Facebook’s implementation of the Facebook Offers feature for businesses pages has given food trucks the ability to offer deals on their food truck Facebook pages. At first the “Offers” function was limited to a few select businesses.  If you have a food truck page with 50 likes and at least a month old, you can use Facebook Offers.

Creating Facebook Offers

  1. At the top of your Page’s Timeline, click Offer, Event +and select Offer.
  2. Fill out information about your offer:
    • Title: Enter a title for your offer (ex: 25% off).
    • Description: Provide more details about your offer (ex: Take 25% off your total purchase).
    • Image: Upload or select an image for your offer.
    • Expiration Date: Choose an expiration date by clicking today’s date and then clicking a future date.
    • Claims limit: Enter a maximum amount of offer claims or choose No Limit.
  3. Click More Options to add a start date, online redemption link and terms and conditions, or to change your payment account.
  4. Preview your offer in the top left and make any changes, then click Create Offer.

Designing Your Facebook Offers

Experiment with offers to find out what your customers respond to best. Facebook Offers following these best practices have a better chance of being successful.

  • Make discounts substantial: Offers with free items (ex: buy one, get one free) or with discounts of at least 20% off will typically reach more people than offers of lesser value.
  • Use an engaging image:Photos of people using a product often perform better than photos of a product by itself, and both of these generally perform better than logos. Keep in mind that your Page’s profile picture will also show next to your offer in most places on Facebook.
  • Set a reasonable expiration date:Give people at least a few days to see and claim an offer, and allow time for your offer to be shared among friends on Facebook.
  • Promote your offer: Create an ad for your offer, and pin your offer to the top of your Page so people will notice it.

RELATED: Use Facebook to Increase Word-of-Mouth Marketing About Your Food Truck

Make Facebook Work For Your Business

So how do you make Facebook Offers work for your business?  Here are several characteristics of quality offers that will attract people to your food truck business.

  1. Value: In order to attract customers to your food truck your offers has to have value to them.  Value is relative to the perception of the customer. The basic overall idea is to make the Offers worth the time and effort that the customer must take to redeem it.    It could be something as inexpensive as “1 free side dish, when you order an entree.”
  2. Easy: Is your offer easy to redeem?  Make it as easy as “show us you checked in on your cell phone and you’ll get this offer.”  Don’t make customers jump through hoops to redeem your offer.  Make sure you communicate how to redeem the Facebook Offers in your offer.
  3. Dynamic: Change your offers up regularly.  Not only will this encourage people to come back, but it will enable you to research and measure what works best as far as the types of Facebook Offers to offer.
  4. Deadline: To encourage redemption, put and end date on your offers.  If you have too long to redeem the offers and it will go stale; too short of time may not be long enough to actually reach people.
  5. Clear: This is similar to the “fine print.”  You must be very clear about the rules, restrictions and/or limitations of your offers.  For example, “This offer not good with any other offers or promotions; One Offers per customer per day; Not redeemable for cash, etc.”  Avoid problems at the redemption point by clearly defining the restrictions on the offers ahead of time.  Also, make sure you clearly communicate what the offers is in your headline.
  6. Communicate: Make sure you have communicated with your employees or anyone who will be responsible for providing the Facebook Offers to your customers.
  7. Promote: Promote your offers on your Facebook business page, on Twitter, in your email marketing, and inside of your location.  You can also promote it via Facebook ads as well as on your website.

The Bottom Line

UPDATE: Remember that Facebook Offers are only available to be posted by Facebook Pages, not individuals. Also, in order for a page to be eligible to create an offer, they must have 400 or more likes.

We think it’s a no-brainer for food truck owners to tap into Facebook Offers to market their mobile food business today, how about you? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Facebook | Twitter