Having just laid out my objectives for the next few months, my first step was to tackle improving my Facebook landing page.
As a small business owner, we all know that Facebook is one of our most important channels to reach our customers, but even more importantly to engage with, listen to, and communicate with our customers. And when marketing dollars are tight, social channels (all of them, not just Facebook depending upon your audience) are a great opportunity.
Now I’m no expert on the intricacies of Facebook, you know the under the covers what it takes to actually deliver the vision of marketing teams or commercial people. I’ve supported lots and lots of testing and experiments in my days at Lonely Planet and even at Loopy Love in the early days of Facebook. Yet I always relied on my outstanding teams to actually implement the tactics we used.
Roll forward to now. I needed a very simple landing page to start me on my mission of building a following. I had a clear vision for what it would look like and how it would behave. I’ve just introduced promotional codes at check out and I want to offer a good deal to all my Facebook fans as thanks for their support. So where to start – honestly, Google. Ironic, eh?
I read about a few different plugins and services which would do this for me and some different free ways to go. And then I read all the reviews of all these things because after choosing a WordPress Theme last year which seemed to do everything I needed and have good support for the other stuff, it turned out that it was a temporary project of the seller and didn’t live up to expectations. We chalk that up to learning, but I certainly didn’t want to be swapping my Facebook page every time my plugin developer got stuck or worse.
Here’s three links to blog posts which I found helpful and which will give you some background if you’re considering the DIY method vs using an application built by someone else.
- This is the DIY approach. If you have a basic knowledge of HTML and know your way around your hosting set up, this is a great step by step instruction by Steve from My Wife Quit Her Job.
- A simple explanation of using an app to create a landing page with some great suggestions of other tools to try in the comments.
- Another application which I know some have used to successful create a landing page. http://www.hyperarts.com/social-media/tabpress-facebook-app.html
In the end, I chose Lujure. Their drag and drop editor meant that I could upload the graphics I wanted to use through a simple interface. Move them around with my mouse until things looked right, and include a wide range of functionality (ranging from basic elements in a page like maps or email capture to more complex functionality like ecommerce in the page). They also have great reviews and from what I can tell appear to be a growing business with a strong business model. I can say that the software was super easy to use, though it didn’t take me only the 30 seconds they claimed on their home page. Including the time I spent messing around to understand the functionality and then actually building and testing my page, it did only take half a day.
ANYONE in a digital business who struggles to get developer time for marketing initiatives should consider Lujure. It means that you can get on with your Facebook program without having to wait in a developer prioritisation queue.
No, I’m not being paid for this, but I have experienced the challenge of tech prioritisation for simple marketing initiatives as both a participant and the decision maker. I would also recommend that developers and agencies suggest these sorts of tools so they can focus on more complex projects.
So here’s my finished product: www.facebook.com/LikeOola. And now I can go about beginning to build a community which has a reason to become a fan of Oola. And soon I hope that they are finding more reasons than just a coupon.
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