Skip to main content

Facebook marketing for F&B - Why Facebook?

You can't avoid Facebook today. With over one billion users, finding somebody without a Facebook account is a rarity. 

Lots of F&B establishments have already started on Facebook marketing. Some have found hits, other misses. 

After dealing with F&B merchants on how to launch their Fan Clubs for their Facebook Page, I have found that there are still doubts about using Facebook as a marketing tools.

As such, I am starting from the ground up. Intermediate and advance marketeers can skip these first few posts. 

So why Facebook?

1. A medium which provides you with a captive audience

When Facebook first launched Pages, they added a fan button where Facebook users become fans of your Page. They made a decision to change it to Likes but it is weird to call them likers. 

So those who join the Page are still known as fans.

These fans are your captive audience. Besides email, no other medium provide that online tool to give you a captive audience.

Yes, some may argue that Facebook has changed the algorithm and less fans see the post. Still, having 20% of fans see you updates is better than nobody seeing them at all. However, I will deal with this issue in a later post.  

If you buy advertisement in a newspaper, your captive audience is only for that particular day and for the particular group of readers who are interested in your ad. Unfortunately, most will forget the ad the next day. 

Advertising in newspaper is costly especially if you do it every other day. This leads to point 2.

2. Facebook Pages are easy to set-up and is free.

It only takes less than five minutes to set up a Facebook Page and you don't have to pay Facebook a cent. 

It is also easier to update your Page than to update your website.  You have an update to share with your fans, just type it in. You have a photo or wish to create a photo album, just click on the add photo link.

However, saying it is free and easy to set-up doesn't mean maintaining it is also free and easy. Yes, there will be cost involved, either in terms of $$ or time. 

3. Facebook is constantly trying to improve local search

Facebook is constantly trying new ways to make your Facebook Page useful to both you as a merchant and your customers. 

For example, Facebook is testing out Facebook Nearby which allows the customers network to filter out the best restaurant nearby. If you don't have a Facebook Page, it won't show up.

4. Word of mouth marketing

There is an added element to Facebook Pages which other mediums don't provide and that is the word of mouth marketing aspect of it.

Word of mouth marketing is relatively new to many and is different to traditional direct marketing. WOM is an element that sits on top of direct marketing.

Direct marketing brings your customer to the shop. After that, then what? When it comes to WOM, you want this customer to share with their friends of your shop. 

So the idea here is to make your customer talk about you so their friends can see it and therefore are aware of your brand. 

In my next post, I will taking a step back from the technicalities of Facebook Marketing and focus on setting goals and commitment to make your Facebook Page great.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Will mrbrown's post on Mr Tan Kin Lian's thermometer app "misadventure" promote technology ageism?

I am not ashamed to say I support Mr Tan Kin Lian as a presidential candidate because I believed in what he stood for. And when Mr Tan posted his "misadventure" with a thermometer app, I did shake my head in disbelief that he did that. Source:   http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2013/07/we-could-have-had-him-for-president.html Thinking twice, there could be a possibility that Mr Tan misunderstood how this app work. Most  thermometer app take data from various weather stations to display the temperature on it. Yes, the technology savvy will do a #facepalm when they read the post and mrbrown's post demonstrated it perfectly. Wrote mrbrown , "Maybe the former Presidential-hopeful didn't realize he needed to upgrade to the Pro version of the app. Then his iPhone would not only measure temperature, it would also measure current PSI (PM2.5 included), tell you if you are having your period, and cook instant noodles. Good thing he didn't try to measure boil

How UOB's Paper Trail Amplifies IT Greatest Security Threat

UOB required you to do everything on paper. If you want to change your mobile number for your banking account with them or for your credit card, you need to fill up a form. Yet, this paper trail represented a potential security fail for the bank - Human Error. So a bitcoin expert walked into UOB to open a bank account. The bank employee had to print a form from a online pdf document to fill in this bitcoin expert's particulars. When it came to entering the bitcoin expert's email, that's when the forgotten art of handwriting was the most obvious of the digital generation. Wrote Robert Capodieci, My name is Roberto Capodieci, as most of you know. and my email address is very obvious to decode. It is not a p4l_l337_s0u1@gmail.com, but it is a more obvious roberto@capodieci.com, thing that, right after reading my name in the same form, should come out easy. Still, a data entry personnel of the UOB bank (or of a service provider the UOB bank uses) entered it as roberto

NEL Train Fault Shouts Lack Of Crisis Communication

The North-East Line train fault of 11 April 2018 was my virgin experience of a rush hour train fault since I moved to Punggol. One would have thought that with the number of train faults experienced by the North-East Line operator, SBS Transit, they would have improved the communications and handling of train faults. However, my personal experience told another story. First, there were no announcements at the Punggol LRT stations of the train fault even though SBS Transit manages them. The train fault was reported as early as 7.10am as I had a friend who was also stuck in the train. I boarded the LRT at Coral Edge around 7.30am and I didn't hear of any announcement nor was there any signage to inform me o the train fault at Punggol Station. Second, the announcement kept saying that there would be a 15 minutes delay, but 15 minutes passed and the trains, on both side, wasn't moving. If the announcement would be more frank to say it will be a longer delay, commuters would