We all know that a fanpage is a powerful tool for generating awareness of your product, brand or service. Put simply, it’s another means of communicating with your target audience every day (if you keep on top of your updates). However, a question which we’ve been asked a lot here at GA recently is this: How can we make money out of our fanpage?

Last week, it was announced that EasyJet will be one of the first brands to allow fans to buy directly from Facebook. To enable this, EasyJet are planning to add ecommerce functionality to its fanpage alongside a holiday planner which will let users plan their holidays with friends. Although this function is not yet available, EasyJet have latched onto the fact that Facebook users spend over three times the amount of time on the social networking site as they do on Google. In fact, only a couple of weeks ago in the U.S., Facebook received more traffic than Google. (Facebook’s homepage recorded 7.07 per cent of all traffic, while Google received 7.03 per cent).

Although Facebook claims that brands do not currently have direct ecommerce functionality from their Facebook pages (transactions must be made on the destination site) the airline’s newly launched ‘Holiday Planner’ tool will eventually let users purchase flights without leaving Facebook – and this would be industry first.

However, in the meantime, let’s look at some of the other ways in which brands are making money from Facebook…

One of the more successful examples of a company making money from Facebook is Burger King. Their Facebook campaign involved the creation of a ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ app that gave you a voucher for a free hamburger – if you deleted 10 people from your friends list. Not only did this activity poke fun at our obsession with social media (sacrifices showed up on activity feeds!) but it also brought people into the restaurant who ordered fries and drinks with their free Whopper. In fact, this Facebook strategy was so successful that Facebook promptly shut it down.

Other food chains (such as Dunkin Donuts) attempted a similar social media strategy where it sent vouchers to its fan base. This encouraged users to come to the restaurant to redeem their voucher. So, provided you can upsell to a customer once they are in your store or restaurant, offering discounted or free product to reward desired Facebook user behaviour is an effective method of bringing your customers to you.

Another successful social media strategy used to monetize Facebook is to create an application to sell your product within Facebook itself. For example, Pizza Hut’s strategy was an ‘Order App’.  This app allows users to order pizza to be delivered to them, directly from their Facebook account. By selling your product directly on Facebook via an application, your social media strategy will be much more successful than if you ask users to leave and then visit your website to place an order.

And lastly, let’s not forget Facebook’s targeted advertising functionality. This social media strategy allows you to show your ad to a specified, market audience. With ads relevant to the people viewing them, this strategy can generate real demand for your product or service. Additionally, Facebook’s tools allow you to see exactly who is viewing and clicking on your ads so, as always, be sure to regularly measure your progress, analyse which are the more successful ads, and make any necessary modifications to maximise your results.