Facebook now lets you “offer” your fans! | SocialExcerpts

Facebook now lets you “offer” your fans! Sep 20

Facebook now lets you “offer” your fans!

Taking a step ahead into the future of marketing, Facebook now introduces “Offers” for brands. This is a huge add-on to the Facebook user experience, merging the real world with that of the virtual one. This is going to change the advertising world altogether. People might become fans of the Facebook page of a brand only just to gain access to the lucrative offers. And that’s the brand’s gain alright. More customers joining the page ideally means more brand awareness, more engagement, more offline sales, etc.

On February 2012, Facebook announced having “offer” feature for the pages, which would give  companies an easy path to share their deals with their fans on Facebook. Few premium brands and advertisers were given the opportunity to test this product early, but most business had to wait till Facebook rolls it out at a larger scale. On May 2012, Facebook announced the roll out of this Free Feature (1st time only) for local business in US and September, 2012, it is rolled out in India.

Whether it’s going to be a bane or boon, is on time to decide. But, we do know for now, that brands will be able to share deals with fans, add value, increase brand awareness and then, consequently pile on revenue. What a brand must decide is – the type of offer they want to run, anticipate its appeal, give it a “kick-ass” headline and they are ready!

Here’s “how to”:

There are three different kinds of offers available on Facebook:

• In Store Only: Consumers can take a print out of the email offer or just show it on their smartphones and show it to the staff at your business (store).
• In Store and Online: Consumers can redeem this offer physically at your business (store) or at your website.
• Online Only: Fans can redeem this offer by visiting your website or any other online contact point.

To create an offer:

1. Go to your Page.
2. From the sharing tool at the top of your Page’s timeline, click Offer, Event + and then click Offer.
3. Click the kind of offer you want to make: In Store Only, In Store & Online or Online Only.
4. If your offer can be redeemed online, type the complete web address where people can redeem it and add an optional redemption code for people to enter. Then click Next.
5. Type a strong headline for your offer. For example, “Buy one shirt, get another one free.”
6. Upload a photo for your offer that will stand out in thumbnail size.
7. You can choose to limit the number of claims by clicking Unlimited and selecting a number from the dropdown.
8. Set an expiration date by clicking today’s date and clicking a different day in the future.
9. Add terms and conditions of your offer by clicking Terms.
10. For in-store offers, add an optional barcode to scan at your business.
11. Click Preview to review what your offer will look like. We’ll also send you an email with a preview of what the offer email will look like when people claim it.
12. Click Back to make changes.
13. When you’re happy with the preview, click Set Budget.
14. Choose the amount you want to spend to promote your offer. Notice that the estimated reach increases with bigger budgets.
15. Click Share.

Offers are only available on Pages with at least 400 likes.

For guidelines, click here.

Facebook offered you this opportunity. What are you planning to offer your customers?
Let us know !