Are you all set to market your business on Facebook?

 

So you’ve set yourself up a Facebook business Page, probably because someone told you it’s a good thing for businesses to do these days, or you’ve seen lots of other businesses doing it. Or maybe you’ve heard all those stories about the amazing results small businesses seem to be getting with marketing themselves on Facebook.

 

But then, what next? How do you actually go from setting the thing up to getting it to work for your business?

 Get to grips with social media thinking

Well, we need to challenge two common misconceptions head on here.

 

First – social media may be free to access, but getting it to work productively for your business takes time, thought, effort and, often, a monetary investment.

 

Second – unless you are clear about what you want to achieve with social media, it can be a huge time sink, without giving you those longed-for results.

 

Now don’t get me wrong. You can achieve amazing things for your small business by getting your social media activity right, but it does require focus and effort.

 A flying start to Facebook for business

So – back to the question in hand – Facebook.

 

There’s a process to go through to get Facebook working for you and the first part is to get people to like your Page in number. The right people.

 

I’ve summarized what to do here

1.Be clear about your goals

What do you want to achieve from being on Facebook? Driving web traffic? Providing customer service? Raising brand awareness? These are but the tip of the iceberg of possible results.

Decide on your top 3 priorities.

2. Put your audience first

Part of being clear will be knowing who you are trying to reach out to and attract back to your business. Now you have to define, in as much detail as possible, who those people are, what their interests are and what they would be interested in hearing about from you.
Do they want to hear nothing but your latest sales and promotions? NO. But would they be interested in finding out where your food is sourced, for example, if you run a restaurant – yes, very likely. Or would they be interested in knowing about ways to run your office more efficiently, if you sell office supplies – quite possibly.

3. Give your Facebook Page a pitch

From the 2 points above you can now put together a sales pitch for your Facebook Page. You want people to come along and like it, right? … to expand your reach, or , in normal-speak, the number of people who get to receive your messages. Well, you need to give them a reason to like it. Then you have a powerful ‘call-to action’ as the marketers call it – ‘like my page because…’

4. Spread the word about your Facebook Page

Get out there and tell the world about your Facebook Page, with your clearly-defined pitch. Add the Facebook logo and your url (link) or a QR code to ALL your business stationery, business cards, invoices , flyers, brochures. And ask for the ‘like’ people like to be told what to do. Include it in your email signature, biographies and online profiles.

 

Email all your current and past customers and prospects asking them to like the Page, explaining the benefits (maybe they will also get Facebook-only offers and promotions too?) One organization I have worked with emailed their established database and ended up with 85,000 likes !
Out at shows and event, or quoting for services, or speaking to groups? Ask for likes to your Page. Tweet the link to your page and ask for likes, or add it to a status update on LinkedIn and ask. And make sure you add a button to your website.

 

Ask your friends and acquaintances if appropriate, and people you meet at networking. Facebook will prompt you invite your Facebook friends to like the Page. You can also join in some of the many ‘like ladders’ that take place within groups and on Pages to generate more likes – if the audience is likely to be right for you.

5. Advertise your Facebook Page

Still want more ‘likes’? You can pay to promote your page on Facebook  via their adverts manager. You can optimize your campaign to gain likes, or, far more productively, you can add a tab or app to your Facebook Page which encourages visitors to opt-in for valuable information, or a voucher or free gift, which they only have access to once they have liked your Page.

I would always recommend the latter approach as, although it might take more time to set up than a standard ‘like’ campaign, you will in this way be qualifying your leads AND collecting email data for onward marketing.

 

The next steps are to post awesome content and to build your Facebook network, which I’ll cover in a new post.

 

 

Have I missed anything so far? Please let me know in the comments! If you want more detail on how to establish a strategy then please download  my ebook!