In my business I am frequently asked that question. Facebook has been all the rage and in the news quite a bit lately, reaching 600 million users worldwide late last year. It seems the thing to do. Of those people visiting Facebook, surely some of them would see your page and visit your business and website.
One of the things I like about marketing a business on the web is the ability to measure results and to see what others are doing. Before I tell you how you can determine if a Facebook page would help you, let me tell you why it might be of use.
Benefits from Facebook
There are two benefits you could get from having a business Facebook page. First, visitors to your page could become customers and friends of the visitors to your page would also find out about you and they too could become customers. Second, the search engines use information gleaned on the web concerning mentions of your business to determine how a website is listed. Your business Facebook page is an excellent place to mention your own business. In addition it is a way to get mentions on the Facebook pages of others and spread the word even more quickly.
Cost of Facebook
Free? Not exactly! Facebook does not charge you anything to set it up. You need people to look at your Facebook page to get any benefit from it. If no one actually visits your Facebook page it will do no good. It should have the image you wish to present in your business. A Facebook page is not something you set up and forget. It requires effort continuously and this is where the costs occur. You can subcontract this work to someone like me or do it yourself. Either way this will cost you something. A custom design Facebook page could cost $500 and you can easily spend upwards of 3 hours a week maintaining and posting to it. Your yearly cost for a Facebook page, depending on how you value your time could exceed $8,000.
Also, a Facebook page is part of a strategy to use social media (social mention) to get noticed so it is best used as part of a social media program involving Twitter, You tube and Blogging.
Here is how you determine if you should have a Facebook page
Step 1 – Determine a few words that those searching on the web for your services may be using in the search box. My example is a lawn care company that does mowing, spraying and landscape services for small business and consumers. One of the most offered services is lawn mowing services. Here, I searched for lawn mowing services
If your business is not listed in the top 5- 10 listings you may have something to gain. Look to see who is listed and if they are doing the same things you are. In these listings for example, the #1 listing is an information resource about lawn care business, #2 is a business offering Lawn Mowing, # 3 also offers Lawn Mowing services.
The next 3 businesses are from Google’s Maps listings which are calledGoogle Places, now. Click on each of the listings and observe if they have a Facebook page link on their home page. Of the top 10 listings only one has a Facebook page.
Somehow these listings are ahead of you and they are NOT using Facebook. I would say it is time to look at other things to bring your web presence to the top. There are many things you can do to your website and on the web that do not involve Facebook. You can use paid ads that you only pay for when someone goes to your website, you can place lots of keyword rich content on your website and you can get yourself listed in multiple directories on the web to name a few. Most of these things do not require the constant maintenance or as much of it as Facebook requires.
As a small business owner you must know that it is not enough to just do things right you must to do the right things. If you are a lawn care business in Westerville, Ohio, my location, setting up and managing a Facebook page should not be a priority. This is what I would advise my clients for this particular business in this particular area.
I am not against Facebook for anyone but as in many things it must be used in perspective. Usually there are other things regarding web marketing that will provide a small business more results for the given effort. In my example the given business should look at other avenues of getting noticed on the web and many of which cost less than setting up and maintaining a Facebook page.