Despite a less-than-impressive initial public stock offering, the growth of Facebook has been phenomenal. And while the number of social media tools available to the public has exploded, Facebook is still the king of the hill. Businesses and organizations continue to ask people to “like” them on Facebook. There are companies that exist exclusively to develop business pages on Facebook for their clients.
So is Facebook the right tool for your business marketing efforts? That depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a misleading question. Facebook is only one tool in your marketing toolbox. A carpenter who only uses a hammer won’t get the right results. It’s the same way with marketing. You have to use the right tool for the right task.
While Facebook is great for some things, it’s not great for everything. Recently GetSatisfaction, did a survey that revealed that almost 90 percent of customers went to a company’s website to research product details. What does that mean for your marketing efforts?
Your customers may hear about your products and services on a social media site such as Facebook (and that’s important). Their friends may say nice things about you on Facebook (also important). But when it comes time to do research they are going to go to Google and to your website.
That means your website needs to be optimized to have the information that your customers are looking for. Your product and service descriptions need to answer the questions that customers want to know. That means you need to write your descriptions from a customer’s point of view rather than from a sales perspective.
You also need to make sure that prospective customers can find you. That means optimizing your site for Google’s search engines to push your name to the top of the list. Again, that means writing your content in the same kind of language that people will search for it on Google (or whatever search engine you use).
Does that mean you should abandon your Facebook efforts? Not at all! People still rely heavily on recommendations from their friends and peers. But focus your Facebook efforts on that kind of interaction. Just make sure that when potential customers leave Facebook to do their research that they can find you—and that they have easy access to the information they want.
