Facebook Deals: How to Setup Your First Facebook Deal

We all know that location-based marketing is becoming a huge hit with Internet Marketers.  Services like Gowalla and Foursquare have been the front-runners in the space and have proven that users LOVE to check-in to tell their friends where they are hanging out and to reap incentive offers for visiting their favorite businesses.

Now Facebook is getting into the mix with Facebook Deals, a new service that provides the ability for businesses to offer incentives to their customers for “checking in” or visiting their location.  Facebook has basically followed the same check-in process from the existing location-based services, but they have also put their own spin on the service.

How it Works [Intro Video]:

Step 1:  Claim Your Facebook Places Listing

Something I found very tricky when I first was trying out Facebook Deals, were how there are local listings (similar to Google Places), called Facebook Places that you will have to link to your existing Fan Page. Luckily Facebook makes it very easy to link your Facebook Place with your Fan Page.

To do this:

Do a search inside Facebook for your Places page.  If you don’t see it, you can create your local places page; if you do see if click it and go to the bottom of the left sidebar and click “Is this your business?”. Once you do this, Facebook will call your phone number and give you a 4 digit pin number that you must put in to verify your listing.

Step 2:  Merge With Your Fan Page

Once you have verified your listing, go to your Fan Page and look at the bottom of the left sidebar and click “Merge with existing Page”.  This will bring up a list of the Fan Pages you manage, then click on the page you wish to merge the Facebook Place with.  This will allow you to create a deal that will be integrated nicely into your Fan Page.

Step 3:  Setup Your Deal

Facebook has a number of different reward options they allow for users who Check-in at your location.   Choose the deal and special offer that you would like to use to incentivize your customers.

1. Individual Deal: Reward customers when they check-in to your business.
2. Friend Deal: Reward groups of customers when they check-in together.
3. Loyalty Deal: Reward customers with checking in a certain amount of times.
4. Charity Deal: Pledge to donate to a charity each time someone checks in.

Step 4:  Start Marketing Your Deal

Once you have created your deal and it has been approved, you can begin using the Facebook Ad platform to start promoting your Deal.  To do this you will need to setup an advertising account and determine which Facebook users you want to target.

If you would like to download the complete guide on Facebook Deals, you can download it here.