The importance of engaging your Facebook fans cannot be overstated. We have discussed many ways you can do that both organically and through ads. One method we have yet to explore in detail on our blog is Facebook Offers. If you’re a retailer, you will want to check out Facebook Offers, a new type of Facebook page post that allows brand pages to create coupons and share them exclusively on Facebook. Facebook Offers benefit your business on Facebook as they help spread the word about your product or service to your fans and their friends. But Facebook Offers also at the same time, drive traffic off Facebook to your store or website and encouraging Facebook users to become consumers of your product. The biggest challenge marketers have on Facebook is converting fans into customers and tracking that conversion. Facebook Offers can help a business do this.
What Exactly is a Facebook Offer?
A Facebook Offer is basically a coupon created and shared only on Facebook. Facebook page admins can easily create these Offers on their page, and Facebook users can claim the Offer to use at a business. By claiming an offer the fan is not making a purchase. They are simply saying they want to receive the coupon which is then emailed privately to the fan. The company never sees the email address which helps protect privacy of the fans.
Facebook Offer ads appear on the Facebook Page wall and can be promoted with Facebook Page Post Ads. When fans claim an Offer, stories about this action will appear in the users Newsfeed. Another way to help spread the word about your offer is to pay to promote the story. Promoted posts make sure your post gets in front of your fans as well as their friends. Offers allow business owners to get in front of potential customers which can lead to a sale as well as a potential “like” on the business Facebook Page. It’s important to recognize that these new “Likes” are incredibly valuable as they increase your reach for all future communications.
How Do You Create a Facebook Offer?
Offers are available to pages with more than 400 fans. Go to your business Facebook Page and make sure you are using the page as your business (not as yourself). Go to the status update box and you will see the icon for “offer” in the top right hand side of the box.
Click the “Offer” icon and follow instructions. Create your offer by entering text in the status update box. You can choose whether your offer is claimed in store, online, or both.
You also have options that include adding a redemption code, barcode, expiration date, terms and conditions, number of offer claims allowed as well as adding an image and headline to your offer.
Tips For Creating An Effective Offer
- Great images and text will help catch the attention of your fans
- Be clear and concise. Make sure you are clear about the what the offer is. Have an outside person review your offer to ensure you are not making mistakes.
- Make claiming easy whether in store or online. Your expiration dates and claim number limits should be reasonable. If the offer expires too quickly or the claim number is too low people will pass it over.
- Make sure to refresh the offer if you run it ongoing. Simply adding new images or different headlines can make a big difference. Watch the effect of changes you make to help inform future changes.
- Promote your offer with Facebook Ads and/or Promoted Posts.
Promoted Post – If you are wanting to get the offer out and seen by your fans and their friends, this method will do that. This is easy and quick and you can initiate it while you create the offer. If it’s your first time using Offers I recommend using this form of promotions. You can set a lifetime budget and Facebook will promote to your fans and friends. Facebook Ads – Use this to target your offer to a specific group of people based on interests, demographics, location, etc. In order to use Facebook Ads you will have to create the offer and then go into ads to promote it. Your offer will not be activated until you promote it. Promoting with Ads will allow you to watch the performance of the Ad and customize it accordingly
What Happens After The Offer
Regardless of how big of an campaign you run (even a small offer) you should always do a post-campaign review. It’s a good time to look at the analytics and understand how people interacted and why. My favorite part of working with Facebook Ads and offers is that the analytics help you understand immediately how people interacted. Of course, you should also be looking at your website and/or phone/in-person analytics as well. Your goal is to ascertain not only how many opted to received your offer or “liked” your offer, but how many people actually followed through and claimed the offer at your location either online or offline. You can adjust the look/feel of the offer, actual offer, targeting strategy etc. to get different results. If it was a successful offer you can determine if you would like to bring it back again. Remember engagement is key with Facebook Pages the more people interact the more everyone will see your page organically so you need to continue to utilize the methods that get the best engagement.As with all campaigns you will want to use the data to improve your efforts the next time around. Marketing is a mix of strategy and testing to get it right. Want even more help creating a Facebook Offer? Get professional help from SocialNicole! Photo Credit