How to Promote Your Online Business with Facebook Apps

Many businesses are yet to fully leverage Facebook's potential as a marketing tool. Nowadays almost everybody has an account on Facebook and most of these folks log into their account at least once a day. That means any business that has a presence on Facebook gets an opportunity to reach potential customers on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, many businesses still haven’t launched an effective social media campaign. If you feel that your brand is yet to take advantage of the massive popularity of Facebook, the first thing you need to do is to launch a fan page for your business. The next step is to get people to like your pages. Businesses can consider offering discounts or special prizes to users who like their Facebook page. Post regular status updates. Your updates must be engaging enough for people to interact with them.  So for example, if you run a restaurant, you can post updates featuring the day's menus or specials. Of course, these are the most basic things. Building a commendable presence on Facebook takes a great deal of time and effort. Fortunately for us, plenty of apps are now available to make this job easier.

Why do you need Facebook apps?

Facebook apps can be a great way to create engagement with your fans. Apps can be used to promote online sales, incentives, competitions, and more. Since they create engaging content, they make sure that your users interact with your brand.

Small businesses don't have to create their own apps. Instead, they can choose some of the available apps. A successful app can go a long way in establishing and strengthening your social media presence. While selecting apps for your business, choose the ones that are simple, quick, and user-friendly.

Here is a list of some Facebook apps that you can use to promote your business:

If you run a restaurant, you should use Heyo. This Facebook app comes with mobile widgets that allow your customers to redeem gift coupons on their mobile phones.

North Social is another company that builds apps for Facebook. It offers apps for mobile promotions, contests, coupons, sweepstakes, and more. These apps allow businesses to launch limited-time promotions almost every day.

Woobox is another app popular with local retailers. It allows small stores to create and launch contests. The most popular feature of this app is its photo contest feature which allows users to upload their own photos and let other users vote the best. A clothing store can take advantage of this feature by encouraging its fans to post photos wearing their latest clothes for a discount or a prize.

If you offer a professional service, you can use an app like FaceItPages to improve your social media presence. This app creates ads that will only show up to users who might need a service like that.

Whatever may be your business needs, there are plenty of Facebook apps to make your job easier. Since the number of people who interact with your Facebook page is far more important than the number of people who like it, creating customer engagement should be your goal and apps make it possible.

Online Marketing Trends in 2014

No one can deny the profound impact of the Internet on marketing due to the way it facilitates information sharing. We find that today, more businesses prefer publishing their own original content instead of embedding their ads within the content of others. This offers additional benefits like audience growth and product branding.

Looking at these trends, here’s what we think the online marketing scenario in 2014 will be.

1. Content Marketing Will Rule

 

Companies can establish authority and gain consumer trust by regularly creating useful, relevant content using various channels. This allows them to build rapport with demographics and develop a loyal following.

Businesses can use channels like social media, eNewletters and articles on company websites to build their reputations. This trend implies that traditional marketing techniques like radio and television ads are losing their efficacy. It appears more feasible to focus on inbound marketing by creating engaging and valuable content.

2. More Diversity for Social Media Marketing

Previously there weren’t too many social media platforms that businesses could use for marketing campaigns. Today, new sites are coming up all the time and some are quite popular. These offer a plethora of additional options for producing great content using a variety of media.

As a result, businesses are branching out and experimenting with multiple platforms in an attempt to reach out to more customers. Diversification often proves fruitful because it helps build brand equity.

3. Image-Rich Content Will Win

Since consumers almost drown in the deluge of advertisements, they will not look at stuff that’s difficult to digest. The common characteristic of successful blog posts is the strategic placement of pictures to emphasize points. We doubt conventional textual content will ever get completely replaced. But it’s quite clear that the incorporation of images can add value to a marketing campaign.

4. More Will Not Be Better

Today, consumer preference is shifting towards simple marketing messages instead of deeper ones. Users prefer an uncluttered, clean and aesthetically minimal style.

Now innovative marketers are moving away from ads that shout “look at me”. They know that consumers do not like to be overwhelmed by the hype and are toning down their campaigns.

Hyper-connectivity and highly-digitized lives offer too many flashy and complicated sensory inputs and consumers are tired of this. Because of this, the coming year is likely to see simpler marketing strategies do better. Successful strategies will be those that promote products that simplify consumer lives and even just improve customer experience.

5. Content for Mobiles Will Be Mandatory

With the growing usage of tablets and smartphones, companies must create mobile-friendly content. This might involve creating alternate mobile versions of websites or using responsive web designs to give mobile users a positive experience. Without this, customers may move towards competitors who offer this convenience and businesses can face dire consequences.

6. Others

We feel that the effectiveness of ad retargeting is likely to grow. Once users leave a site, the products they saw will be shown again in the ads on different websites. Psychological studies have shown that repeated exposure to brand logos and names creates trust and familiarity.

We also think that social signals and SEO will get further intertwined. Since search engines strive to provide relevant and high quality content, they would give importance to the number of times an article, blog post, or product page is shared.

 

10 Effective Ways to Generate Leads

You can't build a successful online business without leads. If there are no leads, how are you going to make any sales?

 

Here are 10 cost effective ways to create leads. However, before you start generating leads, you should know the basic rules.

Rule 1: Create value

If you are really serious about your business, you should create a great value machine. This could be your blog, your YouTube channel, or something else where you post content on a regular basis. It is not easy, but it is the most effective way to create a loyal following.

Write a 100% useful post every day. This strategy takes a while to generate results, but it is highly effective.

Rule 2: Attract leads that will turn into buyers

If you are building an email list, your objective should be attracting buyers, not leads.  There is no point in building a list of freebie seekers. So generate leads that will ultimately turn into buyers.

Building a list full of people who want free stuff is relatively easy, but that is hardly worth your time.

Rule 3: Encourage people to act fast and don't wait until you have built a relationship

Building a relationship with your potential buyers is good, but this might take a while. If you can't wait that long, encourage people to buy faster.  If you are in business for selling, make no excuses about it. Just sell.

So, here are the most effective ways for generating leads:

1. Post viral videos

Create a video that has the potential to go viral and post it your own blog and YouTube. If you post it on your blog, it may generate lots of incoming links. You can promote the video by buying PPC adverts on Facebook. Make sure that your video is entertaining because that is what people like.

2. Be active on social media

It is not exactly clear whether social media is good at generating sales, but when it comes to creating awareness, it is quite effective. Encourage your leads to spread the word for you. Put a Facebook 'Share' button on your 'thank-you page'.

3. Start selling right away

Put an offer in front of your leads. You will get to know how many of them are willing to buy.

4. Don't ignore the easy stuff

Don't overlook cheap and free ways to generate leads. For example, you can include your offer in the email signature.

5. Give away free stuff but make it useful

It is no longer possible to attract people by offering them free junk. This strategy used to work in the past, but now nobody will subscribe to your list just because they will get some free stuff.

So, if you are giving away free stuff, make sure that it is useful.

6. Promote your products as if they were a rare commodity

Everybody wants things they cannot have easily. So when you promote your products, present them as something they can't have easily. If you keep your funnel open all the time, people will have no reason to buy today and not four or five years later.

7. Think big

Many lead generation techniques do not produce the desired results. So instead of putting all your time and money on one lead generation campaign, launch ten. Try every trick in the book. Write good sales copies, great articles, and press releases. Launch banner and PPC ads. If you want to win, you should give yourself plenty of chances to win.

8. Fully leverage all opportunities

Whenever you find an opportunity, think about creative ways to fully leverage it.

9. Link bait

Link bait still works and you don't have to publish sensational or scandalous stories to encourage people to link to you. Instead, publish content that is truly valuable.

10. Don't forget the basics

Success will be yours if you execute the basics well. There are three steps to generating leads. You must have a great offer. You must make it visible to the right people. You should give them a reason to act now.