So before I go on to give you some tips on HOW to get the most out of Facebook, I want to RECAP on WHY it is so important in the first place. Because from experience, if I don’t give you the why – the HOW is irrelevant.
1) It enables INSTANT interactivity to be added to your website at ZERO cost. If you’ve been thinking about setting up a blog or conducting customer surveys or adding video or enabling feedback on your website – e.g. a noticeboard, blog, poll or forum - Facebook allows you to do all of this – and a million times more without having to spend any time or money on programming your website.
2) It’s a fantastic communication tool – second only to email. Once you have a loyal band of followers, you can send messages very efficiently again with zero cost. If you’ve ever heard one of my webinars about email marketing, you’ll know exactly just how important that constant, consistent and relevant communication is. Facebook is getting better all the time at this and enables multimedia embedded within the communications that is just a dream to use.
3) Use it as a referral network. I’m in a not-for-profit business networking club in Cheltenham and each week we meet up and pass business to each other.
The idea being that you develop a list of trusted individuals that you can feel confident in doing business with because you look out for each other. And it works. It doesn’t work overnight because relationships take time. I’ve been a member since July 2009 and my membership has brought me many thousands of pounds of business – as well as making new friends and enables me to source suppliers that I can trust.
But the downside is of course that I have to pay my monthly and annual fees – which come to about a thousand pounds and I have to be there at 630 am each week – rather than being in bed. It’s a small price to pay but all of this can be done on Facebook – and with much, much further reach and zero cost.
Again, it doesn’t happen immediately and it basically involves helping other people, adding value to memberships and groups and actively going out of your way to be someone that others want to do business with. But this is infinitely better that standing around wondering why you’re not getting any leads or sales or spending a fortune on Yellow pages or other advertising that either doesn’t work or is working less and less.
4) Prospecting for New Customers & Target Niche Markets.
Half the battle of succeeding online is to find a niche that isn’t being served or over exploited and then market effectively to it. This has been proven time and time again with regular websites and microsites and niche blogs. If you ever heard me talk about Ebay – for those of you that sell products rather than services – although it can apply to services as well – you’ll know that with a big portal site – half the work is done for you.
The web is a big place so using a place like Facebook and checking out the various groups that almost certainly exist to serve your specific clients means that you have to do a lot less legwork. If for whatever reason that a group – or indeed number of groups don’t exist that will contain either your target market or at least contain people that have access to your target market – then you can simply make your own group.
This leads me on to number 5.
5) Customer Research
What better way to find out what the people in your market wants than by asking them. Traditional ways of doing this would include buying lists, sending out letters or cold calling or standing in the street. Facebook has all the people and groups you could ever want and as long as you don’t annoy people – you have access to as much market research as you can shake a stick at.
6) A Client Management Tool.
Of course, once you have done your research and identified niche target markets and have networked and all the rest then by now you’ll hopefully have some clients to look after. What better way to keep in touch with them and give them ongoing support than to set them up as private individuals in your account that other people haven’t got access to and keep a kind of open diary with them. This way, you have an efficient way to keep all your communications – even invoices and business details together – without having to keep sending and replying to emails all the time.
Half the battle of maintaining customer loyalty is keeping your clients posted as to new developments, dealing with issues as they arise and communicating as well as possible.
Now that I’ve covered just some of the reasons WHY your business should be exploring Facebook as the next marketing channel, I’m now going to briefly offer a few suggestions and tips on how to make it as effective as possible.
End of part 2