Have Your Customers Do Your Marketing For You By Julian Farley | ||
One of the biggest factors for success in any business is connecting with your customers. The more meaningful you can make this connection the more these customers will spend with you and the more they will tell their friends and family about you. I'm going to share with you how most businesses get this ALL WRONG, and what you can do to utilize the #1 most traffic'd website in the world for maximum benefit to your business. If you've ever imagined the power of having a community of loyal brand advocates spreading word-of-mouth about your business, then this article is for you. The absolute best channel for building this business asset is Facebook. Believe it or not, Facebook now has more traffic than Google. Facebook surpassed Google in mid-2010 and has continued adding users at an astounding pace. Currently they have 800 million users, with over 50% of active users logging in at least once a day. Facebook is where your customers are hanging out. They are talking and seeking information for their future purchases. It doesn't matter who you are trying to reach, working moms, senior citizens, pet lovers... everyone is on Facebook. And, Facebook Fans will have the highest customer value of all your customers. Once someone has engaged with you through social media they are much more likely to recommend your business than traditional customers. There are numerous success stories for businesses large and small using Facebook. Kia Motors ran a Facebook Ad campaign that increased awareness of their vehicles 13-points, and allows them to regularly connect with over 89,000 people every day. Victory Motors, a small North American motorcycle company gets their highest conversion rates of any marketing channel through simple Facebook Fan page promotions. Some well known internet marketers use Facebook to bring in $14,000+/week. Despite success stories like these marketers have been wary of Social Media because of it's inability to track all the benefits you receive. What does this mean for you or others willing to take the plunge into Social Media Marketing? It means the door is wide open for you to swoop in and take customers, market-share and valuable insights about your target market away from the competition. How should you approach this unique marketing channel? First, understand where to place value on social media. Here is a chart from eMarketer, who polled professional marketers for the value they receive from social media: The graph above expresses that marketers are largely not worrying about putting an exact dollar value on each Facebook fan or Twitter follower. Even if this amount could ever be accurate, it will never come close to the real value of social media. Social media is the top of the buying funnel. Users here are looking for interesting information and in fact-finding mode. They aren't ready to convert just yet. Start getting prospects engaged with your business today. The 3 biggest advantages for a direct-response marketer to use Facebook: 1. Social media fans have the HIGHEST lifetime value of any customer 2. Social media fans tell your business about more friends and family then anyone else 3. You'll be able to access extremely valuable insights into the psychographics, demographics, interests and social circles of your customers and prospects. Perry Marshall, an AdWords expert that sells PPC training, gained insight from Facebook that over 70% of his customers loved the book "Catcher in the Rye." He then added one sentence to his sales page about the book and saw a 48% increase in conversion rates! These are the types of insights that are impossible to guess. The 2nd step is to know your audience. The more specific you get the better. Put your website, and your competitor websites into www.Quantcast.com to pull out demographic information. Look on Facebook at your competitor's fan pages and see what else their fans are interested in. Read the wall conversations and pickup on things like; standard personality type, unique words, lingo and recurring problems mentioned by your target customers. Make a big list of all the 'interests' you see and brainstorm some you think your customers will have. Think laterally and really get into your customers mind. Here at WorkingMomsOnly.com we serve professional moms. One of our highest converting interests has been 'Fast & Healthy Recipe's'. The 3rd step is for you to create a business Facebook Fan Page. This is the hub of the community you are building. It will serve as the entry point to your sales funnel, feedback loop so you can monitor your businesses perception with prospects, customer service center and act as an instant promotional channel. Hop onto www.oDesk.com or www.eLance.com (I recommend oDesk) and find a graphic designer who has experience building Facebook Fan Pages. There are thousands of them you will get at affordable prices. This is where your landing page tab is designed. Ours looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/WorkingMomsOnly?sk=app_158206150905240 Make sure your tab looks interesting, fun and begs the user to engage with you. Providing some sort of content such as a video, free report or just stating the benefits of joining your community is enough to get high conversion rates and lots of fans. The 4th step is to join groups your target market has joined. You can do this as your business fan page. Get into the conversations on those Facebook walls and provide value. The #1 mistake marketers make here is trying to sell right off the bat. This is not the time or venue for this. You want to genuinely help people with their problems and provide valuable resources. This builds trust, credibility and moves prospects to your Fan Page. View it like virtual karma. The more you give the more you get. The 5th step is to setup a Facebook Ads campaign. Now that you've got some buzz around your business and a fan page its time to turn up the heat and really build the community. Create an ad account and start your first ad. This is where you use your 'interest' and 'demographic' targets from step 2. The key to successful Facebook Ad campaigns is specific targeting. If you are targeting dentists, doctors and lawyers then create separate ads for each. This allows you to have more targeted ad copy which speaks directly to the prospect. You already know what they're interested in, use it to your advantage! The next thing you must do is setup the right kind of ads. To cheaply build your fan base you want a 'Story' ad. To do this you must set your 'Destination' to an internal Facebook page (your new Fan Page tab!). Under 'Story Type' you can select either of the options. See below: This is going to create an ad for you that has the 'Like' button on it. Everytime someone clicks the 'Like' button you get a new fan without paying for it. That's right, it's FREE! Facebook will only charge you when someone clicks your ad and go to your Fan Page (which you'll also get Fans from). Step 6 is to write compelling ad copy. Facebook ads are really simple and fun to do. There are 3 main parts to them. 1. Headline 2. Picture 3. Body The most important part of your Facebook Ad is the picture. It's what gets people to notice the ad. Some quick tips for great pictures are using photos that:
Next, you need a solid headline. One of the most effective strategies is to call out the user based on what you know about them. Are you targeting someone who likes Lexus? Then you must try the headline "Do you like Lexus?" or "Hey, like Lexus?". This gets your prospects attention and speaks directly to them. Lastly, you need copy for the body of your ad that backs up the image and headline. Pepper in multiple benefits and add a call to action. Something like 'Click here to get your free report' or 'Limited time offer for Lexus fans only!'. These work extremely well. The last step to take advantage of all this work is to engage! Get back on Facebook with your new fans and give them valuable news, resources, software, downloads, help and most of all, listen to them. You are bombarded with messages from your kids, marketing messages, family and family everyday. Make a conscious effort to listen to your customers. This is time spent wisely. A really fun and quick way to leverage and engage fans is holding a Facebook contest. Contests on Facebook go viral very fast and when done correctly, will spread news about your business and bring in TONS of leads. We have used a plugin called 'Contest' Burner' http://www.contestburner.com/ to get Fans to spread the word about new products we role out. Ignore social media at your own peril! Social media users will be your best customers. Most businesses fail to recognize the potential of this channel because it's difficult to track things like 'word of mouth' sales and when prospects first became interested in a business. Filled with 'social' people Facebook is the spark that will ignite your free word-of-mouth advertising. |
Thursday, October 27, 2011
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