BigCountryMarketing.com – A small business marketing consultancy company.

As with any business endeavor you need a plan and especially for your marketing strategy since you have so many options open to you that you would be hard pressed to keep track of everything without a plan to make sure you are heading in the right direction. The Target Market As already mentioned, the Facebook demographic is extremely diverse and you have the added advantage of being able to use people‟s profiles to further narrow your target market down. For example, if you want to target women aged 24 – 35 who live in the Midwest and love to crochet, Facebook makes it extremely easy to do. The advantage? You can be certain you aren‟t wasting resources, whether money or time, on reaching a wide audience of which only a small percentage is actually your target market, as was often the case with traditional marketing channels. Remember that the key to building a successful business is to have an excellent understanding of your target market. The more you know about them, the easier it will be to build a relationship with them. Consumer behavior, in simple terms, is driven mainly by two desires, the first is to avoid pain and the second is to gain pleasure. However, pain avoidance carries much more weight. Therefore, the more you know of your audience and what pains them, the more you will be able to meet their needs by providing a solution to their pain. In fact, if you do your market research properly, you will be able to create a product that sells itself. This is where the power of knowing your target market truly lies. What better way to build a relationship with your target market than through a social media platform that allows for so much interaction, like Facebook? There are a few tools you can use to locate your target market. One of these is the Facebook Insight tool which provides information on the people visiting your page, including information such as their age and sex. Establishing Your Marketing Goals Facebook is an essential marketing tool that you need to integrate into your overall marketing strategy for the simple reason that you can glean a lot of information from your market. From product creation to feedback on your service, Facebook can be the ultimate market research tool, and you can achieve all this without paying a penny. In essence, the core goal of any marketing campaign is to increase sales. However, there are other aspects to increasing your sales which, initially, may not appear to be directly linked to increasing your profitability. But they are, and can boost your sales more effectively than even a Super Bowl advertising campaign. These are building a brand, forming a community of prospects who are raving fans, providing customer service and receiving feedback on your business. These four aspects are vital to building a sustainable business model that will generate an income for you for many years. The Power of Branding A brand is basically the image of your business. It‟s what sets you apart from your competition in the mind of your target market. Thus, the key to branding is finding your USP (unique sales position/proposition), which you can actually do with the help of existing customers. Simply conduct a survey and ask why people are buying your product or using your service and not the competition‟s. If you do not yet have a product and are just starting your business, then you should analyze your competition and identify what their USP is. This will give you some idea of what you can do to add extra value and find your USP. Remember never to use price as a USP as this can backfire. Driving Sales with Facebook Facebook is an ideal tool to drive sales as it offers an excellent medium to inform your audience about special offers, product launches, discounts and more. You can easily provide a link so people can access your website or you can even build a store right there inside Facebook. Facebook is also a highly cost-efficient advertising medium as you can run highly targeted campaigns that have a high ROI as it has been proven that social media audiences have a higher conversion rate than organic traffic. Additionally, you can also use Facebook Events to drive sales and increase brand awareness. Building Your Community Building a community is vital to your online business success, especially if you want that success to be long-lasting. Facebook Groups gives you that option but remember that your group can‟t be build around your product or no one will be interested. You need to focus on building a group centered around a cause or interest that ties in with your goals yet has social importance to draw people to join. Customer Service and Feedback Providing excellent customer service and listening to feedback from your customers is vital to the success of any product or business. The more feedback you receive, the more you can improve and meet the needs of your prospects. You can receive feedback directly through a Facebook group or by running a manual search on the platform to find any mentions of your brand. The more responsive you are to your market‟s needs, the more they will appreciate your brand and the more they will advertise for you through referrals and recommendations. There is nothing more valuable in a social media setting than having your Facebook fans recommending your business as this is the place people come to research before they make their purchase decision. Creating a Message This is the moment when you need to forget all you learned in your power-selling and advertising courses about hard selling. This simply does not work in a social media setting. You need to be honest and open with your market and above all you need to provide value first and ask later. In other words, don‟t try to push sales messages down the throat of your Facebook followers because you may soon find yourself alone. Facebook is primarily a social platform, which you need to remember when implementing your marketing strategy. This means that you need to engage your audience rather than merely trying to push offers at them all the time. The more value you provide, the more your audience will trust you and the higher your profits will climb. Conclusion Facebook is a very powerful marketing tool if used properly. The most important aspect to remember is that it is a social platform first and needs to be treated as such. In other words, don‟t expect people to respond to commercial messages but rather build a relationship with them first. Then, they will generate sales for you without you even having to ask. As long as you focus on the needs of your prospects and customers and provide them with value, your sales will increase exponentially and your brand will spread like wildfire. Such is the power of My Facebook Formula.

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