What Facebook’s new ‘Likes’ and ‘Interests’ Means for Marketers

AnnieInfinite — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:50:31 +0000

Unless your head is stuck in the sand you will have noticed that Facebook no longers allows you to ‘Fan’ a Page, but rather to ‘Like’ a page and while most people are trying to get their head around this new change and figure out what it means I can tell you one thing, it means that marketers are applauding.

Why, I hear you ask?

First of all go take another look at the ‘Info’ tab on your profile, if you’re like many FBer’s you hardly ever look at your own ‘Info’ tab, you will see that now all the information you filled out on that page concerning your interests both business and personal have been attached to new pages with their own Thumbnails, some of these thumbnails have no real pages – yet.

What this means for marketers is that you can now target your marketing according to all this new information which is being indexed and geo – tagged via Google!

Let me run that by you again – everything that you fill out on your Info tab is now not only indexable and targetable it is being used by Facebook to do just that! That’s why we do not ‘Fan’ pages any more, this is why we now like Pages – because we can now target those ‘likes and interests’ and market directly to the people who have clicked on them.

No longer are fans only targetable by their own pages, they are targetable via their own profiles and the ‘likes and interests’ that are catalogued on their profiles as well. Now every time you click you ‘LIKE’ something: e.g. a movie, book, music, a news story or an FB Page – this data is added to the general social search engine that is Facebook and this updates your permanent Facebook profile at the same time.

Now I want to make it clear Facebook does not expose your data to everyone – only to those people you’ve have given permission to as a friend will actually see your profile as always, but the collated data us now being used by Facebook Advertising to target marketing more specifically to those who have shown an interest via the ‘likes and interests’ including FB Pages on their profile.

This makes FaceBook Advertising rival Google and perhaps be even more influencial, FB are not relying on keywords but rather YOUR likes and interests, now that’s a step forward in the evolution of online marketing!!

For more information check out this Mashable post: http://mashable.com/2010/04/19/facebook-pages

and this one is a video from Mark Zuckerberg himself on Facebook Changes to expect: http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/zuckerberg-video/

Facebook’s New Ad Targeting Knows What You Read (hubspot.com)
Facebook Ads Will Use Your Web History (mashable.com)
What might Facebook’s new Link to Profiles and Pages mean for Bloggers? (socialmediatoday.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Social network, Target market

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What’s Your UBD?

AnnieInfinite — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:40:03 +0000

First of all I hear you ask, “What’s a UBD?”

Your UBD is your Unique Business Differentiator and it is the most important thing you can know about your business before marketing it. It is what makes your brand, your business stand out in the crowd.

This is what you will use to establish your brand amongst your competition, it is what will draw your clients and customers to you in preference to other brands, it is how you brand yourself, it belongs in all of your marketing and will be used daily by you, your marketing, and your employees.

So how does a business find, create and establish their UBD?

It all begins with your Vision and Mission statements which are a list of values, goals and outcomes you create for your business. Your vision and mission statements help to keep motivation high, give your business purpose and move you and your business from A to B, effecting growth on a regular basis according to your goals and outcomes.

From these statements you will gain and insight into who your business is, who your target market is, and how to market your business. The next step is to sit down and list your businesses main benefits to your customers and what is different or unique about it.

Questions to ask yourself at this stage:

Who is my main target market?
What is different about my business?
What am I proud of offering?
What am I passionate about?
What core values are most important to me in relation to my business?
What do my current customers/clients say about my business?
What benefits of my business are already important to my prospective and current clients/customers? (This might mean some research on your part)
What are people saying about the biggest or most well-known brands in the same business? (researching what other brands are saying around their own businesses can give you an insight into current trends)
What are the most universal needs of people searching for your niche?

Now create a new list, of words I want associated with my business.

The next step is refinement, take your lists and begin a list of words, values and answers you gave to the questions and prioritise them. Which ones are the most important to you, which ones are already associated with your business by your customers/clients.

Continue to refine this list until you have between 3 and 5 of the most important to you and your customers/clients remembering that your customers and prospects are even more important than you when it comes to your marketing, these are your business’s UBD’s. Once you have this list try coming up with a few different slogans or phrases that encapsulate these UBD’s and these can be your very first branding messages.

Great Job! Now you’re thinking like a marketer!

The Zen Bull

More articles to help you establish your UBD:

http://www.asparker.com/ppts1004.html

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p236158609_Finding-out-what-makes-your-business-unique.html

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brand, Business, Marketing and Advertising, Small business, Target market

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