Facebook Marketing

The marketing plan will be broken down into three phases which are:

1. Acquire Fans
2. Engage Fans
3. Post Schedule

Acquire Fans

In the beginning of your Facebook marketing plan, you’ll focus on fan acquisition. To start building a fan base, drive organic awareness at no cost by making your fan page badge or Facebook URL which can be shortened, you’d have this url prominent on other web properties such as blogs, twitter, websites and editorial content. Offline, you can use events and seminars to let people know you’re on Facebook. Word of mouth can go a long way and most of your initial fans will be existing customers, but always give them a reason to visit your page. The number one reason a customer becomes a fan is to receive special offers or discounts, so create incentive with promotions.

Competitions:

• Referral Competition - How to Play: Invite your friends to like our page, after they like it they will have to put YOUR NAME on our wall. On Aug _ 20XX at exactly 11pm the person whose name appears the most, wins. But there’s a twist! You have to invite at least 100 people to have a chance! Good Luck everyone!

Prize: Of your choosing

• Monthly “Fan Of The month” prizes can be given with the use of this application called booshaka that automatically ranks your top fans based of how much they engage with your page via liking sharing and commenting.

Prize: Of your choosing

Paid Advertising:

Facebook Ads: If you’re considering digital advertisements, Facebook ads are a highly effective medium for acquiring targeted fans and building a solid fan base.

Unlike traditional pay-per-click, more is not better with Facebook. The broader your reach the less relevant your ad units will be. Facebook is a social space after all, so it’s no surprise that Facebook users will be more inclined to click on your ad if it’s personally relevant to them

Using ads to acquire fans is extremely easy thanks to Facebook’s ad interface which allows you to drill down to the demographic profile of an audience you want to target, including interests, age, sex, location and education level. You can even target people who are friends with people who already “like” your Facebook page.

Sponsored Ads: Sponsored Stories on Facebook, which are similar to Facebook ad units in appearance. The difference is that Sponsored Stories promote organic user activity such as Page updates, Likes and Apps activity. It is a better use of advertising dollars to let your fans tell their friends about you rather than trying to reach those friends on your own.

Engage Fans

Actively engaging with your fans will in turn bring you more fans as the viral awareness arises. After brand invites/ ads, your current fans are the number two reason other Facebook users become a fan.

Once you have a fan base you’re probably wondering “now what?” It’s time to monetize and to do so you need take into consideration the nuances of Facebook and adjust your efforts accordingly. Facebook has an algorithm called EdgeRank that makes relationships with your fans the highest priority. This means that if your fans aren’t actively engaging with your page, then your wall posts aren’t making it to their newsfeeds.

• Use visual content for majority of posts as visuals resonates better with fans and produces more likes and shares. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (Sources: 3M Corporation and Zabisco)
• Visual content drives engagement, in fact just one month after the introduction of facebook timeline for brands, visual content--photos and videos--saw a 65% increase in engagement. (Source: Simply Measure)
• Inspirational Quote in mornings
• Ask simple questions (such as a “fill in the blank” eg. The thing I hate the most about Mondays is _______ [fans will answer])
• Funny Content
• The most effective wall posts are those that are touching or contain emotional stories. Provocative posts or posts igniting a passionate debate will also solicit the highest engagement rates - 2-3x higher
• Receiving only a slightly lower engagement rate of 1.5-2x more are posts about sports wins or that ask the audience simple questions.For example: The thing I hate the most about Mondays is _______ [fans will answer])
• Keep this at a ratio of 80:20 meaning 80% post about interesting content to engage fans and 20% post about your actual product. The goal of social media overall is not necessarily to market your service but to build and maintain a loyal customer base, once you have a loyal customer base you cannot lose. Think LIME(treated us bad for years) vs Digicel(treated us good from beginning), Digicel has a more loyal following so LIME is always fighting an uphill battle.
• Additionally, the content that you post doesn’t always have to be on brand. You can talk about anything from current events to seasonal greetings. If content is interesting to your fans, you’ll receive the engagement that keeps your posts prominent in their newsfeeds.

Post Schedule

I suggest that you make 4-6 Facebook posts a day and nothing more in order to give previous posts time to circulate around fans timelines and newsfeeds.  These posts should be made between 9am – 9pm

• Monday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 7:10pm
• Tuesday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 7:10pm
• Wednesday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 7:10pm
• Thursday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 7:10pm
• Friday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 5:30pm, 9pm
• Saturday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 5:30pm, 9pm
• Sunday: 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 5:30pm, 9pm

Social media is the very fabric that holds Generation Y together, if you’re not utilizing it you're missing out on creating immense value for your business.

"People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it's surfaced through friends and people they know and trust"- Malorie Lucich; Facebook Spokesperson