Holiday Facebook Marketing: 6 Tips to Success with Apps

The holiday shopping season is here and it’s time to plan!

Facebook apps for contests and deals can be a great way to generate buzz, increase sales, and drive more traffic to your store during the holiday season.  The big mistake to avoid is the “if you build it, they will come” sinkhole that so many fall into.

The promotion app, whether a photo contest, sweepstakes, coupon deal offer, or whatever, is only really about 1/3 of the full campaign needed to have a successful marketing event!  You need to plan and run a CAMPAIGN, not merely launch an app!

Why, because it takes good, focused communication to reach your ideal audience, entice them enough so they want to participate, and then once they have stopped by the key is to follow-up!  It’s about a full circle marketing campaign!

Let’s dive into 6 ways to make that full circle marketing campaign a successful reality for your Facebook App.

Pre-Promo Communication

It’s not just about sharing the contest is live!  To get the most people involved, you need to prepare the way for them by communicating what is coming.

If engaging content that invites user interaction (comments, Likes, Shares) occurs ahead of the promotion, this helps increase reach for the promotion. Why?  Since Facebook’s algorithm takes cues from past interactions, if you can get your fan base to interact ahead of time with your posts, then Facebook takes that as a signal of their interest in your content and can show more of your posts to those engaged users during the promotion, thus increasing the participation of your raving fans which can in turn help the overall turnout grow.

Multiple Post Updates During Promotion

It’s not about sharing that it’s live and sitting back to watch.  You need to have a sharing strategy for Facebook planned ahead of time.  This post sharing strategy needs to take into account the times when your fan base is most likely to be on Facebook.  This information can be found in your Facebook Page Insights under the Page tab.

Be sure to use the mobile friendly Smart URL.  This ensures that mobile users can access the promotion on Facebook since Facebook does not give native access to apps in their mobile app or mobile site.  The TabSite Smart URL acts as a buffer where we are the first contact point when the link is clicked and so we can determine if the user is on a mobile and then give them the mobile friendly version.  Since so many Facebook users are using the service on mobile, this is a critical key to be sure to do!  Post the Smart URL and create a series of posts to share about your promotion during the time the promotion is active!

Write a Blog Post News Release

Yes! Be sure to share a post with the details of the promotion.  Your site is your “home base” on the web and you want your home base to be clear in having the latest information on key happenings for your company.  This helps site visitors be informed and helps your promotion be found in web searches.

Use this as well as the launching pad for social sharing noted in the next item below!

Share on Social Media

Be sure to share the promotion on your other social channels and focus especially on the channels where your ideal audience also spends time.  If you audience spends time on Twitter, then be sure to share your promotion on Twitter with the smart URL link back to the promotion on Facebook.

Consider creating images just for certain social networks to showcase your promotion as well.  For example a taller image, like 900wx1200h works great on Pinterest, while on Instagram a square focused image can help showcase your promotion.  Don’t forget relevant #hashtags as well!

Use Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads allow you to target incredibly well!  You can narrow down by location, gender, age, or by interests and even title and places of employment. This powerful targeting enables you to reach your ideal audience that would have interest in your promotion and product/services.

For as little as $1 per day you can reach your audience with Facebook Ads and drive traffic clicks to your promotion.  Consider using the custom audience code on your tab to then retarget users after with Ads as well!

Promote to your Email List

Email remains one of the best and most effective ways to reach your audience.

Hopefully you work diligently at building an effective email list throughout the year.   This is not about just sending to customers but of having a list of “not-yet customers” that you have grown from offering free resources and helpful materials.  By emailing an alert out to this audience and even encouraging them to share with a friend you can increase the participation in your promotion.

More on email lead capture and nurture >

Conclusion:

Remember, it doesn’t end with the “promotion over” image appearing!

You need to have a follow-up plan in place!  You can re-target with Facebook Ads those that visited your Facebook promotion.  You can enter them into a email nurture campaign that helps those entered get to know you better and which ends with another offer.

It’s all about the full plan, not simply the app itself!