The following is an excerpt. The complete article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes the full eight steps to make sure you take for doing a promotion, as well as notes on having back-up plans, as well as what to watch out for in Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines.
While listening to and engaging with your customers is the top priority for all brands with a presence on Facebook, growing the number of Likes on your Page is also of major importance. There is no recommended maximum for a Page’s Likes – the bigger, the better.
In previous articles we have looked at the value of incentivizing the Like on Facebook Pages, and one of the best ways to do this is through the use of a promotion that encourages existing fans to share and recommend the Page to their friends in exchange for a reward once a predetermined number of Likes has been reached.
By evangelizing fans in this way you can benefit from the positive effects of word-of-mouth and personal recommendation, driving the size of your Facebook community to the next level.
In this article we will look at how marketers and brands can utilize existing fans to drive new Likes to Facebook Pages via the use of Like targeting.
Who Should Do This?
Because they depend heavily on fan involvement, Like targeting promotions work best on Facebook Pages that are already well-established with an engaged and receptive audience.
New Pages or those with a low number of existing Likes should build the community size using CPC and other methods before attempting promotions of this kind.
Driving fans towards a Like total in exchange for a reward, particularly if that is a discount, works best on Facebook Pages where the brand has something to sell, preferably via an online store that is tied to the Page.
Because these kinds of promotions depend so heavily on fan involvement and building a sense of urgency, they should not be overused — no more than one to two times per year for smaller Pages, and possibly every other year for larger Facebook communities.
The Promotion
1. Decide On The Number Of Likes To Be Targeted And How Long The Promotion Will Last
These are both key factors – a small number of Likes can obviously be realized in a shorter period of time, but might be unsatisfying for all concerned, while promotions that go on too long (or indefinitely) won’t hold the interest of your community.
Both the marketer and fans want this to succeed – the latter want the prize, and the former wants the boost in community size (and to avoid egg on face at all costs). Hence, it is important that both the target and timeframe are realistic.
The optimal combination is a healthy Likes target over a fairly strict timeframe that carries a sense of urgency but seems achievable with effort, energizing the community into taking action. For example, a page with 3,000 existing Likes might utilize a promotion that targets reaching 5,000 Likes in 10 to 14 days. That same page could also target 10,000 Likes in a month, but 25,000 Likes over two to three months would be unadvisable. Move through milestones naturally and organically.
The full article, which covers eight steps to make sure you think through when doing a promotion, can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing, advertising, and ecommerce on Facebook. Other steps cover how to prime the existing user base for the promotion, as well details on running ads to support the promotion, and much more.
The July 2011 edition includes updated coverage of the following topics:
