My role as a marketing guy for contractors and service business is 70% research.  While doing this research I view roughly 30-50 Facebook Business Pages per day.  I see who, what and how the successful pages are doing, but more often, I see failures or abandoned pages.  So for those that are not my clients, I thought I’d put together some information that will help you on your page.

Your Facebook Business Page, should not be your sole means of marketing, but it should be a big part of your marketing.

Let’s get to it.

PURPOSE

What is the purpose of your page?

Was it to get people to notice your business?  (If so, why do you only have 50-100 followers)  Did you start your page, because it was a free form of advertising?  (Yeah, I know boost this post, reach more people with a paid boost.)

Your page NEEDS to have a purpose, a job.  Much like your saws, ladders, mowers, paint brushes, etc. Your Facebook Business Page is a tool and needs to have a job.  Your ladders job is to get you on the roof or up to a window.  Your pages job, is what you make it.

You can use it for exposure to your audience.  If that’s the case, then your main goal should be to constantly get followers, every day.

It can be to make offers, enticing views with a coupon, a discount, etc.

You can use it to educate your customers and potential customers.

It can be used to drive traffic to your website or blog.

Whatever you want your page to be, it can be.  It doesn’t have to have just one purpose either.  I use mine for multiple purposes.  You should too.  But, there should be one main purpose, the others are sub-purposes and should be treated as such.

GOAL

You need to set up goals for your page.  The first goal, regardless of the purpose is to get followers.  If you have a page and have let’s say 100 followers/fans, make it a goal to grow that amount by 5 or 10 a week.  That is a simple, yet small goal to achieve.  Take five minutes a day and ask people to like and follow your page (More on who to get later in this article).

According to your purpose, your goal may be to get customers.  Well, how many are you looking to get?  You can’t expect to get 5 customers a month if you have 50 followers and those followers are other businesses like yours, friends or family.  If customers are your goal, then you need followers/fans, you need promos, offers and coupons.  Yes Facebook Business Pages have a trackable coupon in the tabs.

What if your goal is to get website visits.  Well, other than posting your sites URL in the post, you need to give them a reason to go to your site.  Mine is blog content or articles and services that align with those articles.  You can do the same.  If you are a landscaper, you can peak curiosity with a “How-to” choose a landscaper on your post, then lead them to that page on your blog or website.  That is content marketing and it really does drive traffic.  Remember when they called the internet the “Information Super Highway”?  Well, it is more so today then ever.

Follow this system for coming up with your goals.  S.M.A.R.T  no matter what you do in life, you should have a goal and the S.M.A.R.T method is the best out there.

You can find out about S.M.A.R.T here

Have a goal.

Need some help with your social media marketing?  Click the $100 bill.

PLAN

Now that you have a purpose and a goal, you need to come up with a plan to achieve those goals.  As an example in the next 30 days (Time Bound) you want to get 5 new customers (Specific, Achievable and Measurable) for your business.  So you need to come up with an offer that aligns with your business (Relevent).

In all marketing, there are the factors of the numbers game.  (The Numbers Game of Marketing)

You want five new customers, and you have 100 page followers/fans, with half of them people who can’t or would not use your service, if they are a friend in the same business as you, so you asked them to like your page, a family member or friend who lives outside of your service area.

So your plan is 5 new customers and the plan within a plan is to get more followers/fans to achieve that goal.

Regardless of your goals, you need to write down a plan, then work that plan.  In our example above, you may make a new customer discount offer or offer a coupon valid by your 30 day goal deadline.  All the while asking people who can be your customers to like, follow and share your page with friends.  DO NOT be shy asking.  You get nothing if you don’t ask.  People aren’t going on Facebook to look for you, you need to hunt them down in searches.  I am not a spammy, stalker or a troll, but that is how you got here today reading this article.  It is part of the grind of business.

CONTENT

If you are doing any amount of research on marketing, you have bound to come a crossed  articles on content marketing.  It is a big part of marketing in todays digital world.

When I first started, content marketing was a slow way of marketing.  I am dating myself a bit here, but I will explain.  Years ago, I remember reading articles in Field & Stream magazine.  In the back there were classified ads.   Off the top of my head, I remember ads for “Make Money from Starting a Worm Farm” or “Raise Quail at Your Home”  This was where you sent a self address stamped envelope and they sent you information (Content) on how to do whatever it is they were pitching.  With that info they sent, they had an offer for you.  It could of been the “Starter worms, worm bedding or eggs and incubators”  But, they had an offer with the content.

A lot has changed, that slow process of snail mail to snail mail made it a slow process.  It was a nurturing process, leading you from the article, to finding out how,  to selling you something.  Content marketing is just that, offering your viewers something to view that leads them down the pipeline from cold customer that you caught their attention with a picture, video or headline (all forms of attraction-content) to your customer.

The easiest way I can put content (Buzzword) marketing in your head, is to say it’s just information you are giving people.  But, it needs to give value to your TARGETED audience.  Here is an article (The Best IMO) on content marketing explained. CONTENT MARKETING

Video, Images and Text should all be in your mix.

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REACH

This is self explanatory, but needs to be discussed because there is a lot to it.

The first is who.  Who are your followers?

Who would help your business more to be a follower, a friend who has the same kind of business you do in another state or the local lady that owns the deli or hair salon in your town or service area?  The type of followers is very important.

What I like for my clients to do is make it a habit to use the search feature on Facebook and type in your town or area.  Go to people and ask them to like your local Facebook Business Page.  Build “your” community of followers.

When you post a ‘Before and After” of a job, tag the customer in the post.  Now all of their friends can see it.

This is not unethical or frowned upon, it is acceptable and common.  It’s not like those times you have been tagged in a post where you didn’t know the person or the topic.  That is a spammy way to get reach.  What those spammers are doing is tagging 10 people in hopes the you and all of your friends see it.  Although, this doesn’t work that well, it did when they first started this spammy hack style of post reach.

Your goal should be an obtainable amount of people in your market area.  Expanding your reach should always be one of your goals.  That way the offer you post, sees more of the RIGHT kind of people.

If you look at the insights we will discuss later in this article reach of the right people for a local business should be in the 3000-10000 people in a week.  Remember, this is targeted (The right people) fan/follower base.

This should be past customers, potential customers, you just bid work for, local business owners, your business network (You have one don’t you) and general people in your area.  The best being past customers, this is what drives referrals and reviews to help entice your prospective customers.  Local businesses may be able to use your service, but there is another benefit, they have a business mindset and refer.  Your network, you need to have one, if not start.  Having your network as a follower/fan keeps you in front of them so they too can refer.  People in general in your area are the cold ones, they are the out of the blue potential customers and customers.  But, I have found they do spread word of mouth.

Build your followers/fans, no excuse, it’s free or can be paid with a boost or ad.   It’s like planting a tree.  The two times its best to plant were 20 years ago or today.

How to Dominate Facebook for Local Contractors

ENGAGEMENT

“Thanks”,  “OK” or hitting the like button is not engagement.  They are conversation stoppers.  You want to talk with people who comment.  Asking questions is a must.  Be friendly and give them a few moments of your busy day, it will pay off.

Engagement helps you build trust, recommendations, referrals (Word of Mouth) and perception online.  It is a top metric to look at.  Engagement is  important to the Facebook God’s because they prioritize posts with higher engagement, showing them in the feed before posts with less engagement. Hence the algorithm system.

Look at the “Who” it is that reaches out to you often through likes, questions, and any other communication.  It could be a good time to look at personas.  Again, that is another article.

Customer Service;

Is starting to go all through social media for some big companies.  It is one type of engagement.

Insights

For Facebook these three are important; Conversion (Page views, calls, messages, website clicks) reach (how many saw your posts), and engagement (like, comments and shares).

Here is an article on insights.  Understanding Facebook Business Page Insights

You will want to look at how they view your page.  Go to page views in the sidebar and click it.  Now where it asks “by device” click it.  See how many are mobile users vs. computer users.

Another that I use a lot is the “people” in the left hand sidebar.  Where they from, what their age, etc.  You can see fans, followers and people reached.  When you look at the “people reached”  you may see that the more people that are not followers or fan saw your page.  That is what you want.  Strive for 5-20% over your fans and followers.

On my page 15% are women, but 20% of the people who view my page are women. What this insight tells me is that it’s possible that women business owners or wives of business owners are viewing my page.  This helps me make the content of my page.

FINAL THOUGHTS

There is quite a bit to it, but it can be done.  I am not going to sugar coat it, it takes time. The average business should spend half and hour a day on their page.  There is a ton of ways to automate your page, but I will touch on this in an article soon.  This is also just showing, explaining the mechanics.  The finesse comes from the copy writing.  But, that is for another article or 20.

Need help?  Get in touch with me.

800-771-9671 or 856-812-3180 (Call or text)

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