FacebookTimeline Apps/Tabs how to use them to maximise ROI

Facebook Timeline Tips & Tricks from Corrie D Marketing

How to use the tabs/apps on Timeline to promote and showcase your portfolio of products and services! 

We absolutely adore the new changes to Timeline Facebook which came into effect for every business page owner on 30th March 2012.

Facebook now gives you a fantastic opportunity to create customised tabs/apps (running directly along the top of your page under your cover image).

If you think of these tabs/apps as prime advertising positions running along the top of your page (premium position) you have two standard tabs "photos & likes." Each page receives these two tabs on the Facebook Timeline layout.

We trust you will see you have 4 tabs running along the top and a further 8 tabs running below, when you click the arrow total = 12 tabs. You can look at our example Facebook Apps/Tabs you will see our 12 visible tabs however we have 24 tabs in total the remaining 12 are invisible to visitors unless we move them into the top 12.

You can move these tabs.  If you don't know how to move your tabs around, you need to click on the drop down arrow to the right to expand your tabs and then right click on the top right hand corner of the tab - a pencil icon should come up on the top right hand corner, click it and a drop down menu of your other tabs/apps should be showing. Click the name of the tab from the drop down menu you want to swap with. Taaa-Daaaa! You should now have successfully switched your tabs around!

Tabs/apps can be used to as a portfolio of your services. The first tab on every page is the "photos" tab (you cannot switch this tab postition) but you can move your "likes". Our first two tabs are points of reference for our target audience (page owners/page admins) as we want to ensure that our target market to use our page is a useful reference point to keep coming back and paying return visits. WE create customised tabs/apps for companies (please click on the highlighted links) to view our own Facebook page as an example  Facebook Timeline Guide and a Facebook Marketing Live Stream

Example - we carry out 360 Degree Panoramic Virtual Tours ideally suited to the Travel, Tourism and Leisure Industry. We then embed these into customised tabs/apps we create for our clients Facebook and we also embed these into your website.

Customised tabs allow you to showcase your portfolio of services, we call this your marketing collateral, which we create for our clients. We have used our own page to showcase these, as an example of how you can market your company/brand online.

Marketing Collateral 

360 Degree Panoramic Virtual Tours - perfectly suited to the Travel, Tourism and Leisure industries eg. Marinas, Hotels, Property Developers and Holiday Park Owners. We can then embed the VT's within your website & within a customised Facebook App/Tab within your Facebook page. Virtual Tours offer a truly world wide platform once embedded within your Facebook and website. We can even insert speaker icons to make it a virtual guided tour (which is effectively open 24/7.  You can see an example in our Marina VT (Portavadie Marina Virtual Tour)

3D Gallery walls is another of our services we carried out for a number of our clients i.e. Magna Carte Barge and Portavadie Apartments. By using the slider along the bottom you can move the 3D Gallery wall to click on images you want to highlight. We trust you will see the image opens into a larger image on it's own and can then be made full screen size. An ideal way to show 250 images which saves users having to scroll through endless photos'/images which can become tedious and boring.

e-Brochures are a perfect way to get your offline brochure online. You may already have e-Brochures embedded within your website as a Downloadable PDF however we do not recommend this as the more steps/actions you ask visitors to take to your website, the less likely they are to carry it out - due to the distractive nature of internet browsing (incoming emails/Facebook etc).  Therefore it's much easier for visitors to view your brochure online as a 3D interactive page flip e-brochure as opposed to a downloadable PDF. We can even embed your YouTube videos into these. If you see click the link to our Jeuneusse Example https://www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/app_194234897346125

We also recommend you post to your page with industry relevant content and post often, using the 80/20 rule. 80% sharing content, 20% selling your own product/service. Facebook advise posting approximately 3-4 times per week. You can analyse using your Facebook Insights the best times to post by trying various times to post as we believe the best times to post will be different based on the type of business ie B2B or B2C.

Facebook recommends the best times to post are at weekends when engagement with Facebook is high as Mon-Fri most people are in work however if you're a B2B and targeting owners this might not necessarily be the same result.

You can be as creative as you want to be with the apps/tabs we custom design.  If you have an idea of a customised tab/app for your business let us know what it is and we will create one for you as we can do almost ANYTHING on Facebook Apps within your new Facebook Timeline Fan Page and we mean literally anything !!!  From single promotion apps to a fully fledged website or store (YES you heard that right -  a full website !!! ) or any part thereof, and like gate, invite gate, share gate it, and make your promotion, contest, new product launch, new service or whatever you are marketing or promoting, GO VIRAL and sell on Facebook.

If you would like to book any of our services please call Corrie-Dee Whaite, Corrie D Marketing on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Corrie D Marketing February Review

Who has the Passion For Fashion? Roll on next week when two of our favourite magazines get published. 

The fabulous Scottish bi-monthly "Scottish Woman" magazine is one of our all time favourites. It's only been running in Scotland for approximately seven years but its full of fascinating articles, a travel section with unbiased travel advice and a fantastic homes interiors section, not to mention there passion for fashion! We were pleased to help out with the B2B advertising sales in the March/April edition by carrying out personal sales on there behalf. 
http://www.scottishwomanmagazine.com/

After a few hours of selling, we successfully sold two pages! An amazing achievement as one of them was to one of the world’s most exclusive resorts based in Ayrshire. Turnberry, A Luxury Collection Resort, Scotland. http://www.turnberryresort.co.uk/  

The second page was sold to Chairs & Beds, who is advertising within the Homes & Interiors section. They offer demonstrations within the comfort of your own home for reclining chairs and beds to the mobility market. However they have recently moved into the bespoke custom built sofas and settees market (previously known as Scottish Mobility) and is currently re-branding to the new name. T 0800 056 1886.

Bavaria Scotland Charters used our consultancy advice back in November/December regards promoting there summer tours in the Spring issues targeting newspapers & magazines in the UK but finally decided to target the female Scottish market. They booked two full pages in colour, running in the same March/April edition of the magazine. They organise bareboat charters, skippered charters and corporate events on their stunning Bavaria Yachts. Whisky Distillery Tours and & Island Tours throughout the Scottish Isles and further afield, throughout Summer. As we were booking the space advertising space for them for there ad and editorial to appear in Scottish Woman Magazine, we got chatting to the owner of the magazine and acquired Scottish Woman as our newest client! http://www.bavariascotlandcharters.co.uk/

Are you thinking of buying a Franchise?  Looking for impartial advice? Then London based Bi-monthly "Franchise World magazine" is for you and  is available by subsription. They have a fantastic range of Franchise Advisors, Finance &  Business Consultants that specialise in Franchising but most importantly Franchisors looking to recruit Franchisees. The March/April issue is running a  eature on the NEC Birmingham Franchise Exhibition. We are running our own advertising campaign within this title as we are aiming to target the franchising industry. http://www.franchiseworld.co.uk/

We would like to take this opportunity to wish to our clients and media partners all the best success for the future.  Already we know March is looking to be an amazing month due to all the developments with the new Facebook Timeline for pages recently being announced. We would like to wish our good friend Barry Pontin Concepts all the best of luck with his new business venture and hope he is settling in okay down South. We would also like to wish Maria a speedy recovery and we're all hoping you get better soon.

Whats been happening with your business in February? Did you have any good news and success stories you can share with us... It's all doom and gloom in the newspapers therefore we thought we'd like to hear about any inspirational good business stories or contracts you have secured lateley? Please feel free to share with us we'd be happy to hear how things are going especially the success stories - We "like" those :)

6 Reasons why it’s important have a “like” page and banner ad on a business profile!

It's time to GET SOCIAL!

1)      A “LIKE” page is sometimes known as "LIKE Gaiting!" Also known as a welcome, landing page for non fans.  It gives visitors a reason to “like” your page. Once they have liked your page they can access your wall etc and engage in the conversation and interact with your brand. It's quite difficult to get visitors to "like" your page, if you're eg an accountants or car repairs. A pub/club or restaurant is much easier to "LIKE".

2) A personal profile is easier to engage and interact as you can actively make friends requests however it is against Facebook rules to use a personal profile page to promote a business. If you have the new timeline layout it also flags a warning that businesses should not use timeline to promote brands with logos etc. We wouldn't recommend doing this as they are both different and have various restrictions ie you can't add friends to a business page, but you can't advertise a personal page on Facebook Ads. You have to rely on visitors opting in to "like" your page and follow your posts.  Hence why we advise having the "Like" page. It looks professional and can be customised with your branding, logo's etc.

3)      A banner ad appears down the side of your Facebook business profile page,which will replace your profile pic (If this is your logo, please change this to ad ad and make this space work for you). Think of your Facebook business page as real estate and this is a prime location to promote and advertise your company services. Again this should be branded.  A picture of your logo is doing nothing for you. It doesn’t tell visitors to your site anything. It’s a logo!  Having an ad  is very important as its FREE! Facebook DO NOT charge you for your banner ad to appear up there. It should ideally, list the services you offer, it will have good copy content (remember AIDA the basic advertising rules when writing ad copy) Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.  A call to action  will be your web address and telephone number. This ad appears on all your pages ie welcome page, photos, wall etc.

4)     Once you have a great looking page you can start advertising on Facebook Ads relatively cheaply as opposed to traditional forms of media ie local and national press. We recommend approx 100 likes and ensure you have a vanity URL, banner ad and like page, to get as much value as possible from your Facebook advertising and business profile.  Facebook advertising is 11% cheaper in the UK than any other country, there are also ways you can keep your advertising costs down by upto 45% by remaining within Facebook ie using the Facebook Ad campaign to link to your Facebook business profile page as opposed to an external URL to a website. Again another reason why it's so important to have a GREAT looking page. It's even better than a website as IT'S LIVE AND IT'S RIGHT NOW...!!!


5)  Use insights to enable you to  monitor and analyse what posts your tribe (fans) react to most, best times for posting etc. You can also monitor your ad spend using Facebook ads, as these are live you can pause and stop. You can create multiple ad campaigns (remember to name them all differently to stop any confustion when analysing the success rate of each campaign). You can  measure your ROI by asking every enquiry you receive how did you hear about us. Most Facebook enquiries will message on Facebook however we have had calls and visits to our website but they originally found out about us through Facebook. By using Google Analytics in conjunction with Facebook Insights you can monitor the traffic Facebook directs to your website from your advertising campaigns by analysing the data over the same time period or you can compare it by doing a control test when the website relied purely on organic traffic without facebook ads.

6) It's always best if you have an idea in mind of an end goal or target ie to achieve e.g. target is to get from 112 to 500 likes, or it could be to generate £X amount of sales on your website (if you have an e- commerce site) or if you don't have an e-commerce site it could purely be to drive traffic to your website. As this way you have a benchmark that you can use to monitor and analyse your advertising. 

If you require any help or assistance with any of the above you can visit our website www.corriedmarketing.co.uk or www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/

How Can Social Media Help Franchisor and Franchisees alike?

How Can Social Media Help Franchisors and Franchisees alike?

Are you too busy selling your franchises and promoting your own products & services,
that you take your eye off the ball when it comes to your marketing and advertising?

What are the 2 major concerns keeping you awake at night?

1. Is it lack of franchisees? Or is your competition gaining an edge?
2. Or it could be that you don’t have the time or technical understanding or knowledge of the wide range of marketing & advertising techniques that are available to you?

You know you need it and want it. You understand that you’re franchise will be left behind your competition if you don’t do it. WE ARE HERE TO HELP! By offering you high quality, yet cost effective social media & marketing solutions.

We understand franchising has the 3 sides to the business - the franchisor, the franchisee and the product/service! Our services help you sell your franchises to franchisees, we can also assist each individual franchise and finally we can help you both in promoting the brand, product/service.

Now businesses have more media choices than ever before and making the right decision is crucial to your business. We are a Social Network Media Management & Marketing Consultancy, specialising in Franchising and the Retail sector with twenty year’s marketing experience. Eight years within the Franchise industry and twelve within Retail.

Social Media is not a fad and it’s not going away any time soon. Theworld's largest social networking site “Facebook” is currently the second most visited site after Google and recently surpassed a record 800 million active users in one day. Users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, with their favourite pass time being uploading pictures, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world's largest social, networking site. This is far ahead of sites like Twitter & Blogger etc. Users cumulatively devote 723 million minutes a month. Twitter, receives 565 million minutes of users time per month and LinkedIn, which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second
most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much of users' time as followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on
YouTube).

If your company wants to embrace social media we would recommend setting up a business page on
the 3 main social media sites. These are Facebook, Twitter & Linked In. However some industry experts predictnot for long. Google+ is a new contender in the social media landscape. With Google’s new search results changing which now include Google+ Search plus Your World, means that search results are now being heavily influenced by Google+. With over 3 billion searches per day on Google, it’s poised to explodethis year. Newfigures recently released show Google+ growth accelerating. It
recently Passed 62 million users. Adding 625, 000 new users per day. Predicting that by the end of 2012 that this figure will jump to 400 million. Google+ could now be a serious contender. Previously we believed that companies did not have the time to do all of these social media sites properly due to time restraints, but with the addition of another new social media site, time spent on these sites has now been reduced even more.

Why Facebook? Facebook is the second most used site after Google. Currently hit a record 800 million active users in one day. We set up customised and branded Facebook Business Fan Pages, for your company with a Welcome/Landing Page for non- fans to land on which is also known as “like gaiting”. This gives visitors to your page a reason to “like” your page and engage with your brand. Facebook pages are a more intimate and direct marketing channel. They are instant and up to date. It can even be more up to date than a website as it’s RIGHT NOW!

Our award winning graphic designer will really make your company fan page stand out by
creating a banner advertisement which will appear on all of your franchise pages as well as your own, these can all be designed in the exact same style, font, type, colours etc. Protecting the brand and corporate identity by adhering to your brand guidelines. The banner advert replaces your
business profile picture but with minor changes to the copy content eg each franchisee would have different contact details, we can insert the Geographical area or postcode area they cover or we
can change the address, email, telephone number, website etc. The banner ad appears within all of your Facebook pages on your profile e.g.welcome page, wall, photos etc. We can also brand your “like” page designs sothat they are all the exact same or can be individually designed to suit each franchisee because it’s all the one company designing for everyone’s business/brand/product or service they can all be in keeping with one another. We can also create pages and skins using your corporate branding within all the other social media sites eg Twitter, You Tube etc.

We understand the different social media sites there audiences and there media consumption.
We can assist you to set up whichever social sites you prefer, whether its “You Tube” to post videos for your business or perhaps if you’re in the music industry Flowd or Soundcloud are better suited to your needs, to get your music heard! We follow your prospect’sonline journey, using Google Analytics and Facebook Insights our comprehensive understanding and knowledge of analytics and the power of knowing when to post (the best times) and what content your fans/tribe react to HELPING YOU GENERATE RESULTS. We are a target-led results driven company and would advise at the outset before embarking on a social media campaign to have a goal or target in
mind of what you want to achieve ie 100 likes in 3 months, to drive traffic to your website, or to increase sales. If you would like a chat regarding the options available to you please call Corrie
Now for details! Tel: 012924 559480 or Mob: 07411 170758

10 Reasons Why Your Company Should Be Using Facebook

1 The world's largest social networking site “Facebook” is currently the second most visited site after Google and recently surpassed a record of 750 million active users in one day. Users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world's largest social networking site. This is far ahead of sites like Twitter & Blogger etc. Users cumultatively devote 723 million minutes a month. Twitter, receives 565 million minutes of users time per month and LinkedIn, which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much time of users' time as followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on YouTube).

2 Facebook pages are a more effective and intimate direct marketing channel

3 It is instant and up to date. Printed and traditional media is usually out of date quite often before it even hits the streets. Facebook is even more up to date than a website. Facebook is in real time its RIGHT NOW!

4  It can be used as  a real time research tool (SUPRE receive hundreds of individual answers within 2 hours of the questions being asked).

5 You create a long-term relationship between the consumers and the brand that creates a digital asset with longevity.

6 You create a highly leveraged channel that distributes your brand and message by its viral nature as updates to the Facebook “Page” spread through friends updates and news feeds. This is an incredibly fast and effective organic brand distribution vehicle.

7 Facebook Users are “happy” users and you want your brand to be associated with these feel good feelings.  Average user has 130 friends spend on average 24mins each day, uploading  pictures is there favourite pastime, average user comments on average one comment per day.

8 Viral Nature – easy to promote/spread the word/comment/share/like/grow

9 Growing Demographic  - growth in the silver surfers (50 +) biggest growth age range

10 Customized Pages - Look & Feel (helps raise awareness and build brands). Gives a reason for Non Fans to “like” and engage in the conversation with your brand. Although you do not need to use logos, branding etc. If you’re on a tight budget I would recommend at least having a page and having some sort or representation as opposed to having nothing at all. It’s so easy to do but lots of people don’t use it and its FREE!! 

Do you own your own business?

Are you marketing it properly? 

Let me put it to you like this.  I will use this purely as an example .. you own a B&B but you dont market it properly. If you don't market it properly what are people going to think about your business? They won't be aware you have a B&B or that you have rooms available. Your prospects would think it is just an ordinary house.  What does this entail for your business?

What does "marketing" mean?

Marketing can be both an organisation or customer orientated philosophy. It can also be  a functioning department that handles activities concerned with understanding and satisfying customers needs.

Marketing is the action of promoting or selling your product or business, getting your message accross. Marketing plan activities are designed to increase your customers understanding and knowledge of existing products and services.  Studies have shown a direct link between the success of an organisation and the extent of its market orientation. These marketing concepts are applicable to both profit and non-profit organisations. 

Marketing plan activities are designed to increase your customer's understanding and knowledge of existing products and services. If a company has its own Marketing Department, Marketing is seen as ‘what the marketing department does’.

Marketing is the "key" element and fundamental rule of any business.  I have spoken to thousands of business owners over the years who say they cannot afford to spend money on marketing....I will give you some free inside information. If you are a business owner you cannot afford NOT to spend money on your marketing activities.

You don't need to have a full operational Marketing Department you can outsource this side of the buisness to a Marketing Consultant.  They can find out more about your business by doing market research which will enable you  to find out who your target market is (if you don't know that already).  As Jeff Bullhas said "Everyone" is not your target market.  Where are you now? Where would you like to be? How are you going to get there? What are your brands core values?  How would you like to be perceived? How are you currently being perceived in the marketplace? Who are your competitors? What are they doing? Market Research can also help to identify gaps in the market or market niches. You can do Market Research if your a new business about to launch to find out if there is a demand/gap/niche in the market for your service or you can tailor it accordingly prior to launcing.  It also helps if your an existing business to do Market Research to find out your position within the marketplace, help your business to find out what your customers think, to identify your customers needs and to help you fulfill those needs. A SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is also be beneficial at this stage.

Making sure you have a recognisable brand, using the services of a good Marketing Consultant to do a Brand Wheel.  The Graphic Designer can then take the brand wheel and use it to come up with the corporate colours/image/font/size/type. By using the Brand Wheel it can help take difficult and often complex organisations into the simplest of words. Simplicity is the holy grail of communication, it offers straightforward clarity for those unfamiliar with the message and attempts to uncover the simple words through a systematic process. This works best with a mixed group of people who are familiar with the product/brand.

Using the Brand Wheel you work from the outside in, firstly going around the outer wheel and listing single words the first words that come into mind for each of  four questions usually works best (ie what it does, how I would describe it, how it makes me feel, how it makes me look). Second, go into the middle wheel and again work through the four questions, distilling your original words from the outer wheel into fewer (ideally 3-5 per quadrant). This provides the basis for the inner wheel, where you summarise and prioritise the words from the middle wheel in fewer words. These words form the basis of your brand proposition.

The brand proposition is the building blocks for your communications, whether verbal, written or graphical. Everything you do can reflect these core words, and in turn provide a very focussed, very simple and very effective message to the consumer with your brands design, image, coporate colours and identity.

Marketing can also be described as managing the exchange of relationships as described in the following extract:

Marketing consists of individual and organisational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas.  Market led Approach or Pan Company Marketing.  Spending money on a worthwhile cause. Examples of other exchange relationships are shown in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1 Exchange relationships

Piercy (1997) describes this approach to marketing as a market-led approach – others refer to it as pan-company marketing. The distinguishing feature of both these approaches is that they emphasise that every department in the organisation is involved with the customer – not just the marketing department. I shall use the terms market-led, market orientation and pan-company marketing throughout the text to describe this organisations customer-led approach.

Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department.

(Bill Packard, Hewlett Packard, in Piercy, 1997)

There are 5 P's not 4 P's in Marketing.  Price, Promotion, Product, Place & The 5th P is People.                                                                                                                               (Guy Zitter,  MD, The Daily Mail)

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) suggests that:  Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers needs at a profit. 

Can you see how the CIM has incorporated market-led concepts in there definition of marketing?
All organisations (commercial and non-profit) must be market oriented and must focus their attention on adding value to their products and services to satisfy their customers needs.
Leaving aside the word profit from the CIM's definition of marketing, at a conceptual level the process of becoming market orientated is concerned with identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers needs. Kotler (Drucker, 1992) believes that changes in funding and the introduction of competitive tendering have forced some organisations to use these customer-focused approaches to help them compete in their marketplace. Kotler explains:

Marketing really is spurred on by the presence and the increase in competition that the institution faces in a way that it never faced before. Most organizations don't get interested in marketing when they are comfortable. Suddenly they find that they don't understand their customers very well, and their customers are leaving that church, or they're not signing up for the college, or coming to that hospital. And these institutions become aware of a competitive situation.
How do you deal with a competitive situation? Well, one way some early hospitals dealt with it was to pray that the world hadn't changed and that they would just survive. Now, prayer may have a role to play, but it is not the answer. The normal answer is that may be there's something in this thing called marketing that will help us to understand why customers chose to be with us in the first place and why they're not choosing to be with us anymore.
(Drucker, 1992, p. 80)

He believes that marketing techniques could be used to facilitate ‘mutually satisfying exchanges’ between the organisation and its publics (a ‘public’ is any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organisation's ability to achieve its objectives). This concept of ‘exchanges’ is important. As you have seen, marketing is denned as facilitating the exchange process. In the commercial sector, this means products and services are exchanged for money. In the non-profit sector, this means products and services are exchanged for ideas, values and beliefs.

To run a non-profit organisation effectively, the marketing must be built into the design of the service. This is very much a top management job, although, as in every other area, you need a lot of input from your people, from the market and from research.
(Drucker, 1992)

Value Proposition

What Does Value Proposition Mean?
A business or marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement should convince a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings.

Investopedia explains Value Proposition
Companies use this statement to target customers who will benefit most from using the company's products, and this helps maintain an economic moat. The ideal value proposition is concise and appeals to the customer's strongest decision-making drivers. Companies pay a high price when customers lose sight of the company's value proposition.

I hope this helps you to understand the importance of marketing for your business and how to implement a marketing strategy.