Facebook likepage as a platform for marketing a product

The buying impulse is far stronger for things you want than things you need. Vegetables Vs McDonalds, socks Vs new runners.

When you're selling things that people need you try to pitch it to their want emotions as an edge over the competition. Cough mixs used to taste like poison now they all compete on taste which is more akin to sweets. Your objective is to make something more desirable using an edge of some sort. Color, taste, feel, status etc

If you want to be an internet merchant or use the net as an additional channel then you need to understand what motivates your customer and how customers engage with this medium. Without this understanding all marketing and promotion is a shot in the dark and consequently leads to poor performance and inevitable a closing of the business. 

Two things kill a business, under capitalisation and immature marketing strategy. You can have all the money in the world but a poor marketing strategy will sink you and a good marketing strategy with insufficient capital to execute is equally useless.

Your first priority is to build a functional website with a high quality purchasing experience. Once completed your next priority is SEO – Search engine optimisation. Your next priority is SEO and the next is SEO and the next SEO.

You die without SEO.. simple. Without it you simply don't exist. Even with good SEO you will have to work hard and pay to keep your ranking near the top. If you're not on the first page of a search you literally don't exist.

Some light reading

Are you giving your customers what they really, really want?

Online Shopping – Consumer Habits

Australian online shopping market and digital insights

An executive overview July 2012

Market Research: Women's Online Shopping Habits At The Workplace And Beyond

Literally dozens of White Papers here net commerce

White Papers

SEO info – covers the basics 

http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tutorial/

Social media is at the bottom of your ToDo list..

Facebook is only another channel to expand your brand, but a question you should ask your self is this?

if you use Facebook your self how many times have you purchased a product or look into a product that you have seen on face book ?

Alternative healthy product,? Maybe spend some time promoting your product at a market stall  or  even at a trade show that is related to your industry 

focus on your target market !!!

There is a great site called flying solo have a look on google

Derek you have one of the more professionally put together net presence out there. Certainly in the top 10%. It is something I would expect from a professionally run entity such as yours. Anything less would suggest questionable skills and knowledge.

The problem from a marketing point of view is they can be seen as somewhat pristine and sterile. This is where blogs and FB have their uses. If customers like what they see the next stage in CRM is to bring the customer from arms length to within arms length and start to make them feel like one of the gang. What I call informalising the relationship. Trying to do both in one place is literally impossible and can confuse the message.

You can think of it like this; the website is your official office where formal and initial meetings take place. FB is like the coffee shop down the road and blogs are informative get togethers at the local pub. You have to remember that FB is a social (networking) medium not really an advertising medium.

The effective way to use FB is to first build content then work at interconnecting with like FB/bloggers in your area of business. The networking and interlinking is where the leverage takes place. Without it your just another flyer on a lamp post somewhere.

While I'm here your approach to blogging needs a rethink. Blogs are thrown on websites now as a matter of course but virtually as an after thought. I would suggest moving yours offsite with a complete new URL. Revamp the look away from sterile and liven it up with a bit of informality, personal opinion etc. Leave the existing page as Media, news release, white papers etc.

I would look at integrating with other bloggers in your space but with differing skill sets (legal, brokerage, planning, architectural, engineering etc) and creating a MAB (multi author blog).

You're now starting to build a network of your own which leverages your primary content/message with greater exposure and inherent SEO multipliers as well (backlinking etc)

The basic message is to make each component, page, website etc, work together rather than treat them as independent pieces that largely function in isolation, are disjointed in some way or are compiled in such a way as to detract from the whole.

Build your presence so that it's seamless and holistic.

it really comes do to the product you will be pushing. one of the main features people use facebook is to share photos so if you build a marketing strategy around photography and get everyone to come to your page to get the photo would be good.

Why FacePlant ads are useless…

Most Facebook “Likes” Are Fake