Savvy brands and retailers know that social media, and particularly Facebook, are key locations for businesses to actively engage potential and current customers.

Business has shifted. Social is here to stay.  No longer is simply “Getting to the first page in Google” the primary goal.  Now a key objective is that marketers must reach out via social media, and connect with their audience.

With Facebook being a key location to engage your community, businesses need to be asking themselves questions like this:

What are we doing on Facebook to engage our audience and invite consumers into our social community?

One method to extend your reach and invite others to become of a fan of your Facebook Page is to offer a promotion.  A promotion can be a coupon, a deal offer, a sweepstakes, or a contest.

Promotions offer a fun way to reach more users and to begin the process of connecting with a larger audience that can become customers and loyal fans. 

Here are 5 benefits of using a 3rd Party App to run your Facebook Promotion

1. Ensures Facebook Promotion Compliance

Facebook has a promotion policy that must be followed.  

If this is ignored, pages leave themselves open to possibly being shutdown by Facebook.  Pages cannot simply run a promotion in the news feed telling fans to comment on a post and a winner will be chosen. See Breaking Facebook’s Rules for examples of what NOT to do.

Facebook outlines a number of details including specifically that to comply, a page must use and host the Facebook page contest on a third-party App.  TabSite offers a solution to make promotions on Facebook fully Facebook policy compliant. We call them Engagement Apps.  

Apps like TabSite can host and use the Facebook mechanisms such as “Share with a Friend” as part of the deal access process because this is done on the app.  3rd Party Apps offer peace of mind!

2. Apps Add Viral Tools for Greater Reach

Apps like TabSite’s Sweepstakes Plus for Facebook Pages offer Page Managers a powerful way to employ Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.  Basically, the tool incentivize’s fans with ability to add more entries to their name by sharing the offer with their friends.  So friends share with friends, and more people connect to your Facebook Page!

Items like sharing with a friend, pinning on Pinterest, or adding a image with a #hashtag on Instagram are all examples of requiring something of the entrant that spreads the word further and then rewarding them with a offer, entry, or more entries for doing so.  The power is that with the right incentive, fans are motivated to get the word out!

See Pet Store Testimony of Facebook Community Engagement Growth.

3. Like Gating option Grows Fan Base

The technique of gating a tab content or entry until a fan “Likes” the page is alive and well.  Like Gating (or fan gating) is the mechanism of requiring visitors to “Like” the fan page and then the content/form to enter is revealed to them.

Like Gates are accepted and common, and the value to a Page is the ability to grow one’s community.  Of course, after the Like the new fan needs to be further nurtured to become a active part of the community and ultimately a customer of the brand.

Third Party Apps offer features such as Like Gating so that any business can create a tab with a Like Gate in a simple and easy method without needing to know how to code at all.

See Case Study from Photographer Photo Contest.

4. Lots of Features – No Development and Programming Costs

Another key advantage for small and medium sized businesses is the fact that third party apps like TabSite make it easy and affordable to run a powerful Facebook marketing promotion.  Using a good 3rd party app means that anyone from the owner to the marketing department can setup and deploy the contest.  No web developer and advanced programming is needed.

users do not need to know a line of HTML coding to setup and deploy a Photo Contest on Facebook for instance.  For as little as $19 a company can setup and run a full-featured, engaging contest on Facebook.

5. Grow your Email Marketing List

Email marketing is still alive and well!  Smart marketers know that it takes multiple points of contact with a company before most consumers are ready to make a purchase.  If a company runs a contest on their Facebook page and uses a integrated tool to allow the entrant to opt-in to the email list of the company, this provides a ongoing means for the company to reach out to the person.

The concept is simple, offer a deal that a user wants to get, then also offer as part of that the ability to join the email list.

 

TabSite is a third-party app that conducts all the promotion features on a tab and therefore is a safe and secure platform to use in running Facebook contests on a page.

A Facebook promotion can be an important tool for building community and exposure. Any time is a good time to launch one, but every day you delay it is a missed chance to excite and grow your audience.