It’s All About the Customer
Facebook is different things to different people. For some individuals, it’s a great way to connect with high school or college friends and family members. For others, it’s a place to play games such as FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz. And for many businesses, Facebook is a vast online marketplace where you have the potential to connect with millions of individuals for free.
However, your social network storefront needs a little TLC. The main thing you need to facilitate is a positive, responsive relationship with your customer.
 | DEFINITION |
A social network is a website that enables people to connect with like-minded individuals and/or to support and learn about their favorite brands.
The best way to support your potential customer is by taking three steps:
1. Define your customers.
2. Find your customers.
3. Fulfill your customers’ needs.
The following sections show you how.
First, you have to determine who your customers should be. You need to know who your potential customers are before you develop a marketing campaign to attract them. For instance, if you’re going after a young, tech-savvy audience, they’re already well-acquainted with Facebook, so your marketing campaign needs to get their attention in a fun, aggressive way. If you’re going after an older, more conservative audience, your Facebook campaign needs to be more subtle.
You can even use Facebook to help you define your customers. For example, using Facebook statistics, you may find that more women than men like your business’s Facebook page. That additional insight helps you better focus not only your Facebook marketing campaign, but your entire marketing plan.
 | FEEDBACK |
Three Harvard students—Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra—claim that they came up with the original Facebook concept. They hired Mark Zuckerberg to create the website, but he reportedly stole the idea and built it for himself while stonewalling them. They reportedly found out when one of their girlfriends logged in to the site! The Winklevoss twins won a small payout in court, but sued again because they felt as though the compensation wasn’t reflective of the company’s worth. They lost.
Find Your Customers
After you identify your customers, you need to get them to your Facebook promotion. You can get potential customers to your Facebook page or Profile using the following techniques:
• Creating online events (see Chapter 11)
• Using viral media (see Chapter 12)
• Leveraging traditional marketing (see Chapter 3)
• Promoting well-branded games (see Chapter 13)
We go deeper into these and other opportunities later in the book.
Smart marketing means nothing if the customer doesn’t walk away satisfied. For one thing, you should want your customer to have a positive experience when dealing with your company. You want them to think you have a great product and a great relationship with your company. This desire for customer satisfaction goes beyond an inherent wish to treat people right. It’s a good marketing tool. After all, customers talk! Even in the age of Facebook, word of mouth may still be the most powerful tool. In fact, Facebook is a word-of-mouth accelerant: whatever people used to talk about only at the coffee shops and the water cooler they now spread virtually—and at lightning speed—on social networks.