Taking Advantage Of Facebook Offers

We’ve talked at length about the importance of engaging your Facebook community beyond simply acquiring fans. Page Post ads are a great way to encourage this interaction. If you’re a retailer, consider Facebook Offers, a relatively new type of Page Post that allows brand pages to create coupons and share them exclusively on Facebook.

Offers can be beneficial to businesses both on and off Facebook. On Facebook, you can spread the word about your product or service to your fans, as well as to their friends. At the same time, you’re driving traffic off Facebook to your store or website and getting Facebook users to become actual consumers of your product. It’s a great way to see in real-time what your Facebook presence is worth.

What Is An Offer?

A Facebook Offer is a coupon created and shared exclusively on Facebook. Admins can create these Offers on their Page, and Facebook users can then claim the Offer to use at a business via an email confirmation.

Offer ads act like Page Posts, in that they live on the Page’s Facebook wall and can be promoted via Page Post Ads. When customers claim your Offer, stories about this redemption will appear in the desktop and mobile Newsfeed. You can also pay  to promote the story to even further increase its reach and potential for claims.

Offers allow business owners to reach and engage with potential customers in the hopes that the coupon will encourage them to become actual customers.

How To Create An Offer

Offers are available to most Pages; simply visit the Content Creator box and select Offer. You can choose whether your offer is claimable in store, online, or both, and you can set an image, headline, redemption code, terms and conditions, expiration date, and any targeting restrictions.

As always, eye-catching images and engaging text will advance the success of your Offer. Be very clear about what the Offer is: calling out dollar amounts or percentage off will do well. Make your expiration date and claim numbers reasonable, and the means of claiming, in-store or online, easy.

If you’re planning to run your Offer for an extended period of time, consider periodic creative refreshes to keep the post fresh. Try a new image or copy and see if those changes have a significant effect on the number of Offer claims.

Once you’ve set all the parameters for the Offer, you can select your method of promotion. Facebook has two options: to set a simple lifetime budget and let Facebook do all the work, or to promote later using another ads tool. The first method is more than sufficient for a first time poster who just wants to get the Offer seen by a number of people.

However, if you’re interested in targeting your offer to a specific group, or evaluating performance of different demographics or keywords, you’ll want to promote later. This will allow you to create your own customized ads for the Offer, being as specific as you see fit.

How To Promote An Offer Via Ads

Once you’ve chosen to “promote later,” your Offer will remain un-posted on the page until you’ve created the first ad. This gives you the opportunity to design your ad strategy before the Offer has been claimed.

Promoting the Offer means you’ll be able to get your offer out to more potential customers. You can also learn a great deal about whom those customers are. Although (as with all FB ad types), you won’t be able to see which individuals claimed your offer, you’ll be able to see what types of people claimed it, based on the targeting you’ve set up.

As we said, Offer ads function in the same way as Page Posts. The content of the ad is pulled directly from the Offer (image and text), and you can run both standard ads and Sponsored Stories. The Offer ad will also highlight the number of people who have claimed the Offer.

The aspect advertisers have control over is targeting, choosing who will see the ad. As always, think about the type of Facebook user who will be interested in your Offer and what his or her interests might be. Fans are the most obvious choice, having previously expressed an interest in your brand or product. Take advantage of these users by targeting them heavily.

Geographic targeting is often important, as well. If the Offer is only claimable in stores, you’ll want to limit the ads to those areas that could feasibly use it. If the Offer is for a clothing or jewelry store, consider running your ads toward females and retail-specific keywords. An Offer for a food product would benefit from targeting fans of other similar restaurants or cuisines. You’ll learn only as much as you’re willing to put into it, so make sure to test a lot.

Post-Offer

Once the Offer has ended, take time to look at the engagement data and understand who claimed it and why.

If the response was less positive than you would have liked, was it the actual Offer that was unappealing? Or, could your targeting strategy have been more refined? If the Offer was wildly successful, consider making it a regular feature of your page to engage fans and encourage users to come back for more.

Use the demographic and keyword data to inform future campaigns. And, of course, make sure to measure the actual coupons used in store or online to assess if the promotion actually turned Facebook users into customers!