Facebook as a Marketing Platform
April 14, 2009, 10:34 am
It seems every time a new Internet technology hits the wires, the marketers flock to it seeking opportunities to exploit it. Facebook started out as a way for students on college campuses to stay in contact with their old friends while making new ones at their new school. How it became a worldwide phenomenon attracting professionals in their 30s, 40s and 50s is still a bit of a mystery to me, but the creative interactivity inspired by Facebook applications – themselves created by members of the Facebook community thanks to the system’s open programming libraries – is one of the biggest reasons people keep coming back to spend hours on the site.
Facebook overtook competitors like MySpace and Friendster because of the trust it builds within its community. In order to add friends and view their information, you must first know where to find them, then request that person confirm you as a friend. This level of protection over one’s information helps keep the site engaging and relevant to its users without the spam and fluff found on similar sites. Once someone has confirmed you as a friend, you begin watching their activities in your newsfeed. This can quickly become overwhelming, but Facebook provides a number of controls to help you see only what you feel is really important.
This level of control builds a sense of trust in Facebook’s postings, which makes it an incredible marketing opportunity for any business trying to gain exposure. It also builds a wall that is incredibly difficult for marketers to penetrate.
Facebook is not an effortless way to market your business – it requires careful strategy. While you can purchase Facebook ads on the side of most pages – which appear fairly well targeted – the most effective way to market on Facebook is to convert your customers into genuine fans, or what viral marketers call “sneezers”. Encouraging your customers to post their experiences with your company on their Facebook page exposes you to their entire network of friends, many of whom you would be unable to reach otherwise. Your exposure can increase almost exponentially if even only one or two of those new contacts share their own experiences as well.
Facebook has a built-in mechanism for this in its “Pages” feature. A user can create a page devoted to a business, organization, celebrity or individual and post related images, events, etc. Each page has its own “Wall” for other people to post on, just like a standard account, as well a small discussion board. Other users – even those whom you haven’t approved as friends – can become “fans” of whatever your page is promoting and interact with other fans. Your page should act as the “home base” for your Facebook marketing efforts and clearly point back to your company’s web site. It’s an effective way to spread your message, but it’s only the beginning.
After your customers “fan” your page, you want them to actively talk about your business on their wall, encouraging discussion among their group of friends whom you are otherwise unable to reach directly. The power of a recommendation like this in such a trusted environment can’t be understated. The trick, of course, is in figuring out how to get your customers to talk you up. Certainly, you could offer some kind of incentive – get X number of your friends to fan our page and receive a prize – but that kind of bald-faced ploy could rapidly backfire in such a walled-in environment.
The best way to get people talking about you – whether on Facebook, Twitter, or at the local cafe – is to develop a product or service that is genuinely remarkable, then make it easy for you customers to talk about it. This is the basic thesis of most of Seth Godin’s books, particularly Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside. I recommend ordering both of those books to get the creative juices flowing.
In the meantime, here’s how you can get started marketing your product or service on Facebook.
- Create a Facebook account. If you want to keep a wall between your personal life and your business life, I recommend creating a Facebook account specifically for your business.
- Create a “Page” promoting your business. Be sure to fill out all of the information, including an appropriate profile picture. If you have images of your product line, upload a few to the photo gallery. If you have videos of your product in action, upload those as well or link to them from YouTube. Introduce yourself and establish your page as the source on Facebook for information about what you do. If you provide a professional service, use this page to establish your expertise.
- Talk to your customers and find out which ones are already on Facebook. Ask them to add you as a friend and to become fans of your page. Your most loyal customers are the ones most likely to share their experiences with their friends, so give them gentle encouragement to do so.
Any time you update your product offering, make sure you update your page on Facebook. Post a line about it on your wall to share it with your friends. But, even more importantly, don’t restrict your Facebook activities to strictly business purposes – social media is all about being, well, social. Don’t be afraid to share some personal information about yourself (keep it appropriate). Most people don’t like buying from faceless corporations – personalizing your business can go a long way to helping you turn strangers into friends and friends into customers.
Also keep in mind that marketing on Facebook will not work for everyone. Facebook is still a rather new platform attracting a younger, more technically savvy crowd. If this doesn’t describe your key demographic, your time and money may be better spent elsewhere, like strengthening your email marketing strategy or building strategic alliances with complementary businesses. But keep an eye on Facebook – it’s changing the way people use the web and may be a harbinger of things to come.
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