Holiday Primer: Facebook Offers

Allison Howen — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:30:00 GMT

There are 584 million-plus reasons why Facebook is a marketing hotspot. This number of active daily users makes the social network's everyday audience about three times larger than the Super Bowl’s.

To cater to the increasing number of marketers tuned into Facebook, the network offers a variety of robust advertising options, including the newest “Facebook Offers.” These Offers are essentially a form of daily deals, which are launched directly from a brand’s Facebook Page. While many businesses already leverage this ad format, there are many best practices that marketers should take into consideration in order to gain the best return on investment (ROI) from this type of promotion – especially during the holiday season.

• Create a deal that no one can refuse – When launching a Facebook Offer, marketers must create a deal that doesn’t hurt their brand's bottom line, but also entices consumers to redeem the promotion. For the best results, discounts should be at least 20 percent off regular prices, however, merchants will typically see better results with offers that include larger discounts or promotions for free items.

• Make offers easy to redeem – Before creating an offer, marketers must work with merchants to determine where the promotion will be valid – either online, in-stores or both. After this is done, marketers should take the necessary steps to make offers easy to redeem. For example, they can add a barcode for in-store offers or a redemption code for online offers. By adding these elements to offers, marketers make the redemption process hassle free for consumers and brick-and-mortar employees.

• Attract attention with the headline and image – Most people browse their newsfeeds multiple times a day, which is why the headline and image of an offer need to stand out from the rest of the day’s Facebook posts. Marketers should use a headline that prominently displays the offer's value so that customers know exactly what they are redeeming. Additionally, the Offer’s image should showcase the product or service being promoted, and shouldn’t be too complex for consumers to identify on a small screen since offers are also displayed on mobile devices.

• Make it clear and concise – Merchants must customize the terms and conditions for their offers, and it is best to keep this section as simple as possible. While it is important to clearly outline what products an offer can be used on, a complex or long terms-and-conditions statement may end up turning customers away from the promotion.

• Set an expiration date – While limited-time offers create a sense of urgency among consumers, it is important for merchants to allow their offers to be valid for at least a few days. In fact, the longer an offer is valid for, the more free word-of-mouth advertising it receives through the newsfeed.

• Determine a budget and start promoting – The amount that is paid to launch a Facebook Offer is based on the number of people that the offer will reach, which is why it is important to set a budget before creating an offer. Furthermore, marketers should share their existing offers instead of creating new offers, so they can easily keep track of the offer’s analytics. Lastly, merchants should promote their offers by pinning them to the top of their Facebook Page.

Launching a Facebook Offer is a quick and easy way for merchants to attract consumers both online and in-stores, especially during the holiday season. While the offer may only reach a segment of your Facebook fans, the interactions that fans have with the offer are shared onto those users newsfeeds. This means that even though the initial reach of an offer may not be huge, the word-of-mouth advertising of the offer through the newsfeed may result in a much larger audience and new customer opportunities.

However, it is important to note that testing different variations of offers will provide marketers with information that can help to optimize future campaigns. Thus, marketers should try a few different discount options, image alternatives and versions of headline text before deciding what works best.

Facebook Offers' Test Over, Merchants to Pay

Michael Garrity — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:35:00 GMT

Looks like it’s time for Facebook to finally try to make itself even more profitable.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced the test launch of Facebook Offers, a service that allows businesses to send promotions directly to users via their news feeds. In return, fans can redeem special vouchers for discounts. But that test period is coming to an end, and now all Facebook Pages, with more than 400 fans, can send discounts and promotions through their networks. (There is an exception for pages operated out of Japan, but they will be eligible next week.)

However, while users can still claim these promotions for free, it will now cost merchants a minimum of five dollars to run an Offer on a related ad product and promote it to a specifically targeted audience. In addition, they can now include bar codes and unique promotional numbers in their Offers, making it easier to track and claim at in-store checkouts or on third-party sites.

Since the service's inception, Facebook has worked with a group of local business pages to test and optimize Facebook Offers, allowing merchants to share their offers with their fans free of charge. Not only did this help extend a merchant’s reach through Facebook’s ad products, but also every time a user claimed an Offer, it would then appear in his/her news feed and appear organically to their friends.

With Facebook Offers, local merchants are granted another opportunity to advertise their deals and promotions online beyond just Groupon, Foursquare and Google Offers, and unlike those avenues, Facebook Offers comes complete with access to the social network’s 900 million-plus users.

Thus far, Facebook seems optimistic about the service's potential, despite having shut down its similar predecessor, Facebook Deals. The optimism stems largely from Offers' ability to provide an individually targeted approach to sharing promotions on the social network.

Now, we’ll just have to sit back and see how many merchants will open their wallets to promote their deals on the social media site.

'Net Features : facebook offers

Holiday Primer: Facebook Offers

Facebook Offers' Test Over, Merchants to Pay