Facebook is truly one of the wonders of the modern world. It allows friends and family to connect and stay close, even if they live a world apart. But another way Facebook has changed the world is the way people do business. In a lot of ways, buying and selling has become infinitely easier. Connecting with customers and building relationships with them has improved as well.
Let’s take a look at several things you should know when running your business on Facebook.
1) Facebook isn’t great for direct sales. When I say that Facebook is amazing for buying and selling, there’s a bit more to it than that. It’s great at generating traffic, building an audience, and interacting with your customers, but if you’re expecting to make immediate sales, then you’ll most likely be out of luck.
Facebook itself says it’s about building relationships. When the majority of users sign on, they’re not typically looking to buy anything. What works best is a method called ‘relationship marketing’. Relationship marketing isn’t focused on making direct sales or an ‘intrusion’ form of selling by always targeting new clients.
Relationship marketing focuses on keeping the customers you already have and building a repertoire with them. There’s great value in the long term by advertising this way. So if you want to make immediately sales, Facebook is not the right platform for you. But if you’re interested in actually having a relationship and building trust with customers, then you’re on the right track.
2) Make friends before making the sell. As we discussed above, Facebook is all about relationship marketing. The way you do this is by creating Facebook ads to build up your page. Your ads, when target properly, will attract users to your page. Once they follow your page, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to build a relationship with them.
Facebook marketing is slow and methodical, but will lead to amazing rewards on the back end. Most marketers use Facebook as a means to drive traffic to their sales funnel. They spend the time up front building the relationship and trust so it’s easier to journey with them through the different stages of your funnel. Taking the time to get to know your followers is key to your success.
Another great advantage to Facebook marketing and building relationships is all the data you can extract from your pages. You can interact directly with your followers, conduct polls, ask questions, and find out ways you can improve the way you do business. You can follow trends to ensure you stay ahead of the curve.
3) Have long-term goals in mind. It’s incredibly easy to spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads simply experimenting to find out what might work or what doesn’t. If you’re spending that kind of money, what are you accomplishing, not having any goals is a waste. When you spend money in business, you should be gaining something of value.
Since you’re not going to find instant sales through Facebook ads, plan long term. What are your advertising dollars going toward? Do you want more likes on your page? More traffic to your website? Plan out different stages with goals in mind for each stage so your money isn’t going to waste. A quick one-week ad campaign probably isn’t going to make you rich.
Facebook is an amazing platform that can help grow your business in so many ways. With that being said, it’s important to keep in mind exactly what Facebook does and how it operates. It only works if you use it as it was meant to be used.
