Marketing on FACEBOOK

Innovative FACEBOOK Marketing

by Martha Nelson

If you are one of the very few people in the world that doesn't have a Facebook account, now is the time to sign up! If you do have a Facebook account, please read on. I am an avid social marketer and I have learned much from doing research and would like to share with you about using this wonderful social networking application to help market your martial arts school and help bring it to the next level!

First, you must create a Facebook page especially for your martial arts school. You may do so by adding an additional page from your personal profile, or you may create a separate account with another email address and make sure you identify with Facebook that this page is a business selling services. This way you may promote your school with a 'LIKE' instead of adding friends. If you have a Pro-Shop, make a separate page for it as well. You can promote these products online via Facebook, and show the pictures online using your students wearing them in combat and sparring practices. There are many ways to use Facebook to advertise sales on particular items that your students may use with upcoming events such as tournaments, exhibitions, and fundraisers.

The 'Create an Event' that you can do on Facebook like you do with your AMSweb page is a great way to also promote any event you have. You can post new Events on your school's Facebook page and invite all of your students and potential students to all of your events and have the RSVP responder so you know approximately how many will be coming. You may put your school's home website inside the body of the text of the Event notice to everyone may link to the details of the actual event. One simple idea to make an event of one night have an exhibition and have potential students come to watch your students perform. If they sign up for lessons that night, their first two weeks of lessons will be free with a free uniform! The posibilities are endless.

This social networking tool is so powerful, fortune 500 companies, such as Anheuser-Busch is using Facebook to advertise to consumers in a different way using it as an interactive tool. The company is inviting its million fan base from its Fan page to view the 3 superbowl images from the commercials and guess the storyline. Then the company is going to display a 4^th commercial only on the Internet to its fans on Facebook. It is contest related and game interactive.

When placing an event on your page, try to make a contest out of it. Make a contest for the potential students and your present students to name the upcoming winners of a particular event. Such as, 'Who will be the winner of the most funds raised?” or “Who will break the most boards at this year's Break-A-Thon?” or “Who will be the Champion at the Tournament?” Put online, “Who will be the winner?” On your fan page, post videos and pictures of ten of your students in action to make your page exciting. These pictures and videos will get posted on the streamline and your friends or fans will see them as soon as your upload them. If they comment, the pictures may be seen on their friends' streamline as well. Many people will see the action, they may or may not get curious about it and click the picture to see. But always try to keep your site interactive and exciting.

Here are some interesting facts and research statistics about Facebook. There are over a half a billion Facebook users worldwide and 60% of them sign on daily. That means over 250,000,000 people sign on to Facebook everyday. It has minimal public access, so your data is protected from outside sources. The quizes you take as fun time quizes are actually marketing tools to help the people that do advertise on Facebook, are better able to target market the consumers by knowing more about who to target by having more information about each person that is enrolled in Facebook. These quizes find out people's likes and dislikes, your career, your personality, your gender, income level, etc. Facebook has a potential of an 8 X ROI advertising potential if done right. It is not easy however, if it was you would have more advertising competitors on Facebook. So, being not so easy is more to your advantage to advertise on Facebook once you know the tricks to doing it.

Spending your money on Facebook ads can be very tricky and maybe expensive, but you can set your limits to your spending per day. You can spend as little as $10.00 a day or an unlimited amount, it is up to you. The estimated reach to people on Facebook is at least 134,052,720. (I pulled this number from my own advertising campaign page.) The ads on Facebook are very simple. They have a title, which is only 10% of importance according to research. It has an image, which is very important. So important, it has 70% relevance to your ad according to reseach done by Facebook. The description or the body text of your ad is the remaining part of your ad. It is under your image and has 20% of importance. The study Facebook took 1000 men and 1000 women and displayed a series of ads advertising basically the same thing. Over 70% of the study clicked on the image with girls having clevage, 10% clicked recognizable brands, 10% on blended images, and the other 10% on everything else. So, this study tells us that pretty girls showing their chest is actually the best image to use to get the best results when advertising. (Sorry, facts are facts.)

For the content of your title you should have the name of your school, a Facebook feel, and be very simple. The body text of your ad must give results for the consumer. Such as, Become a black belt; Lose Weight; Get in Shape; etc. Remember your 'call to action' and also mention you have a limited number of spots left or have an urgency posted in your ad, such as 'Offer expires this week.'

Things to remember about advertising on Facebook:

.01% return ratio is excellent

Numbers is the advertising game

CPM=cost per 1000 impresseions

CPC=cost per click

23. is the house rate

The 'Ninja techniques to lower your costs of advertising on Facebook are to choose the right image for your ad. Images online is worth 70%! Remember this when you are thinking of spending your hard earned doallars! How many times are you seeing pretty girls in tank tops online? A picture is worth a thousand words and maybe thousands of dollars! Critique what time of day your ad is being displayed and where. If your school is in Texas, you don't want people in China viewing it at midnight. Check out the 'responder profiles report.' It can tell you things about the people that have responded to your ads, like what books they read, tv shows they like, and what interests they have.

Also, Facebook does not cap how many times someone views your paid ad. So, tighten your group with separate campaigns of your ad. Stop running your ad if it is not getting clicked and tweak it and try it again. People often change what and how they do things on Facebook.

If your ad does well, later flip it to CPM. This way you will get more impressions and Facebook will be guaranteed money and will cut you a deal. You may spend less, but watch it or you could lose money. Be patient and keep it simple. Follow these steps and you just may become a marketing guru on FACEBOOK!