Small businesses have to be careful about where they spend their marketing funds.
The fact of the matter is that, while social media sites like Facebook offer tremendous opportunities for small businesses, you've got to know exactly how to use them if you want them to be effective.
For many businesses, poor Facebook Marketing means low ROI, which means that many just aren't willing to take the risk or devote resources to the process.
This means that, for those that know what they're doing, there is plenty of untapped potential in that market.
The first thing to know, before you go any further, is that every business is different.
The model that works for one business in terms of Facebook Marketing won't necessarily work for the next.
What gives you ROI may not give a small business down the street the same results.
You need to understand that there are many levels of ROI involved in Facebook marketing, and some work better for some businesses.
You also need to remember that some of your ROI is hard to quantify.
For a small business, that also makes it hard to justify.
For example, Facebook is wonderful for helping to build reputation and brand, but these aren't always areas that any given small business can really put to use.
Here are some concrete metrics you can look at to determine whether or not your Facebook App Marketing efforts are giving the payoff on your investment that you hope they will:
Figuring out what areas to focus on and developing a strong, consistent Facebook marketing strategy around those areas is key if you're going to put the power of Facebook to work for you.
The fact of the matter is that, while social media sites like Facebook offer tremendous opportunities for small businesses, you've got to know exactly how to use them if you want them to be effective.
For many businesses, poor Facebook Marketing means low ROI, which means that many just aren't willing to take the risk or devote resources to the process.
This means that, for those that know what they're doing, there is plenty of untapped potential in that market.
The first thing to know, before you go any further, is that every business is different.
The model that works for one business in terms of Facebook Marketing won't necessarily work for the next.
What gives you ROI may not give a small business down the street the same results.
You need to understand that there are many levels of ROI involved in Facebook marketing, and some work better for some businesses.
You also need to remember that some of your ROI is hard to quantify.
For a small business, that also makes it hard to justify.
For example, Facebook is wonderful for helping to build reputation and brand, but these aren't always areas that any given small business can really put to use.
Here are some concrete metrics you can look at to determine whether or not your Facebook App Marketing efforts are giving the payoff on your investment that you hope they will:
- Sales.
The ultimate goal of any Facebook marketing program (or any marketing program, really) is sales.
Whether that's more indirect (as it is with branding) or whether you're running a real-time store via your Facebook Page, you need to be able to look at the way that Facebook marketing impacts your sales.
You can use tools such as Google Analytics, for example, to show how well your Facebook page leads are converting.
Unfortunately, not all sales data is so direct.
If you're trying to get people to walk through the doors into your brick-and-mortar store, you're going to have to lean on some different metrics in order to see what your ROI really is. - Lead generation.
There are a couple of ways in which Facebook marketing tactics can be used to generate leads.
One is a direct method.
This method will use things like Custom Facebook Apps to generate leads.
You can then use Facebook Insights along with Google Analytics to identify the effectiveness of a lead based on your Facebook site.
The other type of lead generation is offsite leads, where you track traffic across domains and look at goal conversion metrics, again putting the power of Google Analytics to work for you. - Reach.
Small businesses have limited reach due to their very nature as small businesses.
Mass media outlets are generally outside of the limits of a small business' budget.
Facebook, however, offers reach to a much larger audience at an incremental price (if not one that's overall less expensive).
In addition, as a social media technology, Facebook offers reach to potential customers in your target market who simply cannot be approached via conventional means.
Reach is harder to measure, and in the end is going to be somewhat subjective for many businesses. - Product development.
If your company relies on things like focus groups and product testing, Facebook can be a tremendous opportunity.
You can connect with people interested in your products much cheaper and quicker than you can via conventional product development means, adding to your overall ROI from Facebook marketing. - Customer service and retention.
People are more and more using social media sites like Facebook to offer complaints and criticisms about various brands.
This idea of spreading discontent via word of mouth isn't new, but with Facebook you actually have the opportunity to do something about it.
Not only can you use tools to analyze what's being said about your business on Facebook, you can track mentions of your brand.
In some cases, you can reach out to discontented parties and offer them support or service.
More than one stalwart brand hater has been turned into a brand advocate via Facebook.
Here again, this is one of the harder areas of ROI to measure, of course.
Figuring out what areas to focus on and developing a strong, consistent Facebook marketing strategy around those areas is key if you're going to put the power of Facebook to work for you.
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