Did you know businesses are creating branded Facebook pages to interact with customers and promote their brands and products? Most businesses from multinational corporations down to the greengrocers at the end of my road are using Facebook as a marketing tool, and here’s why.

 

Reach

With over 1.65 billion people on Facebook, having an online presence in the community increases your visibility and allows you to connect with people all over the world. This is especially handy if you ship internationally, as it’s an easy way for people to discover your business from far away and go on to purchase your goods online.

 

Cost

Setting up a Facebook page for your business is FREE. The only ‘costs’ to take in to consideration may be in terms of wages if you’re paying employees to update, monitor and engage with customers on your page, unless you decide to promote a post…

 

Targeted Advertising

If you’ve got a special offer worth shouting about and would like to promote it at a certain demographic, you can pay Facebook to promote your post. The cost of running a Facebook campaign is significantly cheaper, and yields a higher ROI in terms of reach (Healey, 2016).

When setting up the promotion, you can aim the target at specific segments- people between different age groups, genders, locations, etc.- you can even target consumers who have ‘liked’ a certain page, which could be affective for complementary goods (e.g. targeting your ad for half price swimming costumes at people who have ‘liked’ your local swimming pool).

 

Increase Brand Awareness

Creating a more prominent digital presence will increase a brand’s online value proposition for customers (Chaffey & Ellis Chadwick, 2012), as the more visible a brand is across different platforms, the more it will be noticed.

Rogers (2002) also revealed that ‘mass media channels are more effective in creating initial knowledge’, which can work to a business’ advantage if they want to create a cheap and easy campaign to raise brand awareness and get noticed.

 

Time

For any last-minute updates, Facebook is the perfect way to inform your customer. Morgan (1996) states that digital communications are more effective at relaying updates quickly. It doesn’t have to be an important campaign- fans love being kept up to date with special ‘behind the scenes’ sneek peeks of new products etc. that you wouldn’t pay to show them. Facebook is a great way of engaging people around the world with live updates.

 

Food For Thought

 

Know Your Target Market

Social media usage is highest amongst more affluent households, who are most likely to have higher disposable income, which may be significant if your product is a premium item or luxury good. Identify whether investing in paid promotional campaigns on Facebook will actually affect sales of your goods- if you saw an advert for a half price tin of baked beans, would it make you rush to the supermarket to stock up?

Smith (2012) suggests that Millennials’ (those born in the late 80’s or early 90’s) ‘profuse use of digital media’ has led to digital marketing being the most effective way to engage with that particular segment. This means that if you have products aimed at young adults, social media advertising may be the most effective way to engage with them.

 

Why Not Both?

Just because you want to implement a digital marketing strategy, doesn’t mean you have to stop employing traditional marketing techniques like flyering, posters, or even TV ads. Ryan & Jones (2009) and Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick (2012) explain that traditional and digital marketing can be used together to create a seamless marketing strategy. This could be by increasing brand perception through multi-channel marketing, as discussed above, or by targeting different audiences through different channels of communication.

 

References

Chaffey, D. & Ellis-Chadwick (2012) F. Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practise. 5^th ed, Harlow: Pearson

Healey, S. (2016) How Planned Digital Marketing Campaigns Increase Footfall in UK Leisure Venues. Brighton: University of Brighton

Rogers, E. (2002) ‘Diffusion of preventive innovations’. Addictive Behaviors [Online], Vol. 27 (Iss. 6) Available at <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460302003003> [Accessed 08.01.2015]

Smith, K. (2012) Longitudinal study of digital marketing strategies targeting Millennials. Journal of Consumer Marketing. Vol. 29, No. 2, p86-92

 

All resources cited feature within my dissertation paper ‘How Planned Digital Marketing Campaigns Increase Footfall within UK Leisure Venues’, but are included here for those who haven’t seen my paper. Please get in touch if you’d like access to it.