It’s great to have a large number of facebook “likes” or “fans.” Of course it feels good when you have lots of fans and it seems like there’s a big interest in your company. But are all of those “likes” contributing to your bottom line? That’s actually a tricky question because first you have to be able to tell whether those people are being converted to paying customers, and secondly, how to do it effectively. While not the subject of this article, RPM can also help you determine the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

We can think of a successful Facebook campaign as a series of 4 actions. Keep in mind that these steps are cyclical. When you finish up with the follow-up phase, you’ll cycle right back to the core phase and start again.

These are the 4 phases:
Core Phase
Build-up Phase
Promotion Phase
Follow-up Phase

Core Phase:
This is the initial part of your advertising campaign and the time when you’ll be publishing most intensively. Here you’ll want to really talk about the fundamentals of your company or business. This is the time to develop a public persona so to speak. You should be making very regular posts so that you’re constantly popping up in news feeds and building a solid base of fans. Equally important as publishing good material is ENGAGING with people on your page. If they feel you’re just a faceless entity they won’t stick around for long. The faster you can respond to comments the more people you’ll keep coming back. You’ll also want to think a lot about the demographic you’re trying to reach. How often you post, what time of day, length of post, medium (photo, video, text, etc.) all play a very important role in reaching the right people.

Build-up Phase:
The build-up phase is exactly that; the time you’ll build anticipation and excitement over what’s to come. You may consider running a contest, paid promotions, and getting any affiliates on board. Page maintenance is still a big priority so you should still be posting core content while continuing to add photos, videos, and links.

Promotion Phase:
Now we’re ready to sell something. How you decide to do this can depend a lot on what type of business you run. However there are some really common tactics that consistently get results. These can include a giveaway, early bird specials, sales building up to a cut-off date, or any type of special you can come up with.

Follow-up Phase:
There are really two purposes to this stage which are pulling in last minute sales/leads, and gradually returning to your core phase. This would be a great time to seek testimonials for your business. Consider also, that you can reach back to the promotion phase with a, “Still time to..” special offer.

The timeline for this type of campaign may be different in each case but it wouldn’t be unusual for it to run up to a year in length before returning to the core phase. It can be a really daunting task to keep conceptualize, design, execute, and maintain this type of marketing strategy. That’s why RPM is here to help you. Visit us at www.rpmmn.com if you’d like to start taking advantage of Facebook today!