10 reasons your business should get into Facebook Deals

Don’t dismiss the Facebook Deals announcement today as one for just the advertisers and social media wonks. This is one for anyone who sells anything: whether it’s jeans, gig tickets or coffee. If you’ve got a brand and it has some kind of physical location, you can do something with this. And Facebook deals can be useful for the little business as well as the multinationals like Starbucks.

Facebook wants to help you connect with your customer and you should let them. This is going to be useful for your business, so make your boss look at it.

Using Facebook Places on the mobile app for iPhone and Android, customers will be able to access online vouchers and get discounts and extra experiences by “checking in” to your shop.

Facebook Deals Europe has launched with 12 brands including Yo Sushi and Alton Towers but many more will be added. Here’s why you should be one of them.

10 Reasons to use Facebook Deals

1) Deals bring customers in: get more customers to see your deals and you’ll get more customers coming in to get your deals.

2) Location-based deals bring nearby customers in – and nearby customers are more valuable than ones 30 miles away, because they are more likely to walk into your shop.

3) The deals don’t even have to cost you anything – you can offer pretty much anything as a Facebook deal: experiences for example – backstage tours, the autograph of a singer, a high-five from the bar staff… The Facebook reps encouraged businesses to get creative about it.

4) Customers you get on Facebook also become advertisers for you – when they check into your store, a notification goes to their profile page and all their friends see it.

5) People pay more attention to recommendations from their friends than to normal adverts. This isn’t just advertising for you – this is high-value advertising for you.

6) It’s all free. Facebook don’t charge or make any money from this so it’s free for businesses to use. Sure we don’t know how long it will continue to be free – but you should get into it while it still is.

7) It’s been pretty successful in the US – the Facebook VP said that 50% of businesses who had put an offer up returned to put a second one up.

8) You get information about your customers – not much. But you can start to build up a picture of the genders and ages of the people who visit your store and tally it with things like what deals they choose and what times they come in. It works like “Insights” the tool on Facebook pages for admins.
(NB: individual customers can set their privacy settings differently.)

9) If you offer customers an “experience” – say a VIP backstage pass, or the opportunity to try the chef’s hat on – or whatever it is – then the likelihood is that the customer will do more than check-in. They may be more likely to post a photo and write something about it as well. That creates a more interesting package – something that other people on Facebook are more likely to engage with. You’ll start to build up “a conversation around your brand”, as the Facebook reps love to say.

10) Last reason? This is Facebook. Everything they do is huge. The majority of your customers are going to be on here. Okay so only a minority will have smartphones with the app – but that percentage is only going to grow. You should try this out.