In the world of Internet marketing, Google is King. But in the past couple of years, Facebook has also become a viable lead source for many types of service businesses. Marketing on Facebook is very different from Google.
With Google, potential clients are searching for your service. In contrast, with Facebook you are pushing your services to them.
That said, the customer you get from Google is going to be more likely to spend money because they are looking for a solution to their problem, while the typical Facebook lead is either not interested or not ready to buy yet. They need to get to know, like and trust you.
So how do we make Facebook work? In my opinion, the key to Facebook success is timing. The chance of a potential customer viewing your ad at the exact moment they are ready to buy is slim to none. You will need to be showing up in their newsfeed on a continual basis. So, when the time to buy does come, your business is at the top of their mind.
There are two primary methods for a business to market on Facebook. Both methods can be very profitable when executed correctly. The method you choose will depend on your personality and how you choose to spend your time. The first method is free, but will cost you time. You will need to be working on Facebook almost every day. The second way involves paid advertising. It will involve some up-front time to get set up and a little time each week to change up the ads and settings, but far less time that the free method.
Which Method Is Right for You?
Let me ask you this: Are you already on Facebook every day? Do you enjoy using Facebook to communicate with friends and family? If the answer to these two questions is “Yes”, then you may have some success with the free method. If you don’t enjoy Facebook and you want to use it strictly for business purposes, then I highly recommend the paid advertising method or hire a marketing firm to do it for you.
The Free Method
To market your business on Facebook without spending money, you will need to make a name for yourself. I recommend using a personal profile to do most of the posting instead of a dedicated business page. You still want to have a business page, but posting from the business page will only reach 10% to 20% of the people who “Liked” or “Followed” it. A Facebook “Like” or “Follow” is created when someone finds your Facebook Business. If people like what they see on your page, they can give you a “thumbs-up” by clicking a button that says “Like.” This automatically enrolls them to “Follow” your page, meaning your posts will be inserted into their feed at no cost to you.
The reason for this is that Facebook wants you to pay to reach your audience. Furthermore, it’s much more difficult to get people to Like your page as opposed getting them to accept a friend request. I recommend setting up a separate Facebook account for business. I have two accounts under my name so I don’t annoy my friends and family with my business posts. It works great.
The way to really make this method work is to inject your personality into each and every post. This means lots of personal pictures from your smart phone. Use lots of faces of people, animals and local landmarks. You don’t want to come off as a marketer; instead you want to be friendly and tell stories.
My good friend, Sid Graef, owns a very successful multi-truck service business here in Missoula, Montana. He is one of the best Facebook marketers I know, and his rule of thumb is to make all posts valuable, helpful or relevant. Once in a while you can throw in a special offer or some sort of pitch.
I recommend you post every day during the week. Only one of those posts should be directly promoting your service.
You can also run contests for discounts or freebies, but make sure people have to engage. It can be in the form of trivia or identifying a local landmark. You want people to participate and have fun. That’s really what Facebook is about. If you can work with that mindset, you will get more business.
The Paid Method
If you are like many business owners, you don’t have the time or the desire to hang out on Facebook every day. If this is the case, then buying advertising on Facebook may be the way to go. When done correctly, it can generate some steady business.
Remember, I mentioned that timing and repeated exposure is the key to Facebook marketing. The way to accomplish this is with a feature called Retargeting. When someone clicks one of your ads, they receive a piece of code called a pixel on their browser.
This allows you to repeatedly send ads to the same people over and over. Most likely they were interested in your service, but were not in buying mode. But if they see your ad six more times in the next month, you have greatly increased the chances of them picking up the phone and calling you.
Retargeting is so important when it comes to Facebook Ads that I recommend not spending any money with Facebook unless you have this set up correctly.
There is definitely a learning curve when it comes to setting up Facebook and Retargeting Ads. Facebook has some very helpful tutorials. You can also find hundreds of helpful how-to videos that give step-by-step instructions on YouTube.com.
Facebook updates the Ads Manager interface so often that it probably will have changed several times by the time you finish reading this book. The important things I want you to take away from this chapter are the general strategies so you can jump in with a game plan instead of going at it blind.
Secret Bonus Strategy
Here is a strategy that I have come up with to easily double or triple the effectiveness of each and every Facebook Ad. Instead of running ads from your business page like most businesses do, you want to create a separate page that is all about local business reviews in your city.
Then you want pick your ten favorite businesses and write a review post for each one of them. This can be a restaurant, a mechanic, a friend’s business, etc. It doesn’t matter which ones you choose; you just want the new page to have some solid content so when someone checks it out, they will see that it is a legitimate review page.
From now on when you run ads, choose the review page instead your business page. The ad should be a recommendation instead of a pitch. It should say something like “We recommend Elite Home Remodeling for their amazing service…blah blah blah.”
The reason this strategy works so well is because it appears to be coming from a third-party source. Everything should be written in the third person. It is called third party credibility. The trust factor is much higher than if it comes from the business itself.
That’s it! Play with it, use it, modify it and get those calls coming in. At this point you should have enough ammunition to really make your website take off. In the final chapter I want to bring it all together so you can take action and get your Money Machine to really start working for you.
Table of Contents
Intro to Book: The Service Business Money Machine
Chapter 1: The Power of Making It Easy
Chapter 2: Navigation Menus and Pages
Chapter 3: Going Mobile
Chapter 4: Website Look and Feel
Chapter 5: Domains, Hosting and Websites
Chapter 6: Building Trust On The Internet
Chapter 7: Video Power!
Chapter 8: Closing the Deal
Chapter 9: SEO – Understanding the Game
Chapter 10: On-site SEO
Chapter 11: Off-site SEO
Chapter 12: Google My Business FAQ
Chapter 13: Facebook Marketing
Chapter 14: Bringing It All Together
