3 Ways to Promote with Facebook (Without Sounding Like A Salesperson)

Nobody likes being sold to. And when you become a fan of a page on Facebook it’s no different. The last thing you want is a page that only posts “We’ve got a great deal! Call now! ORDER NOW PLEEEAASE!” over and over. I mean when you click the LIKE button it’s an unspoken agreement that the page won’t bombard your homepage with trash.

But, obviously as a marketer you want to get value out of your Facebook page. So how can you use it for promotion without sounding like an annoying salesperson? Well you’re in luck! We’ve got 3 tried and true ways to use Facebook for promotion, ranging from I’ve got only got 5 minutes to set something up to I better have a long term plan if I’m going to do this right.

1. Facebook Offers
Facebook offers are probably the simplest, least time consuming, and most convenient way to create a deal or discount for your Facebook fans. For example, if you’re the owner of a restaurant and want to bring customers in on slow days, you could create a “1/2 off a Medium Pizza this Thursday”.

Customers can easily claim the Offer in the newsfeed or on your Facebook page. When your fan clicks to claim the offer, a message is automatically sent to the email address hooked up to your Facebook account. From there they can simply show the email on their phone to the business or print it off from their computer.

We’ve written about how cool Facebook Offer were in the past and you can read about how one small business was able to utilize Offers.

2. Contest
If you want to think a little bit more long-term, a Facebook Contest could be a great solution for spreading word about your brand or promoting a new product. A contest on Facebook gives your fans the chance to win a big prize.

Now I’m a bit partial, but in my position as Marketing & Social Media Strategist, I deal quite frequently with creating contests for clients and the reason I like them so much is... because they work.

When you give the chance to win something of great value, something that your customers/fans want and are passionate about, they become much more willing to click LIKE for your page and spread the word about your company for you.

Just look at the results that the Fly Free With RST Facebook contest got. In an 8 week period, LIKES of the Rochester International Airport’s Facbook page increased 138%!

3. Giveaway
Similar to a contest, a giveaway is a great way to increase exposure of your company on Facebook. The important difference of giveaways from contests is that everyone that participates gets something rather than one or two people winning a big prize.

When running a Facebook contest, once the winner is announced, you’ll almost always get a handful of disappointed people that will click unlike out of protest for not choosing them as the prize winner.

Since Facebook’s promotion rules require that you collect information with an online form in a custom tab, you are able to collect email addresses and have an alternative route to market to your giveaway entrants.

Just check out the story of how the Kinky Liquor giveaway got an insane amount of new fans.

Keep in mind that promotion should be just 1 part of your social media strategy. Much more import is sharing consistent and relevant content for your fans. Once that person decides to click the LIKE button for your page, make sure that you don't post like the annoying salesperson.

P.S. Got a minute? We’d love to hear what topics you’d like covered in the newsletter. Take the quick survey