Social Networking: Marketing Your Business On Facebook Makes Sense
| Posted in Social Networking | Posted on 24-02-2010
Comments
Facebook’s prominent role as a promotional method can not be reiterated enough in the contemporary marketing world. A cost effective way to get the word out since it is free to join, Facebook is fast becoming an efficient method of promoting many a company’s products and services.
Facebook is a social phenomenon that has transformed the world of direct marketing to heights unimaginable just a few years ago. Millions of individuals with differing tastes, opinions, personalities, and characteristics have joined Facebook for many reasons, including: networking, getting back in touch with former classmates, keeping in touch with family, etc. People can add or delete as many Facebook friends to their individual profiles that they wish. However, for as much of an emphasis that is placed on Facebook’s main purpose of keeping people across the world in touch through an online forum, Facebook can also be an extremely effective marketing tool if it is used properly by companies.
Many Fortune 500 companies like Avon and Toys R’ Us house fan pages on Facebook. People who are interested in these companies and who are members of Facebook can join the organizations’ pages. Those who run these fan pages, or groups as they are alternately named, give their fans the most up-to-date product and company information. The companies’ website and other contact information can be found on the fan pages, an aspect which can result in an increase in web traffic for the firm. In their traditional print, radio, email, mail, and web ads, companies have started to make consumers aware that they have pages on Facebook, and people are encouraged to visit the firms’ pages on the social networking site.
Small companies, like their larger business counterparts, have started to take advantage of Facebook’s role as a powerful marketing tool. Facebook is especially an attractive option for smaller businesses as it is free to join, and small companies tend to have less discretionary dollars for marketing activities than large firms do.
The following is an illustration of how Facebook can be used to market a small business. An owner of a small cafe wants to promote his or her business. He or she sets up a page on Facebook which includes information about his or her company, pictures and descriptions of the different desserts offered at the cafe, testimonials about the business, and the url to the cafe’s website. Initially, the cafe owner can invite his or her friends to the page. Those friends can invite their friends, and the chain can go on to a point where the Facebook page has the potential of finding new customers for the business and increasing traffic to the cafe’s website. These actions in turn can positively enhance the cafe’s bottom line if enough people are made aware of the cafe and then decide to actually visit it. Thus, the more Facebook friends the cafe’s page has, the better.
Small businesses have always primarily relied on word-of-mouth advertising to promote their products and services. They tend to be locally based, and happy customers will tell their friends to visit the local merchants who have the best reputations. Facebook has now provided an online forum for small businesses to promote themselves; it is indeed a contemporary take on word-of-mouth advertising that more and more small firms are utilizing to their advantage.
Large and small companies alike have been using the popular social networking site Facebook to market their products and services. However, the impact of Facebook as a promotional tool has been even bigger on small companies which do not have a lot of discretionary funds for marketing. Small companies can effectively use Facebook, which is free to join, to promote awareness of their firms and to drive more traffic to their websites. This in turn has the solid potential of increasing small businesses’ customer bases if they use Facebook effectively.
The impact of social networking sites on the world of marketing can not be overstated. These sites are inexpensive and efficient methods that an internet marketer can use to promote a home business products and/or services.
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

