Offers for Facebook, and how to use them effectively

Finally! Facebook has delivered a service for the good of small business.
The new 'Offer' feature for facebook pages is set to be a welcome marketing tool for business and their clients.

Today we'll cover how to list an 'Offer', how to get the 'Offer' feature on our page if you don't already have it and also some tips on creating an effective 'Offer'.

How do I list an Offer?

Listing an offer is easy and can be done in a matter of clicks.

Where the 'Event/Milestone' feature was, you will now see 'Offer/Event'. Click and choose 'Offer'.

Add your headline (up to 90 Characters) to grab your potential clients attention. Then adjust the number or claims available. You can have unlimited, down to custom. At the time of publishing, the custom claims button wasn't working.

Add your terms and conditions, e.g. 1 per person, not available on Wednesdays, must email to receive code etc. Adjust the expiry date of the offer.

Add an image, remembering that your image will be 50% of your selling point.

Preview and post if it is finished. Don't forget to check spelling and grammar before you post.

How do I get it?

Facebook has said the 'Offer' feature is still in beta and that they are rolling it out to Local Business pages before going for a full roll out on all pages, so if you don't have the offer feature yet this is why. If you don't have the offer feature, and wold like to post offers you can also contact them to get the feature enabled on your page.

How do I create an effective Offer?

Your offer should grab your customer and entice them to make a claim. Facebook recommends an offer that is at least 20% off your normal price or a price that your customer can already 'see' like a buy 1 get 1 free.

Remember to take into consideration your product costing and how much of your profit you are willing to loose out. You don't want to offer a discount so high that you are only attracting a single purchase customer and you definitely don't want to sell yourself so short that you can't keep up with demand.

A major part of your offer is going to be your image and heading. Both need to grab your customers attention. Consider a combo of either an image of your product to help describe what your selling and a heading that will grab them with an awesome discount or an image to grab them with an awesome discount (Sale, 30% off, buy 1 get 1 free) and a heading to describe what they will be getting.

Some examples of great headings:
Buy 1 Dog Collar in May and get a free lead!
All Custom Paintings Framed and Mounted FREE!
25% off Kids Hats, when you purchase a matching outfit.
Buy a Natural Body care kit and receive 50% off your next refill.

Next, you need to get down to the nitty gritty. The number of offers you'll have, expiry date and your terms and conditions.
Your budget, turnaround time and 'exclusivity' should come into play here. Is your offer so good you only want to give away a few? Or will you have a free for all but for a limited time only?

Your terms are very important also. Be clear and think of all aspects when creating these.
Do you want to offer more than one per person? Are you limited to local or worldwide customers? Do you have other promotions running that this offer may clash with? If so be specific. Add "Not available with any other offer" or "Not available on Cheap Tuesday".

If you run a bricks and mortar shop you may also want to ensure you have sufficient staff on board to cope, so limiting the offer to days you have extra staff available would work in your favour.

If you run an online store, you would need to add a call to action so your customer can redeem their claim such as "Email us to receive your discount code." Or "Add your free handbag to your cart and it will discount immediately".
If your website shopping cart allows codes and discounts, you'd also want to set this up prior to listing your offer.

 

 

Promoting your Offer.

The idea of Facebook Offers is to create a viral marketing experience on customer news feeds but this often doesn't come without legwork on your part.
Promote your offer on your own page to remind customers that it is available. Let them know they have 2 days, 1 day, 1 hour available to claim and redeem.
Post the offer on your blog, website and newsletters. If your customers are asking about that particular products that is being discounted - let them know! They'll thank you for the savings.

Finally, don't fall into the Scoopon/Living Social business trap of making an offer so good that you run out of stock, out of staff and out of business. A good offer creates a great reputation for your business, but a poorly planned offer will ruin it.

To be in the know on all things Pink Sugar Design, visit our website, join our facebook page or follow us on twitter.

Weekend Specials

This week marks the beginning of our Weekend Specials with 25% off Hair Accesory Display Cards.

A new special will hit our store every friday ready for the weekend, and you can look out for the Hot Pink banner on the right of our webpage to check them out - I think you'll have a hard time missing it!

Our specials will run through the week until a new special takes its place and I guarantee you won't want to miss them! They'll be red hot folks, so don't delay - mark it in your calendar that Friday is the day to be here.




The great thing about our hair accessory cards is the they are available with a combination of slot sets which means 1,2,3,4,5 or even 6 clips can fit on our cards!

They'll set your products apart from the competition and make your clips pop with your custom printed logo and professional branding.

Unlike regular business cards that have been used to display hair accesories you won't be limited to only 1 or two clips per card and you won't have to spend your morning cutting slots in each card hoping to make it to the post office or market in time.

Best of all you can have the cards contour cut around your logo for that extra wow factor!


This Friday we'll be focusing on something a little more themed to current events to get your business moving some serious stock!

To be in the know on all things Pink Sugar Design, visit our website, join our facebook page or follow us on twitter.


To be in the know on all things Pink Sugar Design, visit our website, join our facebook page or follow us on twitter.

Small Business Advertising - Free Advertising for your business!

Advertising plays an important part in small business, and is also great for SEO as long as you choose upstanding websites to advertise with.

We've compiled a list of websites to register your business with to start bringing in the traffic to your business website. If you have any to add, comment below and we will add them to our list.

1. Hotfrog.com.au
Add your contact information, a blurb about your business, products, images and discount coupons.

2. Truelocal.com.au
Not as comprehensive as hotfrog, but you are able to add more photos. Again, contact info, blurb, 1 discount coupon.


3. Support a WAHP Directory
There are free and paid listings available here. The Free listings are pretty minimal in options, but as it is a site widely used by the small business supporting market you can gather your target audience very easily.

4. Mums Who make Directory
Similar to SAWAHP, free and paind listings available. Targeted to the handmade community.

5. Mwwah Directory
At the time of posting, this was under construction.

So get out an get posting! Make sure you listings are as comprehensive as the service allows for. After all, it's free so you'd be mad not to take full advantage of it. Keep in mind, these listing will be online for years to come, so don't forget to stop by and update them if your business model changes or if you start offering a new product line.

How to set up Artwork

You've got a logo, you know what item you want so you go ahead to make your purchase - excited to have your branding in your hands very soon!

Then you stop, dead in your tracks when scrolling down the page you see "Upload Artwork:"...
"Upload artwork? But what if it isn't right!? What do I do?"

Sound familiar? Don't fret! This is just the page you need to read!

Setting up your artwork ready to upload is actually easier than it sounds, and if you are still not sure you've done it correctly we print & produce all of our items in house so we can double check the graphics you upload to make sure they are suitable for printing.
Generally, if there is a problem we will try to nut it out first by recreating the logo in a higher resolution or adding a bleed. If we are unable to do this then we will contact you to ask for a better graphic.

Big Bad World of Artwork Bleeds

Note the bleed, trim and artwork areas.
All of your important information such as text or graphics should be tucked inside the artwork area.
The background should extend 2mm out to form the bleed.

What is a bleed?
The first thing to consider when setting up your artwork is the bleed.
This is an extra area of background design that is usually about 2mm wider than your actual artwork which allows for any discrepencies when we send your order to production.
Because there can be a 1-2mm discrepency when our machines cut your order, if there is no bleed you may be left with white edges on some parts of your item or worse - your text could be cut off!

Here's a graphic showing examples of artwork set up problems that we most encounter:

  

Here you can see the text is too close to the edge, leaving no room for the bleed.

If your text, images or other important information is too close to the trim of your background it can get cut off as we demonstrate above. Think of the bleed as your protective barrier, keeping your branding from being held at the mercy of our machines!
So when you are creating your artwork, be sure to leave an extra 'edge' of the background for the bleed and ensure your text is tucked well inside the trim, so it doesn't end up right on the edge where we will cut.

Setting up artwork on our contour cut products, is just as easy!Here's how we do it:

Here you can see there isn't a bleed available, so a white edge is seen on the final product.

Again, the bleed plays an important part. You've managed to keep your text inside the trim line, but you've forgotten the blasted bleed and your unique shaped stickers, contour cut business cards or die cut hair clip cards just don't look right with the white edges.
Making sure to keep 1-2 mm extra background bleed area on your design will fix this right up, and your business will thank you for it!

Resolution Revolution!

So now you have your artwork fitted with some shiny new bleeds and you have everything tucked in safely behind the ANCAP 5 Star rated artwork lines. Good for you, apprentice designer! But do read on...

Artwork resolution plays an integral part in producing a crisp, clean, eyecatching product. If you don't have a high enough resolution, your  product will be blurry and unreadable. For instance, have you ever gone up to a Coke-Cola truck and looked up cloase at the branding? It's all blurry and fuzzed up right? That's because it is stretched out to fit. If you send through a graphic too small for our product and we stretch it to fit - you'll end up with an up close Coke-Cola truck, and that's just not appealing!

           
        Oooh Aahh Pretty!             U.G.L.Y This ain't go no alibi!

The first graphic is set to 300dpi or a 4.5cm x 4.5cm sizing. The this-that-shall-not-be-named-graphic is half the resolution, but blown up to fit our 4.5cm sticker. The result - TRAINWRECK!
A minimum of 300dpi is recommended at the very least for printing. If your graphics program doesn't have an option for the dpi, you should always make your graphics to the size need for the item (plus the bleed) to ensure it is of the highest quality. For example, if you are buying one of our 8x11cm hair clip cards, design your artwork (including the bleed) to be 8.2x11.2cm.
Rest assured, we wouldn't print anything like the above. We wouldn't want to ship it, and you wouldn't want to receive it!

To run through a checklist for designing your artwork follow B-TAR:

Bleed
Trim
Artwork
Res

(It's not catchy in the least, so just be happy I'm a printer/designer, and not a singer/songwriter!)

Don't forget, if you have any queries or questions about setting up your artwork just email us! Your question added to our list, might just answer another budding business owner/designers question!