The reason we market is to generate leads and sales. If that’s not true for you, then please stop reading this and go do something else productive. If you want to use Facebook to close more sales and earn more profit, you’ve come to the right place, my friend.
I got in the car business somewhat unceremoniously. My grandfather was a dealer in the ’50s in Downtown Los Angeles but he passed on before I was old enough to work. I was hired by a car dealer when I worked at a bank during college. I took the job because it was more money with less stress. I’m the only person in my family who’s carried on the “car business credo” (if one could put it that way) and that’s because I’ve always enjoyed selling to and servicing the cars of awesome people. I loved the business because it allowed me to apply what I knew, adapt it for growth, make a decision today and see the effects of my decision tomorrow.
Today, as a social media marketer and consultant, I talk to lots of clients and prospects, some who don’t really know for sure why they have to use social media, only that they do. They’ve heard it’s where they need to be but aren’t willing to allocate a budget to make it work correctly. Some dealers (and other businesses too!) appoint a “Social Media Director” and have no clear process to know if what he/she is doing is correct or successful.
There are cases where the boss doesn’t fully understand the power of Facebook and they make a snap judgment installing a rookie in the starting line up. These “Social Media Directors” limp along trying to do what they can with the assets given to them, which in many cases are just their own ideas and sweat equity. All so that a few months later, the boss says, “What the hell does this guy/gal do?” and they pull the plug.
If you’ve come across this scenario either as the boss or as the appointed social media guru, listen up. As the boss, you already know that nothing is free in this world. That’s definitely so with Facebook and other social media marketing, especially in the last 18 months. If you’re willing to adapt and make the decision to do it right, Facebook will give you the results you’re looking for.
If you’re the Social Media Director (or some variation thereof) and you’re struggling to be successful, there are a few things you have to do in order to get the boss’ attention. First, you have to summon the courage to ask for a budget. Come in confident, tell the boss what’s up and show them how your plan will work with the right spending. You’re talking Social Media ROI and when you talk results, you talk their language.
What are the results you’re going to talk about? Leads and sales. How will you get there? Here’s how. This is a method I use daily and many clients are seeing more traffic from Facebook than from 3rd party lead providers. One client enjoys a 3:1 ratio of traffic from Facebook compared to another well-known “traditional” source.
Here’s my 3-Step process using Facebook to Generate Leads and Sales:
1. Publish Awesome Content
By now you’ve probably heard that you need useful, relevant content to attract buyers. While many of you agree that you need it, very few are actually producing and publishing it. In order to get to awesome, you must first discover a few things about yourself and your business:
- You must know what makes your business different than your competitors’. Why do people buy from you? What core values and beliefs make up your business ‘brand’?
- You must be able to describe in detail who your ideal customers are. In the new age of Google Panda 4.0 the more you know your customer, the better you’ll be able to reach them.
- You must know what your goals are and write them down regularly. In today’s example, I’ve done just that with items 2 and 3.
2. Grow Your Likes and Increase Engagement
Grow your community on Facebook to mirror that of the real life community around your business. In the salad days of Facebook, people would like your page and then they’d see all the content you posted. That’s simply not the case anymore. The good news is that Facebook ads deliver great results (when done correctly) for not a lot of budget. Use Facebook ads these two ways:
- Ads to Grow Page Likes. Target those ideal customers you described in detail earlier with delightful reasons to like your page.
- Page Post Engagement Ads. Promote certain posts that are getting better organic results. If your audience likes something (and you can judge this by looking at your Insights) then there’s a good chance more will like it if you serve it to them by paying to promote it.
Keep in mind that a large amount of Likes does not mean that your page is succeeding! You must have high engagement to match it. If not, it won’t matter how many people like your page because NO ONE will see your posts. In the next step, we’ll cover the strategy to generate leads. If your strategy is only about growing likes and not about driving users to your website, you’re doing it wrong. You can’t stop at growing Likes. You can promote a well done value added post that drives actions on your own website OR you can promote “likes” on your Facebook page where people are likely to never see or hear from you again. One boosts profits and the other boosts ego.
3. Get Leads
Now that you’re building a nice size audience of prospects, it’s time to go for the gold. Use your Facebook page as the welcome mat for the sales process; a path to close the sale.
- Create a marketing campaign to attract eyeballs.
- Share that content on Facebook and promote it using Facebook ads.
- Drive those who click to a landing page on your website.
- Collect their contact information and follow up.
- Track the traffic from Facebook to your landing page using the tracking pixel (provided by Facebook in your ads manager).
It’s time to reboot the way you think about Facebook and other social media. Every marketing effort’s goal is to ultimately generate leads and every business’ goal is to make more profit. Improve your process using Facebook to generate leads and sales.