Each day, Facebook.com receives over 640 million page views. Your friends, family, neighbors, and more importantly, your customers are using the website every day. How do you use it to your advantage?

If you have a B2C business, you should have a Facebook fan page. But just having the page is not enough. It needs to be filled with interesting and engaging content. It must be created with a goal in mind (like converting Facebook fans into customers that walk in your door). Before any of that happens, you need to think of where your prospective fan starts: the landing page.

Great landing pages can make a huge difference between a “Like” or a prospect clicking X on their browser. The landing must do two things:

Illustrate what your business does

Give the prospect a reason to be a fan

These two principles will make a landing page go from good to great. Let’s see some examples from NHL, Coca-Cola, and one of my favorite non-profits: Team Rubicon. They may differ in message and presentation, but their technique is the same: the tell their audience who they are and give them a reason why they should be a fan. Here’s Coca-Cola:

There are some noteworthy traits on Coke’s landing page. Their use of humor is present in the “Like Coke? There’s a button for that!” proclamation. It tells the prospect that this isn’t just some boring business site. It says that if you click here, we’re going to tell you fun things about our product.

Since Coca-Cola is the most popular brand across the globe, it’s not necessary to tell the prospect about their beverages. They instead take a different (and much better) track in talking about partnering with the World Wildlife Fund to entice the prospect. In the fan highlight section, you can see a brand that engages and uses images from their customers to help convert new ones.

Now onto the National Hockey League, which uses a slightly different, but highly effective tactic:

When you click to the NHL’s page, you’ll see some things behind the initial banner. This is intentional, and it entices the prospect to click the like button so that they can see what else is there. This is a great strategy and it’s used quite frequently. Further than this, they give you reasons to click-contests and exclusive offers. After you click Like, the page changes and they are able to further their reach by inviting users to change their profile picture through their Profile Photo generator.

Finally we turn to Team Rubicon, a non-profit group of veterans and medical professionals who go into disaster-stricken areas to deliver aid and supplies before most others can. Their landing page delivers the two principles in video form, with a two-minute guide of what TR does and how you can help. It’s a fabulous use of space on the landing page, and the short video delivers a better experience than text or images could do.

So give your customers and fans something more. Just like you would customize your sign or the look of your offices, make sure that your Facebook page is tailored to that initial impression. Instead of having your prospect land on your wall, show them why they should walk through that door. Your fans are out there looking for you.

Are you ready?