simple. I think every small business should be using Facebook. We are not going to stop until all of them are using it to grow their business.” True to her words, Facebook has helped a lot of businesses to grow at a rate that was unimaginable before it came into existence.
Are you promoting your business on Facebook?
Picture by mkhmarketing