6 Steps To Facebook Marketing Success

Facebook. You either love it or hate it.

But as a business, you can't afford to ignore it.

Current research shows that online purchasing is set to increase by 6 per cent by 2015.

If your customers are on Facebook, you should take advantage of the F-commerce phenomenon to market your business to an increasingly 'hungry' audience.

Facebook.

Love it or hate it?

It isn’t just Facebook, but rather social media in general that seems to provoke a response that’s akin to asking someone their feelings about Marmite.

Yet marketing companies worldwide have long since recognised the enormous opportunities and revenue potential that exists for their clients through Facebook and other social media platforms.

So let’s examine the facts:

- Ecommerce revenue has been estimated at £77 billion for the last year

- Facebook currently has 900 million users and rising

- In population terms, Facebook equates to the world’s 4th largest country

Whatever your personal take on Facebook, that’s a potentially massive customer base, which equates into a potentially huge sales opportunity in any language.

If your business has the potential to sell online, here are 6 proven tips that will help you to achieve success with Facebook marketing:

1. Although we often talk about social marketing as if it's just been invented, it has existed long before the emergence of the internet. Whether we admit it openly or not, we have always been influenced by peer pressure ever since we were at an age to recognise it existed. And 'social' encompasses much more than social media; we still rely on personal recommendations from friends and the influence of celebrities and people we respect to make our purchasing decisions.

Facebook (and social media in general) is all about engagement and two-way conversations. If you find yourself talking at your audience, rather than chatting with them, your attempts to sell to these people could fall on deaf ears.

2. Don't be tempted to buy fake fans for your Facebook page. FB's clean-up operation this week saw 65,000 'fans' wiped off Lady Gaga's FB page. Still, with over 53 million fans remaining, the flamboyant Gaga won't have much to cry over. However for the average business, losing a bunch of fans in one go could have a knock-on effect.

3. Avoid making your FB page look like a product catalogue. Make it the place to find out all about whatever it is you sell. Encourage product discussions among your visitors. And once your page has developed that community fee, you can present your site as a convenient place to buy.

4. Utilise the tools provided by your ecommerce site to integrate your website and Facebook page into a powerful marketing presence.

5. Tap into your fan power with lots of quizzes, competitions and promotions. Create opportunities for your fans to interact with you – and encourage them to broadcast your site to their friends.

6. We've all heard about the decline of the traditional high street. With shoppers moving away from traditional retail in huge numbers in favour of purchasing on the web, arguably, there has never been a better time to cash in on the buying potential of ecommerce backed up by a creative social media strategy.

If you’d like to exploit the sales potential of Facebook and social media, there are marketing companies who can help you get things moving right away.

What do you think of Facebook’s latest March 2013 makeover?

The biggest redesign of the News Feed since 2006 was unveiled last week in front of the assembled media at Facebook's HQ.

So what might have prompted the latest revamp?

In October 2012, the technology website TechCrunch reported that 126 million users had accessed their Facebook page solely via a mobile device during the previous month 2013 an increase of 24% in the quarter June-September.

As one marketing consultant rightly points out, because more people are now accessing the social networking site from smartphones and tablets the emphasis has been placed on putting mobile first. But is there more to it than that?

Facebook’s co-founder and Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg says that he wants Facebook “to be the best personalised newspaper in the world, with different sections for photos, videos and music, just as a Sunday newspaper has several supplements.

Clearly the News Feed facelift is intended to prompt Facebook's one billion plus users to spend more time on the social networking site, as well as to provide a more consistent look and feel between PCs and mobile devices.

All of which sounds like excellent news for brand owners too. Particularly seeing as Facebook is intent on becoming more ad-friendly by giving more prominence to larger advertisements, which marketers suggest have more influence than words when it comes to social media.

It also looks as if we shall see more prominence being afforded to videos uploaded direct to the Facebook site, rather than from Vimeo and YouTube 2013 although I don't see FB abandoning these well-loved video platforms any time soon.

Some analysts are naturally cautious about this latest overhaul, stating that Facebook will need to strike a balance between going all out for advertising revenue and weigh it against the possibility of alienating users who find ads pushy

I guess, as with all aspects of marketing, the key thing here is relevance.

If Facebook can effectively use customer advertising preference to deliver targeted messages to their users, then brand engagement will follow naturally and advertisers will attract the click-through-rates they desire.

Between Facebook, its users and its advertisers, this scenario amounts to a win-win-win situation!