Facebook has changed the way we communicate. For business, Facebook is about more than just having a large fan base. What are you doing with your fans? Do you interact with them and how do they respond to your posts? You probably spend a fair amount of time updating and maintaining your page, are you seeing benefits? Are you converting fans into customers?
Your business can improve lead generation and increase sales using Facebook marketing. The key is to understand how to take your fans from Facebook and get them to your website. Developing goals and a strategy is the first step to efficiently gain qualified leads and customers from your Facebook page. Let’s examine the steps to creating the best plan for your business.
Taking the First Step: Create a Plan
There are three steps to address when developing your plan. They are:
1. Quantify Your Goals: Examine your current Facebook analytics closely to determine your current target click through, prospect to lead, and lead to conversion rates. Once you have these numbers, you’ll have a baseline to work with. Now that you have baseline numbers, you will be able to analyze the results of your marketing efforts in the future.
2. Review Your Existing Buyer Personas: They key to increasing your numbers on Facebook hinges on reaching the right audience. Understand who your ideal customers are and the best ways to target them.
3. Create an Integrated and Unified Campaign: Your activities on Facebook should mesh with the rest of your marketing in order to maintain a cohesive brand image. A consistent brand image resonates with audience across all channels. Make sure what you are posting and offering on Facebook is fully integrated into the rest of your marketing efforts.
Establishing an integrated unified outreach effort to potential prospects on Facebook needs to go beyond your existing friend base. Lets examine several methods for increasing your company’s reach on Facebook.
Increase Your Fan Base on Facebook
In order to improve lead generation and increase sales using Facebook marketing, you’ll need to increase the number of people you’re reaching thru the site.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you’re working to increase Facebook fans for your business:
1. Frequency of Posts: According to Bit.ly, the half-life of a Facebook post is only 3.2 hours. You need to post frequently to ensure that people are seeing your message.
2. High Value Unique Content: Keep your posts high quality. Just because you need to post frequently to be effective, mediocre content is of no value. People want relevant, useful information of high-perceived value. Avoid spam.
3. Post at Optimal Times: Study your Facebook analytics to determine when your posts have the most interactions and highest click through rates. This will depend on the focus of your business and varies by industry.
4. Use Visuals and Interesting Images: People often skim their newsfeed or a company page. Use brand relevant, attention-grabbing visuals to make your content stand out.
Posting frequent high-quality unique content takes time that you may not have if you’re running a business. The key to an effective strategy is to organize content creation ahead of time.
Create a Content Calendar
The best solution to the time factor is to create a content calendar that includes what you want to post, and when you want to post it based on your analytics research. This will keep you both organized and up to date.
There are several great social media publishing tool available, like HubSpot’s all in one solution, that will automate your posts. This will keep your information flow consistent, even when your attention is elsewhere during your company’s busiest times.
Your calendar should include everything, from specific offers to industry news that is relevant to your target market. Schedule posts to promote your latest blog content available on your website. Your goal should be to publish diverse content as frequently as possible without sacrificing quality.
By organizing your content creation and automating your posting, you can reap the benefits of Facebook while still focusing your daily efforts on working leads, interacting with readers, creating new posts and monitoring your results.
With a little bit of work it’s possible to improve lead generation and increase sales using Facebook marketing. If you want to learn even more like how to take fans from Facebook to your website and how to turn those fans into leads and customers then download our free ebook, “How to Turn Facebook Fans into Paying Customers.” It’s a step-by-step guide that will help you turn Facebook into a sales generating machine!
