One of the major issues of online marketing was the sticking point of meeting. E-mail, banner ads, and social media marketing have the ability to reach huge volumes of users, but customary online marketing suffers from dismally low CTRs. Obviously, outreach isn’t everything, especially online where people simply ignore and click away from all the content that has to compete for their attention.
Are Facebook Fan Pages changing this for everyone?
Facebook Fan Pages are a business’ opportunity to present themselves online, access a loyal and interested Facebook fan base at a personal social level, and grow that Facebook fan base through long-term relationship building. Happy Facebook fans not only keep in touch and buy more, they also become powerful unofficial “brand ambassadors” for your company among their own friends: a most powerful marketing strategy, when considering studies that show the overwhelming influence that friends have on each others’ brand and product preferences.
Let’s briefly compare a Facebook Fan Page to a Facebook Group. Groups are visible only to members; they can blast messages to large numbers of people, but this can be annoying; judicious use of Facebook Fan Page status updates is far more effective. Groups have the advantage of the “invite all” feature for new members to invite their friends; while this can mean your group goes viral, it also means that most people will decline or drop the group after realizing that it isn’t relevant to them. Plus, it means that people are constantly bombarded irrelevant group invitations. For the selective word-of-mouth sharing of Facebook Fan Pages, desensitization isn’t an issue.
Notably, in a Facebook Fan Page, you have the ability to embed applications that can provide everything you or a fan could want – unlimited information displayed in any format, coupons, catalogs, contests, polls, chat rooms, free branded gifts, and many more, all while the page functions like a regular Facebook page. Providing actual value as (or through) apps gives your Facebook Fan Page the appeal of “something worth being a part of” – something that your fans are more likely than ever to actively recommend to their friends, while your brand image and reputation benefits.
There’s just one catch: You have to keep your fans happy. Learn the best practices, keep up the flow of valuable content, and don’t get too cavalier about social media, or it can go sour fast.
Too summarize: Despite missing out on the “blast” nature of older online marketing strategies, Fan Pages can more than compensate through encouraging engagement, building long-term relationships, and boosting brand reputation, all while interacting in a visible social setting and earning fans that add to your brand’s own army of personal word-of-mouth advocates.
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