Getting Business From Facebook - for free

I love LinkedIn and wrote an article on how to best use it to get hot leads for your business (see the article here). Now it’s the turn of Facebook...

Facebook is a strange beast, and I mean beast:

• Facebook now gets more traffic than Google
• Over 260 Billion page views a month
• Over 800,000,000 Facebook users
• A growing business use and presence

But speaking from experience advertising on Facebook does not increase the bottom line. It’s cheap and gets traffic but actually getting sales from Facebook adverts has been hard. Until I stopped paying...

Now I don’t pay for adverts on Facebook but I am starting to get traction. Here is my latest figures:

• Reach: People Who Saw Your Posts 10,798
• Up 17,896.7% from previous week

Does that mean sales? No. But keep reading to find out to get more likes, more readers, more exposure and, yes, more sales...

Facebook lets you engage with your target audience. It also lets you capture their details and that is the key to success. Once you have their details you can engage with them and they will buy from you.

The step are simple enough:

1.       Build a business page (not a personal page)

2.       Add great content

3.       Get likes – build your audience

4.       Convert likes to contacts with data catchment

5.       People will buy from you

Some businesses set up a profile for their business as if it were a person. It’s not effective so don’t waste your time. Be professional from day 1.

As with all successful strategies online content is king. Add great content to your Facebook page. Take it from your website and blog posts. If your company has brochures add them too and offer them as downloads.

Every time I post on my blog it automatically posts to my business Facebook page. It has a back link to the blog so drives traffic there. This has the dual effect of adding great content and getting people to my website.

Once you have something worth seeing you can start attracting visitors. Remember that your page must offer great value to the reader. They must want to go there and return. The truth is that after liking a page most people will not go back to it. However they will receive your posts directly on their news feed.  

But be warned: if they do not engage with your content by commenting, liking or sharing it Facebook will notice. After a while Facebook will stop sending your content to their newsfeed. So keep your content informative, of value and engaging. Be fun and quirky too and you can even be controversial so that people comment more.

So how do you get likes?

First step:

1.       Invite your personal friends

2.       Invite your email contacts

3.       Invite your business database

Next step:

Join relevant groups on Facebook. Post on their timeline and attract people to your page. People on Facebook like to stay on Facebook. Make it easy for them. At the same time you can enhance results with offers of benefits if they like your page. This could be anything you can give away for free and preferably via email; like and eBook. To help with this kind of giveaway you can use a service like Rafflecopter. They have a free version which will suffice as the premium is a bit expensive.

Groups are key. Just as on LinkedIn you need to find and engage with groups relevant to your business. Then you post your articles and blog posts with these groups too. I post all my blog posts on my blog, Facebook page and in all my LinkedIn and Facebook groups. Maximum coverage and impact.

Your goals are to increase engagement, build authority and trust. Comments from customers are great here so ask some happy customers to posts some good feedback on your page for you. Once your page gets bigger you can even segment it and have sub groups. You may have a testing group for new offers or ideas; another of existing clients and another for people interested in one area you deal in.

Next put links to your page on your website and blog. Add like buttons everywhere you can and use the send buttons too so that people can share your posts with their friends. This is where valuable information is key to success. Your articles must be worthy of sharing.  

This article is a prime example. I know of one marketer who charged $40 for an information product which said pretty much all that I am. However he left out one vital point about data catchment. You see its all very well having a great Facebook page and lots of likes.  But as I have already said people on Facebook like to stay on Facebook.

So now you have to entice them off and into your data catchment. But let’s not leave just yet. You can use events to get leads and you can use the Raffelcopter system I mentioned earlier. They are both hosted on your Facebook page so that is a big plus.

Of course all of your blog posts and articles will entice people away to your website where I am sure you have great data catchment (if not call me!). But one thing that is overlooked by almost all Facebook business pages is that you can use the "about" section at the top left of your Facebook page. This little box is edited in the admin and called “short description”. Use it as an advert and put your website link in it (use the full http:// version).

Entice people away for a great offer or free product. This section stays on top of the page ALL the time. People will see it and if it’s a good offer they will click the link. Have a look at mine on the Results Marketing System page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/resultsmarketingsystem?ref=hl)

So in a nutshell.:

1.       Great content

2.       Attract relevant visitors

3.       Give value and engage

4.       Capture data

Happy Days! More sales :)

Alternatively: if you don’t have the time to do all of this for your business but would like the results, you can get CR4L to do it for you. We have a package that is guaranteed to work – or you don’t pay!

This is another offer from Results Marketing. See more at http://cr4l.com