Though all the social media channels which is utilised by every business to target their audiences and also wish to have direct communication with their customers, Facebook marketing is the best alternative today.
That’s why large or small business should consider advertising on Facebook as it offers a good opportunity for business to make good sales online, improve brand image, create a good platform where business can have good interaction with their customers, make customers aware of their products and services, convince them so that a loyal customer speaks about the qualities of the company and its product with family, friend and his group.
Experienced Facebook advertiser has aptly remarked that “large part of company customers are on Facebook. So all companies should have a Facebook page so that they can have a healthy interaction with their customers”.
So if a business wants to target a younger generation, then they should definitely consider Facebook as part of their marketing and communication. The latest growing trend is that people who are 50 plus also using Facebook so businesses are targeting them also.
Following are some good reasons why Facebook is good for business marketing
- To Manage Company’s Reputation
Many times dissatisfied and jealous customers can criticise a company’s brand through their own personal profile. To counter this negative propaganda, company can use Facebook to explain his stand by putting its arguments, to address customer concerns, to ask the customer to share their positive views. Especially the loyal customers who love company’s products that would come up with positive comments.
A good example can be given about company Taco Bells and Nestle’s brand Maggi, media restored to negative publicity and also their competitions started expressing negative views about the brands of both companies. These companies used Facebook effectively by putting positive arguments about their products and the quality criteria. After continuous interaction with the customers on Facebook, loyal customers came up with the companies praising their products and these positive reviews slowly improved the company’s image.
- To Build Good Relation
Facebook can be effectively used by business houses to target their audience. There are many company people who give more preference to Facebook than LinkedIn as they can operate a profile on Facebook in a personal capacity and build good link with the customers as Facebook has 5 million users and the majority of people today have their profile on Facebook.
So Facebook can be used company officials by creating personal profiles and also company page can be created to have a healthy interaction with customers. This strategy actually works in all conditions like branding existing products, launching of new product, changes in exiting product or coming up with positive arguments in favour of companies to improve and maintain good relation with their clients.
- Low Cost Strategy
Facebook marketing is much more economical as compared to other social media channels. The cost of Facebook marketing is very low and this makes it too popular among all platforms and small businesses who don’t have a big budget for marketing. Even big businesses before going for bigger marketing campaigns go for trail marketing concepts with the help of Facebook.
- Basic Information Can Be Shared
The majority of business houses use their Facebook profile to do publicity of brands’ products and services. All top most companies also interact with their customers on Facebook to give various types of information like appointment of new manager, launch of new company office, launch of new product, some social event company is organising to their client. The main purpose of the company is to attract the attention of their customers and create interest in them about what company is doing.
- Customer Support Can Be Provided
Many companies who have profile on Facebook encourage their customers to share their experiences about their products, services or after sales service question on their company’s profile. The company’s official and officer incharge answers and clears all the queries of the customers. This is much better than old traditional methods of customer writing letter to the company or using telephone, here the interactions are much faster and effective also.
- To Increase Brand Awareness Among Customers
Facebook is a popular social site that used by businesses to encourage existing and potential customers to like their page on Facebook and share new updates about products, services among users. This increases the brand awareness of a company’s brand. Customers also encouraged to post positive message or any other question they want to ask and they can also share it on their wall. These positive messages of the customers increase and popularise the company’s brand.
Following are the reasons why Facebook is bad for business marketing
When we talk about social media sites the very first name come to our mind is Facebook. With the 5 million active users Facebook is considered to be the ultimate platform to promote company’s products and services. But nowadays, it is very difficult especially for small businesses to promote their products and services due to huge competition.
It is very difficult to find out the right audience on the platform and if the company targets the right audience another problem is that how to manage them and getting them involved is also a very big issue for the small businesses.
If the company is getting successful to attract the audiences toward their ad and campaign on Facebook, but the major problem is that they don’t know at the end this effort is profitable or not for them.
- It Is A Costly Affair
It is so easy for the business to setup the Facebook page to promote their products and services, but this is not the only thing business have to do. They have to put a lot of efforts to promote their products on Facebook platform.
They have to promote the page on a regular basis and update their customers with some latest happening of business. For that they have to make a lot of ads and build campaigns for promotion of their brand and it requires a lot of money and without even knowing the possible outcome of that effort whether it is worthful or not.
- It Requires Rich Content
Nowadays, one can’t rely only on photos and status update on Facebook. One has to do a lot of other things like making colorful and catchy videos to attract the customer on a particular platform. It is not a big issue for large business, but when we talk about small business they don’t have a high budget to make the rich videos to attract the customer.
- Frequent Changes
The major problem with Facebook is that it is changing its interface and app very frequently based on the valuable suggestions and feedback of customers. All the company and business houses have to update their page and content according to the latest changes. It is not so easy task for every business house.
Facebook is very prominent tool for the big businesses which promote their products and services at a grand level display and get thousands of likes on them.
But when we talk about small businesses, it is so difficult to change the page and content so frequently they don’t have too much budget to do so. As the social media platform is very much important for the business. So for that small businesses get diverted to other social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to promote their particular brand.
No doubt everything in this world is two faced, one is sunny and the other is dark so is Facebook. Facebook may have its shortcoming, but the biggest benefits of having a Facebook profile is that business can share links, videos, update status, and other information on their profile so that customer can see it.
As the number of active Facebook users increasing, many companies use it to give information about its products, services and other useful information. With the help of Facebook, business increases their brand awareness and popularity. So a branded Facebook profile page is a must for every business house.
