Using Facebook for Business Marketing

Social networking sites are a rage all over the world for their power to interest and intrigue the users. A networking platform such as Facebook, can serve bigger purposes than just chatting with friends, if used wisely. The use of social networking as a tool to promote a business idea or create awareness about a social issue, is being widely felt. For amateur businessmen, using Facebook for business marketing reduces expenditure on advertisement. This cost-effective measure for advertising allows a business to be popular across international boundaries with just a little effort. What more could a startup want?

How to Use Facebook for Marketing Your Business

Attention
Using Facebook for business marketing, follow the same rules of advertising through any other medium. Seeking attention is the first step of advertising. Facebook gives you an option to create a page (an identity or a profile) for your business. Login to the site, and create this page, by adding a profile picture and details. The site will guide you at every instance and the instructions are quite simple to understand. A page will give your business an identity and a starting point.

Interest
Why would people look at your page? Why would they like it? What's in it for them? Fair enough. To increase views, likes and followers for the page, you need to make the page interesting with pictures, intriguing snippets, quizzes, polls, personal information about the founders, prizes and such other stuff. The second step of using Facebook for marketing business, is to generate an interest amongst the viewers and to retain it. Remember that the page has to be regularly updated and it has to be kept alive with interactivity to retaining its users' interest.

Desire
After you've got attention and generated interest, you need to arouse a desire amongst users about your products or services. More the interactivity, more desirous will be the product. Persuasive updates, consistent advertising messages, pictures that bring out the essence of your product and making offers of reasonable deals are some of the ways in which your followers will want to own your product or avail your service. Increased number of followers, constant interactivity, inquiries and suggestions are all indicators of the fact that your product has reached the desired state.

Action
This may seem confusing, as we are talking about a virtual marketing. Responding to queries, which increases your sales is the action in question here. Say for instance, you are promoting a startup event company. After following the aforementioned steps, if you get calls from potential customers who would buy the invites, it is a job well done. When it gets rolling because of its popularity, it is known as action, in advertising terms. The same holds true for Facebook.

Satisfaction
It is important to revert to your customers and get important feedback from them. A feedback will help you figure the levels of satisfaction and the scope for improvement. This makes your customers feel valued, which goes a long way is establishing a loyal customer base and increasing your clientele.

Virtual business marketing is easy but it requires dedicated effort minus deviations. It is one platform that will give you a wide audience that is spread across the world. Thus, launching yourself in the international world is just a click away. Advertising a product on a social networking website comes with a great responsibility of matching up to people's expectation. And they don't ask for much! Worth a shot, I say.