Marketing on Facebook is known to be extremely successful. In addition to having a healthy FB page and regularly posting, you can create yourself a planned marketing strategy to deliver over a set period of time. This will raise the profile of your Facebook page and your website if you are clever.
Here are some great tips on how to create a good marketing plan for your social media activity on Facebook.
A marketing plan must be well timed, budgeted, and contain activity that creates a range of activities that cover a wide spectrum of media. Doing this for Facebook is not immediately obvious but here are some hints to help you.
First consider the timing. Things speed up on Facebook so while you do need to let things ‘cook’, mini campaigns last for a much shorter period of time on social media. A campaign should last around one or two weeks at most. Some may even only be promoted for a few days. Create a timetable of marketing activity that will give you weekly actions for six months. This gives you time to plan ahead, while keeping activity levels steady and regular. It is also a great way of tying in important holidays or dates that you can link in with, like Easter, Christmas, Valentine’s etc.
The next step is to choose from a range of activities, the ones you are going to use on Facebook. Here are some examples for you:
Facebook adverts – these are pay per click adverts that can easily be bought and created within an hour. You set the budget and when that amount is used up, you can top it up or change advert. You are also able to very specifically direct your ads to be seen by specified target users.
Facebook sponsored and suggested posts – These are the same as adverts but they are larger and appear on the users’ newsfeeds.
Facebook sponsored surveys – These are surveys and ads that point out friends who like a certain product or page. They also ask you a question about a certain product as part of the advert. These can be hugely helpful for gathering marketing metrics and learning more about how your product is perceived by customers.
A Facebook competition – This is free of cost, other than the cost of the prize. Unless you wish to use adverts to promote it, you simply announce and promote the competition via your regular posts.
A Facebook special offer – As above, special offers are free if you post them as status updates. If you have the budget you could advertise them too.
A Facebook page promotion – Adverts that specifically promote your page as opposed to your business website. These also appear on the news feeds of users, usually in a section with other suggested pages.
A Facebook link share – Link up with other business pages or business groups and start to share your page link. Offer to share others too in a mutually beneficial page link swap.
