With an increasing number of brands and PR companies constantly looking for new ways to generate more "Likes" and "Fans" on Facebook, one of the most effective ways to achieve this is also one of the simplest - and up until recently, has been one of the most overlooked.
Adding Facebook "Like" buttons on your company website and promoting that your company is "on Facebook" via digital and print advertising is all good and well, but the point that a lot of brands are missing is just how effective creating a customised landing tab on Facebook can be in relation to utilising traffic and increasing the number of conversions from visitors to fans. Arriving on a company's Facebook wall for the first time and being greeted with a multitude of conversations, product posts and competition posts, all going on at once, can often be quite a daunting experience. Visitors arriving at these pages often arrive not knowing much, if anything, about the brand, especially with smaller brands. The outcome of this, more often than not, is visitors moving away from the page and off into the social media wilderness.
In light of this, below are five ways that brands can make the most of creating a customised landing tab on their Facebook page to engage fans, promote features and increase fan conversions.
1. Create an area to introduce your brand - One of the most important features of a landing page is to welcome your audience by introducing the brand and creating a snapshot of your activities, products or services. By creating a landing tab, brands are essentially presenting visitors with a starting point from which they can then move around other Facebook pages. As a result, visitors are better positioned to engage in the raft of conversations taking place on the wall tab, now knowing a little more about what the company does.
2. Keep it simple - It is important to keep the objectives of creating a landing tab in mind and to ensure that these are effectively met when designing any visuals and positioning content. For example, first and foremost, there needs to be a clear call-to-action within the landing tab to encourage visitors to click the "Like" button. Ideally this will be displayed through the visual elements and layout of the content within the tab.
3. Be creative with visuals - With first impressions said to be the most important, the world of social media is certainly no different and it is important to catch people's attention quickly. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of a well thought-out and unique visual, almost like a mini-advert that captures what your brand is all about in a clear, attention-grabbing snapshot. Starting with what is essentially a blank page, brands should utilise this opportunity to highlight their imagination, creativity and identity, leaving visitors with a lasting impression of the brand and encouraging them to become Fans of the brand to find out more.
4. Spotlight current promotions - A customised landing tab can also become an area where brands can highlight their latest promotions, competitions and products, creating visiblity and awareness for these where previously they may have become lost in the sea of Facebook wall posts. That said, it is important that the layout and format of the page remains clear and does not become filled with an overwhelming amount of content. In this case, less is definitely more. As many brands have already discovered, utilising the landing tab to introduce new promotions, video content and competitions, if approached in a clear and cohesive way, can prove to be hugely successful at both converting more fans as well as engaging visitors with current social media campaign activities.
5. Create intrigue by adding a Hidden / Reveal feature to the tab - Offering visitors access to a brand's Facebook wall posts in exchange for a click on the "Like" button may not always seem like the most captivating of offers, especially when visitors can already access the wall posts without clicking the "Like" button. Whilst some companies post regular and interesting content on their walls, this by itself may not always be enough to entice new fans. Enter the concept of a Hidden / Reveal content feature. Essentially this feature incorporates a visual of the content that fans can access, hidden behind a shaded area on the landing tab. By integrating this feature with current product promotions and competitions, brands can enable visitors to catch a glimpse of exclusive content and offers that their users can gain access to by simply hitting the "Like" button. This not only adds extra intrigue to the promotions and competitions themselves, it also acts as an incentive for visitors to become fans of the brand.
As more and more brands look to increase engagement and fan conversions, creating an area that provides an insight into the brand and captures people's attention is essential to complement other offline and online PR and marketing activities. By integrating a well-designed customised landing tab with other social media competitions and exclusive Facebook promotions, as well as digital and print campaigns, the overall result will provide visitors with focus, direction and more of an insight into the brand. Most importantly, it will present visitors with the perfect starting point for engagement and interaction with the brand.