Ecommerce Facebook Marketing Tactics

Facebook, once only known to be used for social networking and connecting with friends on the web, is beginning to look like a vast online marketplace. Retailers are scrambling to market to the enormous audience that Facebook attracts daily and turn these users into paying customers. It all began with the Facebook fan pages, which allowed businesses to build a presence for their brand on the social media site. They can add an unlimited amount of fans on their fanpage, and many leading retailers have already successfully built a large following. Just recently Facebook has been linked to e-commerce on an even bigger scale. Many of these businesses that are already well integrated with Facebook are beginning to create their own ecommerce apps, allowing them to sell their products to their fans directly through Facebook.

If you own an e-commerce business or are thinking of launching one and you have yet to try Facebook marketing then you better get started. First, you must build a Facebook fan page. It's quick and easy, just look for the link on their website and fill out the information. Once that is done, it's time to really begin customizing the page in a unique way that will draw people in and get them to become fans. Below is a list of elements on the fanpage and how you can use it to market your business.

Wall - have fans leave comments in this area, share their thoughts, help make suggestions, ask a question, etc.

Info - write a description of your business, make it clever and remember to speak to your audience in a way that they will like

Notes - share the latest news regarding your e-commerce business, announce promotions, etc.

FBML - create up to 10 customizable html display areas that allows you to add anything you want

Photos - add photos of your products and you let your fans to share theirs

Discussions - get the conversation started, have your fans give you feedback

Videos - post videos to promote your products and demonstrate how to use them, you can also let your fans share their videos

Events - announce special upcoming events or promotions

Reviews - let fans rate your products or services

Others - install other applications created by third party developers that are supposed to be used for the fan page

Once you have your fanpage set up you can start focusing on how to achieve more traffic. Your fanpage doesn't have to be perfect, it is one of those things where the more interaction you are able to receive, the better the content. So start small and watch it grow and develop over time. Once you are able to reach the pulse of your fans, you can think more creatively about what to offer them on your Facebook fan page. A good idea is to create exclusive coupons just for your fans. You can also start a fun contest for them as part of a promotional campaign where the winner receives something for free. Try to think of as many creative and fun Facebook marketing ideas to increase the amount of participation on your fanpage.

Advertisements are another great Facebook marketing tactic to get people to become better acquainted with your brand. However Facebook advertisements are in a lot of ways very different from other kinds of advertisements. The advertisements on Facebook cannot focus on direct sales like Google AdWords ads can. The reason is because they each have an entirely different type of audience. The users on Facebook are there to socialize whereas the group on Google tend to already know what they want and actively search for it. When trying to reach a Facebook user, you can't push your products on them. You have to first give them a reason to become a fan and then develop a relationship with them. Once the relationship is there, you can find interactive ways to keep your products and brand fresh in their mind, and the chances of them becoming a customer is much better. So apply to become an advertiser on the Facebook network and build banner ads that link to your Facebook fan page instead of your ecommerce site.

Most recently, an increasingly popular Facebook marketing technique is direct selling. Since selling directly through Facebook is now possible, there is no reason for you not to do it. The big name retailers are just beginning to make their fanpages even more interactive by listing their products on there. The ones that have already created a large community are finding that merging e-commerce with Facebook can be very profitable.

By: elogichick

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