Why does your business have a Facebook page? If the answer isn’t on the tip of your tongue, here are a few examples.

  • “It helps build our brand.” (Do you want to brand, or do you want to sell?)
  • “So we can connect with our customers.” (When was the last time you posted something?)
  • “So we are out there.” (They may need Mulder and Scully on this one.)
  • “Well, I’m not exactly sure, mainly because we were told we needed one.” (Finally, honesty.)

Social media today is like having a website a few short years ago. If you didn’t have a website, you were basically invisible online. Everyone was rushing to type in the big WWW to check out business websites, and if you weren’t there, you were missing out on all that activity (plus, you just weren’t cool).

Then, before most folks even delved into search engine optimization and how to make their websites convert visitors (if they got any) into clients, the world of social media cropped up like a Chia Pet on Miracle Grow. The biggest bad boy on the block quickly established itself and still sits as king of the social mountain: Facebook.

Working Facebook

OK, so you have a Facebook page, now what? Sure, having a Facebook page is crucial, and it is likely that a potential customer will check out your page at some point during the sales cycle, but is that all there is to it?

In a word, no. You can’t just set up a page and pull in new customers. And having a page that is dead is basically worthless. You have to work it, if you want it to work. That means the following.

  • Include an attractive graphic header that lists your services.
  • Post regular content (i.e., daily, and at best, multiple times per day) that is engaging to your target market, not just sales information.
  • Interact with other businesses and your prospects and clients.
  • Run contests and special promotions.
  • Create a high quality, targeted online sales funnel that pulls in leads of prospects interested in your products or services.

Funneling Sales

“Create a what?” you ask. An online sales funnel is simply a way to target advertising to prospects that takes them through a process to collect their contact information, allows them to contact you themselves or gives them the ability to purchase your product and service right there.

Sales funnels, if created correctly, are gold, and if you know what you are doing, Facebook can be your business gold mine.

Here’s an outline of how to create a sales funnel that pulls in quality leads.

  1. Create an eye-catching Facebook ad.
  2. Use very specific demographics to target people who have the best chances of being interested in what you do (by age, location, gender, interest and many more parameters that Facebook allows you to use when targeting).
  3. Create a quality landing page that the prospect is directed to once s/he clicks the ad (this page will do the job of encouraging the prospect to take an action, usually leading the person to fill out a form, leave an email address, call you, etc.)
  4. Follow up on each lead ASAP — get ’em while they’re hot.
  5. Make sure all leads are loaded into an autoresponder campaign so that automatic emails follow up with each and every prospect who does not purchase immediately.

Tell, and Sell

If Facebook is not second nature to you by now, here’s a tip: Your business page and Facebook advertising are two separate things. They do work together, but one is designed to sell (the ads and sales funnel), and the other is designed to tell (your Facebook business page is where you post content, connect with your prospects and clients, and so on).

If you are not already doing this, the time is now. Your clients and prospects are on Facebook, and the platform allows you to pull in leads day after day, week after week, if you know how to do it properly.

If you get your business active on Facebook, deliver offers to your audience that it wants, and have a system in place to capture leads, you can greatly increase your client base and bottom line revenue using the big social behemoth, Facebook.

Mac Cassity is the owner of Mid Atlantic Social Media & Marketing, in Ellicott City. He can be reached at 877-536-6546.