CHAPTER 7

THE FACEOFF: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Now you are ready to fly.

If you have followed from Chapter 1 to this far, you would have selected your weapons (Chapter 4), drawn out your Seven Sentence Guerrilla Facebook Marketing Plan and Calendar (Chapter 5), launched one or two attacks, and are keeping track of your performance (Chapter 6). Perhaps the initial results aren’t exactly spellbinding, but patience is a guerrilla virtue. It will take some time for results to show. The important thing is, you have started on your journey.

The next steps will be very exciting times for you. Your Guerrilla Facebook Marketing journey is like a process – it has a beginning and a middle, but it doesn’t have an end – unless of course, you call the shots to end it.

Once you begin on your journey, you will discover that this journey will be peppered with ups and downs. There will be challenges – some foreseen, others unforeseen. This journey, like life, as we know it, was never meant to be days filled with blue skies with flower-strewn paths. There will be grey skies and potholes along the way, but that only makes the journey more interesting. The longer you stay on this journey, the more adept you become at managing challenges that come your way to test your boundaries.

Moving beyond your Facebook backyard

Once you have grasped the mechanics of running a successful Facebook marketing campaign, you will start to explore the possibility of moving beyond your Facebook backyard. And when you do so, you will soon discover that while you can’t deny or ignore Facebook, neither is Facebook the end all for your web-based marketing campaigns. So as you get better, how do you reach out to the next level? What other web-based mediums are there for you to explore?

How can you move beyond your Facebook backyard to grow your online influence as a whole? Does your business come up on the first page of main web search engines such as Google and Yahoo?

There is less magic and telepathy involved in putting out your online influence than you think. A guerrilla’s online influence typically consists of a combination of different online platforms in order to drive web traffic to and fro your Facebook Page and other platforms. Facebook does not operate in a vacuum, and neither should your business. The web community has many websites which you can connect with in order to grow your online influence. For example, you could get listed on social book marketing sites, or participate in independent forum sites, contributing as experts or as advisors in your area of expertise or industry experience. Here are some websites that we have shortlisted that could provide you with some potential opportunities to expand your online influence:

What about website traffic? How can you direct traffic from your existing website to your Facebook Page, and vice-versa?

Even Facebook itself recognized the need for its platform to be embedded within the larger web community. The evidence is in the creation of tools such as Facebook Connect (Weapon #25 in Chapter 4), Feed Burners (Blog RSS, Facebook Twitter, RSS Graffiti - Weapon #15) and Plug-ins (Visit Us on Facebook, Facepile, LiveStream - Weapon #16) that can help users connect within the wider web community. What about getting visitors to your website and/or Facebook Page to subscribe to your mailing list? Can you find a combination that best suits your business and the amount of energy and time you are willing to spend on boosting your online influence?

Going beyond the web

More and more people are turning to the Internet to get the scoop or story about businesses and brands. Although we say “more and more”, it does not mean that everybody is on the web. In the year 2011, the world’s population will cross over the 7 billion mark. But as of March 2011, out of the 7 billion people, only 2 billion are Internet users. Despite rapid technological advances, the world’s Internet penetration rate averages at just 30.2% (www.internetworldstats), about 3 in every 10 people in the world are Internet users.

What’s beyond the web? The real world – the one we live in, the one with some 5 billion people who are not Internet users, and who will demand and need products and services? How are you marketing your products and services to them?

Have you integrated your online marketing campaigns with your offline marketing campaigns? What do your printed pamphlets and brochures, your invoices and receipts, and your name cards say about your online presence? Is your Facebook Page prominently displayed on them? What about your shop front? Are there efforts to entice walk-in customers to log onto your online presence?

Are your offline systems compatible with your online systems? Can your customers make purchases easily online and pick up their purchases from your shop front? Is it easy for your customers and prospects to find your offline presence from your online presence? At the same time, are your walk-in customers to your shop front enticed to go online to look for your online presence?

Jot down some ways to integrate your online presence with your offline presence:

Changing Times

We are witnessing the dawn of the social media revolution.

We live in changing times.

In Chapter 1, we highlighted the Changing Face of Facebook. Facebook is in a constant state of change – they change policies, guidelines, and the way features are presented on the Facebook interface. Sometimes, they are announcements, other times, changes are just rolled out and users are expected to go with the flow. Some changes can have significant impact on businesses. For instance, to-date, the number of Facebook mobile users has increased to almost 200 million users. Facebook mobile users access their Facebook accounts while they are out and about from their mobile devices. Can you see the potential Facebook mobile can have for your business?

In addition to changes within Facebook, technologies that support social media have also evolved quickly. Technology not only moves fast. It has made things easier and simpler to accomplish. Thanks to new software technologies, guerrillas today can create Facebook Pages and websites competently and professionally by themselves, at a fraction of the cost, or even for free, with a little DIY. The greatest challenge is not dealing with technological change and computers, but the people behind the computers. Technology is only as good as the user. If you are not investing time and energy to learn more about software apps and changes in technology in general, you are missing out on this century’s greatest invention.

Change and evolution.

This is the future of Guerrilla Marketing.

Are you growing yourself as your Facebook presence grows, in tandem with Facebook’s growth?