Ten Ways to Market Products and Services on Facebook

Facebook Can Be a Business Driver

As a marketer I am constantly looking to Facebook as a channel to market products and services. Sure it is great for connecting with old friends and colleagues, managing contacts, and if careful, to be used as a way to develop new relationships with individuals that you never before had access to, but outside of this, how can Facebook be used to grow your business through an increase in visibility, consumer interaction, and of course revenues?

Below you will find ten ways you can market your product and service on Facebook to accomplish all three of those goals. I am sure there are more, so if you think of one, add it to the comments, and I will update this list in a future post.

Ten Ways Company’s Can Market Their Products and Services on Facebook

• Facebook Sponsored Listings - This is the easiest, but least creative of the ten. The benefit of the sponsored listing is that they look just like any other newsfeed item. When advertising does not look like advertising, it is usually effective.
• Facebook Application - You can develop one yourself, pay someone to create one, or sponsor one. Either way Facebook applications are are hot and very viral. Building or finding an application that is complimentary to your product or service should not be hard, and the time/monetary investment should yield huge returns.
• Facebook Profile with Spokesperson - Does your company has a spokesperson? Then they should have a profile. Think the Geico cavemen (or even the Gekko). Creating a profile for them and then having your customers, vendors, partners and anyone else added as friends will give you a huge network from which you can A) get to know them better and B) gives you permission to directly market to them through emails, comments, etc.
• Facebook Group for Company - Creating a Facebook group for your company and for your corresponding products and services will allow you to create new conversations with existing and potential customers. In addition, with a group, direct emails can be send out to the readership. This is an excellent push pull marketing avenue (think deals, discounts, demo’s, news, etc).
• Facebook Marketplace - Facebook created the marketplace for a reason; so people can sell things. In addition to creating listings for your products and services for sale within your local network, it is only logical that this will grow and extend to allow for product data feeds to be updated, and for expansive geographic locations to be targeted with a listing. If you had multiple employee with accounts (why wouldn’t you), you could create the listing multiple times within different locations to cover an enormous geographic location. Or this could simply be used on a hyper-local level.
• Facebook Events - Why let kids throwing parties have all the fun? If you are bar or restaurants with theme nights, you should be listing them weekly. If you are business who will be conducting a training, seminar, or open house, create an event. Besides them being included in the calendar for your network, you can also invite your company, product/service groups to the event. If you are reading this and your company produces or attends trade shows and you have not yet created a Facebook event for the trade show, you are missing out on exposure for the event and a chance to get to know who might be attending.
• Facebook Polls - Facebook’s biggest asset might just be the data it has on a wide-scope of demographics. If your company is in need of information for research and development purposes, creating a Facebook poll is a low cost way to get honest answers that can be used to make your product/service better or even aide in the development of a new one.
• Facebook Flyers - Getting the word out about a new product or service? This can be done a display ad basis With Facebook flyers. The flyer is an effective way to advertise on the site. At only $2 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) it is cheap. Although the display ads are not always the most effective form of advertising or marketing a product, when used in combination with some of the other avenues mentioned above, it can round out an effectinve Facebook marketing campaign.
• Facebook Network Discussion Boards - Participating in a community, especially if your company’s product/service is in a targeted geographic location can serve as an outstanding way to create conversations with your current and potential customers. If one was to be more aggressive, but tactful, discussion threads centered around your industry could be created, with the intent of you building your expertise, etc. within the group which aides in the perception of your company and it’s offering appearing superior to that of competitors. Proceed with caution though.
• Encourage Employee Participation - Your employees should be your biggest evangelists. Your employee’s should have profiles, they should be participating in your groups, and interacting with their customers and partners. They are representatives of your company and they should be pushing your products/services at every turn. Think about this; if you were a sales person what better way is there to learn about your customer (outside of meeting them in person) than to add them as a Facebook friend and learn about them as a person. As business becomes more fragmented and move further from face-to-face, Facebook can serve as a replacement for face-to-face meetings not just a supplement as it is now.

Be Careful About Being “Corporate”

The Facebook purist in me does not want to corporatize Facebook, but the sales and marketing professional within me, just cannot pass the opportunity to leverage Facebook for the good of my company and clients. Any Facebook marketing or advertising campaign (or initiative) should be done with extreme thoughtfulness and tact. Remember Facebook users are a fickle bunch; they will turn on you if your cross the line (which is constantly moving). Play safe. Play smart and you should be successful.

If anyone has found any other ways to market their products/services through Facebook, leave them in the comments below!

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