Facebook Marketing

In the last couple of years, Facebook has gone from a college photo-sharing site to a burgeoning business-networking platform for self-promotion, advertising and multimedia interaction.

With new apps and add-ons, Facebook users can send each other a virtual drink, create and host events, advertise their businesses through social ads, and more.

Free Marketing Opportunities

The beauty of using Facebook as a marketing tool comes from the endless ways in which you can advertise your business for free. Once you've set up a free account, use your creativity to maximize these features.

Profile Page

All Facebook members get their own profile page when they sign up. Use this as your canvas to upload pictures, logos and other information about your company.

Groups

Use the site's Groups feature to network with your target audience. You can join existing groups or create one just for your business to amp up the buzz about its services.

Facebook marketplace

College kids use the site's Marketplace to scout out used couches and find roommates, but a savvy business owner can advertise services and product sales, as well as search for new employees.

Networks

Ignoring the Networks question when you create your company's profile could lose it a lot of business. List your business's city, industry, neighborhood and any other relevant information to let potential customers and business partners know where they can find you.

Facebook Badge

Facebook describes its Badge feature as "a customizable way to share your Facebook information on other web sites." Creating your own Badge will link Facebook friends to your company's Web site.

Events

Instead of printing out flyers and mailers the next time you want to advertise an event, use the free Facebook Events app to get the word out.

FunWall

Mass emails are so yesteryear. If you want to keep in close contact with your Facebook friends, use the FunWall to create a message or send a greeting to everyone at once.

Top Friends Network

Reward your top friends by sending them a virtual drink or writing on their FunWalls. As a marketing tool, the Top Friends network serves as another way to group your contacts, keep an eye on your target demographic, and quickly and effectively reach out to your company's best customers.

Inbox

Send secure, private messages to your clients on Facebook with the Inbox app. You can still send out mass messages, but only to the contacts you select.

Notes

Mashable! calls Facebook's Notes application a blogging feature because of the way users post links, messages, photos and other information that they want to share with friends. Even if you maintain a blog elsewhere, give your Facebook friends an exclusive peek into your company's news and behind-the-scenes schedule by posting here.

Contact Importer

The contact importer helps you "find your friends on Facebook." If you want to find out if your clients or other work-related contacts use Facebook but think it's a little lame to come right out and ask, upload your contacts from AIM, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and more to find out if they're online.

Share Partners

When you publish updates to your company blog or Web site, add the link or a link and a photo to your Facebook profile using the Share Partners app.

Tools and Applications

Facebook add-ons allow you to customize your profile page and build up virtual relationships with clients and customers. Check out these tools and applications that will give your marketing plan a boost.

Facebook Social Ads

Pinpoint your company's Facebook friends and friend wannabes by creating a social ad that reveals itself to visitors of your profile and friends of friends of friends ... you get the idea.

Facebook Pages

A more business-savvy name for Profile, the Facebook Page now includes all kinds of add-ons so that you can post videos, logos, pictures and other marketing info.

Facebook Polls

Businesses can effectively find out what their target audiences are thinking by utilizing this polling service on Facebook.

Facebook Beacon

Connect your company's Web site to your customers' Facebook profiles with the Beacon action alerts. By integrating just three lines of code, your customers can choose to let their friends see what they viewed and bought on your company's web site and more.

Facebook Insights

Through charts and mapping devices, companies can accurately track their "presence and promotion on Facebook."

Facebook Platform

If you want stand out from the thousands of other Facebook advertisers, create your own tools and applications with Platform. This system helps Facebook users design interactive apps so that visitors and friends can easily explore what your company has to offer.

FeedBurner

Advertise your company's blog or podcast with the FeedBurner app for Facebook. A feed will appear on your profile, so visitors to your page are instantly updated with new postings, videos and more.

Gydget

Small companies, bands, nonprofit groups and other organizations should try out Gydget, "a stand-alone viral-promotions tool" that you can add to your Facebook page and also encourage others to integrate with their own pages Update fans and clients with details about upcoming events, networking opportunities, sales and product launches.

Ether

Charge by the phone call when you list your Ether number on Facebook this ingenious app. By adding the button to your Facebook page, you can advertise your expertise and invite friends to call you for advice.

Jobster

Attract new talent from the Facebook pool by integrating a Jobster button with your profile. Your company can build its own job network, submit a listing in the Jobster network and more.

QOOP

QOOP helps you create promotional items like T-shirts and mugs from digital photos. Facebook users can use the QOOP app to share the items by letting friends view and purchase your marketing creations.

Oodle Classifieds

Organize your company's advertisements, job postings and classifieds on Facebook with the Oodle app.

How to write a Marketing Plan

Successful companies have marketing plans. Large companies have plans with hundreds of pages; small ones can get by with a half-dozen sheets.

The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, customers come and go.

Everybody in your company should see your plan, you shouldn't keep it to yourself.

Don't write a marketing plan without getting people involved. No matter what your size, getting feedback from all parts of your company: finance, manufacturing, personnel and supply is essential, as it takes all aspects of your company to make your marketing plan work.

The Marketing Plan - A marketing plan is basically an outline of a company's plan and strategy to market its goods or services.

Marketing is everything it takes to influence customers to buy what you are offering, it includes conception, advertising, sales, pricing, promotion, even distribution.

To know how to write a marketing plan, you must first understand the core vision of the company as well as the company's goals. Then, develop your marketing plan to communicate how the company is going to achieve those goals from the marketing standpoint. Here’s what it should include:

Company vision or executive overview - The overall vision of your company.

Market review - Details of the market environment, including competitors, market trends, future trends and barriers to entry.

Product and business review - Define your product or service, and how your particular business addresses it and attempts to offer it to the market. What makes your company different than the rest?

Strategies - Outline the four P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place (distribution), and Promotion. How are you going to define these aspects of marketing in your business and how will you approach them?

Action plan and implementation - Now how are you going to solve the four P’s? What are the exact plans and steps you are going to follow to make the four P's work for you?

Future Evaluation - Explain how you plan to evaluate and measure your marketing plan's success. What tools and measurements will you utilize?

Success

Success does not just happen. Success is the result of hard work. Nothing you would call a success is just handed to you. Something that is handed to you is called a gift. Success is something you earn. It is something you work for. Here are 9 keys to earning success.

Dissatisfaction

If you are satisfied with the way things are then you are settling for the good enough. Good enough is never good enough. The status quo is simply good enough. The status quo is the biggest obstacle you will have to over come in order to achieve anything worthwhile.

"Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."

Thomas Edison

Believe

You have to believe in yourself, but not just yourself. You must believe in your product and your company. If you can't believe in your product do something else. If you can't believe in your company either change it or work somewhere else.

"Believe you can and you're halfway there."

Theodore Roosevelt

Goals

Goals are like determining you destination on a journey. If you don't have goals you will still accomplish something, like watching television - you have accomplished wasting time. A good goal is specific, measurable and bound by time.

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Planning

Setting goals is important but with out a plan you really don't have a goal. A goal without a plan is only a dream. Develop a plan of how to attain your dream and then it will become a goal. A plan is nothing more than a set of intermediate goals which when aggregated fulfill the final goal. Goals should be long term, mid term and short term.

To create a plan ask yourself, “What will you have to accomplish before you will be able to reach your final goal.” Those are your intermediate goals. Break your intermediate goals down until you have small tightly define near term goals. These intermediate goals are your road map to success.

"Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan."

Tom Landry

Determination

Most people fail for one of two reasons. They have decided to fail by not even trying or they give up just before reaching their goal. Goals that are easy to attain are not very worthwhile goals. If you really want to accomplish something it will be difficult and require hard work. When you are struggling and about to give up remember, if it was easy, everyone would do it. It's the fact that it's not easy that it'll be called it a success.

"A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work." Colin Powell

Vision

Often having vision is equated to having a dream. But having vision is not the same as having an hallucination. A true vision is seeing things in their true essence, not necessarily in the form they have currently taken. It is not even seeing them as they can be. Vision is seeing things with the facade stripped away only then can you realise the true potential. Think big, dream big.

"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."

Helen Keller

Attitude

Maintaining a positive attitude is fuel to the engine of success. A poor attitude is like putting bad fuel in your car. It won't allow your engine to running properly. It get and maintain a positive attitude, hang around the right people. Create a supportive environment. The right home and work environment will encourage you. A supportive spouse, family members and co-workers will make the engine of success run smoothly. But, it is up to you to create the right environment.

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

Thomas Jefferson

Knowledge

You need to be constantly learning. If you aren't learning every day you can bet your competition is. New information is essential to success. Knowledge makes you valuable. The more valuable you become the more the marketplace will reward you.

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."

Peter Drucker

Give First

Become know as a resource, not a salesperson or business person. Be known as a resource for others. The more you solve problems for others the easier path you will have.

"You give before you get."

Napoleon Hill

Growing your business

Growing your business is a necessity for your business’s survival and your economic well-being. What can you do to get your business beyond the bare sustenance level? All of these ways of growing your business have been successfully used by other businesses and, with some planning and investment, will work for you.

You existing market

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of growing your business is getting new customers. But the customers you already have are your best bet for increasing your sales; it’s easier and more cost-effective to get people who are already buying from you to buy more than to find new customers and persuade them to buy from you.

Ask for referrals

One of the easiest way to get new customers is to ask your current customers for referrals. Doing a great job and just assuming that your customers are passing the word about your business isn’t going to do much to increase your customer base; you have to actively seek referrals. During or after every job or sale, ask your satisfied customer if he knows anyone else who would be interested in your products or services.

Innovate your product or service

Discovering and promoting new uses for your products or services is a great way to both get existing customers to buy more and attract new customers.

Extend your market reach

There are several ways of growing your business by making your product or service available to a new pool of customers. The most obvious is to open stores in new locations, such as opening a store or kiosk in a new town. New locations can also be virtual, such as a website with an online store. Another approach is to extend your reach through advertising. Once you’ve identified a new market, you might advertise in select media that targets that market.

Participate in trade shows

Trade shows can be a great way of growing your business. Because trade shows draw people who are already interested in the type of product or service you offer, they can powerfully improve your bottom line. The trick is to select the trade shows you participate in carefully, seeking the right match for your product or service.

Niche markets

A big fish in the small pond. That’s essentially how this strategy for growing your business works. A niche market is the pond; a narrowly defined group of customers. Think of them as a subset whose needs are not being met and concentrate on meeting those unmet needs.

Contain your costs

When we’re talking about growing your business, we’re actually talking about growing your business’s bottom line. And the difference between pre-tax and post-tax money can make this a very effective growth strategy. There are two main approaches to increasing profit; improving your turnover and cutting your costs.

Diversify your products or services

The key to successfully growing your business through diversification is similarity. Focus on the related needs of your already established market or on market segments with similar needs and characteristics.

Franchising

There are many success stories due to franchising. If you have a successful business and can develop a system that ensures that others can duplicate your success, franchising may be the fast track for growing your business.

Exporting

Expanding into international markets can also be a powerful boost to your business’s bottom line. Like franchising, this is a way of growing your business that requires quite a commitment of time and resources, but can be extremely rewarding.

How to promote your business online for free

Most businesses can benefit from free online promotion. If you have a limited budget and want drive traffic to your site here are a few simple ways you can promote your business online for free.

Register your site

Make sure you register your site with directories such as Google, Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org). All top SEO and SEM practitioners know that being listed in web directories is critical towards increased site traffic and overall success for your website.

Google Local

It integrates with Google Maps so, Google Local is a great way to get your business to show up on Google searches.

Yahoo Local

Yahoo local is a directory organized by category and geographic location. You can get a basic listing for free. People searching for your business or industry can find your listing.

Links from other sites

Search engine spiders move from site to site across the internet by following hyperlinks. The more high quality and high trafficked sites you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engine will think you are.

Meta tags

Meta tags are hidden HTML directions for Web browsers or search engines. They include important information such as the title of each page, relevant keywords describing site content, and the description of the site that shows up when a search engine returns a search.

Keywords

Consider likely words or phrases that users might type into search engines to find your site. Make sure your content contains those words or phrases, and include them in your title portions of your site and in relevant content.

YellowPages.com

Yellow Pages have a strong brand name and recognition, and are still used by many people today. They offer a few levels of listings, the most basic is free.

Hotfrog

A multi-list building site, active in several countries around the world and you can list your business for free.

LinkedIn

Join LinkedIn and get connected with people you know and make connections with people you don’t through introductions.

Free Classifieds

Placing classified ads does work, but this method of advertising will take some time before you start to see results. You need to continually submit your ad to these sites, so it stays near the top of the pages of these sites.

Writing articles

Writing articles in ezines, newsletters and blogs, is a great free method for sending traffic to your site.

Email Signatures

Add your URL to all of your outgoing email. Give it a mission statement or a strapline, it will help people understand what you do.