Operating
a home based business is hard. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. It's
hard because no one will knock on your door and give you business, you have to make
it happen. Unless you're going to knock on everyone's door showcasing your
product line (bad idea!) you have to find new ways in the digital world to get
traffic. The best place, by a distance, is Facebook.
Have
you got started?
Do
you have a public page for your business? If not then this should be on
your to do list, today! Create a page of
your business or brand; your business name should be easy to
spell, don't include .com or Company at the end. Keep it short. Once
you have 25 Likes you can set a custom URL to your page
(www.facebook.com/your-business-name)
If you
have a personal page then you want to be the Administrator of your business
page. With this option you can invite all your personal friends to Like your business page
to show support. The more the better. Before
you invite friends and acquaintances you need to decide what type of content
you want to upload. Think of your page as your shop window. Do you
want people to stop and look in because they saw something they liked? Of
course you do, that's the purpose of a window. That's also the purpose of a
Facebook page. Grabbing attention with engaging content. It could be your best
selling products, your skill in design, funny, likable pictures or
catchphrases, but always keep your personal and business affairs separate. My advice; upload pictures of all the
work you have done for your customers. Choose the best looking work that has a
higher possibility of engagement. The quality of your photos are important. You don't need to have an expensive camera or flash to take a clear, attractive picture of your work. The
best pictures I have seen have been taken using natural sunlight, you'd be
surprised how much better a photo looks set outside with flowers in the
background compared to a solid black or grey backdrop using artificial light.
If you are going to use a backdrop, look for solid white with no shadows.
Tag.
Are
you more likely to buy something if your friend bought it? I would. With a
simple click you can advertise to all your customers friends what you just made for
them. Tagging will
make all the difference to whether your Facebook page will substantially help
increase revenue.
Firstly, ask if your customer is on Facebook? If so,
become friends with them from your personal page. It's good to stay in contact
with someone who could be a customer for life. But this also gives you the
option to tag your new friends name in the photo. By doing this you advertise
your product on their wall, encourage engagement and you will start to
notice strangers (friends of your friend) compliment your work. If a stranger
makes a comment, this might show up on their status increasing your audience
even further. And so on…
Tagging your buyers name can be tricky. If their name does not show up in the
drop down link it doesn't mean they don't have an account. You'll need to find them a different way by tagging the picture from your
personal page. Let me explain; when you have a personal page and you have a
business page, it is essentially two users. When tagging you may have to switch
from using your business page to using it as yourself. In the top right hand
corner (the wheel) you have an option to switch users. In the first picture above I
am using my personal page to tag Julie White from Blackpool (my
sister). I easily did this by searching for my business page as myself (I
did not change users) and now I have a lot more options. On the right you will
see that I am unable to tag Julie's link if I am logged in as the business page
user.
Confusing I know, but you will get the hang of it. This is the difference
between gaining a strong and loyal fan base and having a flat, idle page with 9 fans.
Be
wary on how many posts you make. If you post too much too soon, you could clog
up someone's news feed. Then, your fans may turn off your notifications and
they'll never see your posts again. You won't know how many of your fans have
turned off your updates so make sure you don't irritate them only by posting
once a day, four to five times a week. My
advice; Post in the afternoon, around 1pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays
& Sundays; The schedule is not too important but those days are a good mix. There is no danger in taking a brief hiatus but
try to post at least once a week to keep yours fans engaged. Don't share other business page posts. Sharing is for personal use, not for your business. If a manufacturer posts a quality picture of a product you sell, save the picture and post it on your own page. That way, if one of your fans wants to share the picture they are advertising your page, not someone elses. Facebook offers a lot of help on these issues. And there are many social media businesses that specialize in this kind of thing. But I think you can manage it on your own without paying someone a lot of money to do. See this link for tips on customer interaction and engagement; http://on.fb.me/XzTnCx
Lastly,
make a comment on each picture. In this picture I put "How Sweet… if you would like a ladybug for
your little one please contact us for more details."
Nothing pushy or pretentious. I don't advertise a call to action on every
photo, but you are running a business page and you want people to like the
photo and ask you questions if they are interested in purchasing. You will see
the first comment on this page asks "How
much are these?" I've
no idea who this person is and she wouldn’t have known our brand if it were not
for Facebook. After responding to this question I will follow up with her a
week later to see if she is still interested. Sometimes people just need a
reminder.
Marketing
Ever
seen those ads on the side of the page. Have you ever clicked on them and if so, why? Was it the picture, the text or the topic? The beauty of Facebook Adverts is your can
target selected groups down to their interests and living status. This is why
advertising on Facebook is far better than Google Adwords (in my opinion).
Proven strategy. In
November 2012 I helped out a successful vendor of ours with a promotion on Facebook
Adwords. You may have seen this type of promotion before and it works for
almost anything, but for small business boutiques like yourself this is
tremendous and the cost is a fraction of what advertising used to be. It's
called Share To Win. The results were fantastic! Spending $60 in Adwords brought in eight new orders and 200 new Likes to her page. Here's a promotion we did recently.
Before
you create an advert you need to create your post. You need your image to stand out because it will only be 1" big on the Adwords. I am willing to help design you your own flyer with the appropriate content. See above a custom flyer I
made for Lauren Turley @ Celebrate! With Thread using her own work. . I
advertised her flyer on my page and she did the same on her page. The
competition is a chance to win a personalized Cubby and you can enter for free
simply by sharing the post. The reason you want your fans to share your page is
because they are advertising your business by doing so. Each share can reach hundreds of
new people who learn about your company and what you sell. There is no barrier
for you to overcome when you are offering a no strings attached free draw, just
share to enter. You'll see instant interaction and the number of new likes
you get will go up by the hour. All you are doing is giving up the costs of one
Cubby & optional advertising costs. There are no downsides to this style of
promotion.
Upload your flyer and click on the star icon to Highlight the post which expands it to the whole screen.
The
one condition you have to enter the draw is that everyone enters publicly. If
they enter privately (only me) they do not advertise your page to their friends
and their name does not show up on the Shared List. At the
close of the draw you will copy all the names that shared the post. Quite
possibly, only 50% of the names will appear compared to the number that
actually shared. There's nothing you can do about that, you don't know the
names you can't see.
Facebook have guidelines on what they will allow as a paid ad, and they are not very specific. You may fall foul of their 20% text to image ratio, so keep words on your image to a minimum. There is also a ban on call to action post and visible prices. Very odd, but if you keep the post simple it should clear the high bar.
It does not have to be a "Share to Win" advert. You could say, "all new fans that like our page will be entered..." but that disqualifies your current crop of fans. Another idea who be to say, "Anyone who wants to win a Cubby tell me in the comments" so all fans that comments "I want one" will be entered. Easier to manage and you can go viral with it because your fans comments will show up on their news feed.
Once the draw ends you will need to collect all the names
from the list and number them. This can be painstaking. I have yet to find an
easy way to do this so if you find one please advise. I give each entrant a
number and draw a random number from www.random.org
Announce the winner and congrats!
Create
an Advert
I am advertising my page and promoting one of my posts. By
default it will choose your latest post, which should be the Share To Win
competition. Do not add any more posts or comments on your page as
you want your free competition to stay on top for all new visitors.
Advertise in your own country only. You can limit it by choosing you local region but that may only reach a few thousand. I chose Location US, Gender Female (women are more active and engaged on Facebook) ages 21 & up and because you are promoting a children's gift, on family status click "Expecting Parents" "Parents 0-3 & 4-13" I also selected Baby Boomers for a possible grandchild gift. This has the possibility to reach 20 million people. Of course, it's never going to reach anywhere near that amount, but 1% is still 200,000 possible customers.
All that is left now is deciding how much you spend. This is entirely up to you but the more you spend the more your advert will stay live. If your competition is open for three days, I would suggest budgeting for at least $15 a day. Considering the costs advertising in the past, this is a minuscule budget, but the results will be well worth it!
Your ad would appear like this:
Promoting one of your posts to your fans and friends of fans is an easy less complicated way to getting attention. You will pay to show up on your fans friends timeline. If you have over 500 fans already, this is a good way to reach a larger audience. Choose of of your favorite posts and ask people to show support to your page.
$50 in Free Advertising. Facebook
have offers regarding free credits and you should take advantage when they
do. Do an internet search to find other tips on accessing the promo, buy my tip, if you have never advertised
before, simply click on Create an Advert and browse around the options.
You don't need to select anything at all. I think Facebook flag all accounts
that show interest in advertising. Hopefully, you will get an email that offers
you a free $50 in advertising credit along with a promo code. You may need to
reach 50 Likes to achieve this, so again get your friends, family and customers
to like you in order to get that credit.
Website
How is
your website? Do you have plans to spend thousands of dollars on a brand new
"contemporary" look. Please, let me stop you right there! This might
have been the thinking ten years ago, but websites are useless if no one knows how
to find it. If you are selling unique boutique gifts like the Cubbies, you're
just not going to get sales coming in from your website. It rarely happens. The
best source of sales come from someone who saw a personalized gift you made for
a friend and you gained a referral from it. The next best is one of your fans
seeing a new post of a product or design they haven't seen before, and then you
have new reorders some satisfied customers.
Our
most successful vendors get all the right comments on their post
"How much
is this…"
"This is so cute, my son would love…"
"Can I get
it in Blue…"
"How do I order?"
With a website there's no interaction. No
positive comments to see and no mutual friend connection. My advice; have the URL of your business page
your new website link. Or redirect your current website to your business page.
Why not, it shows everything your website does and more. You can show the
contact details in the About section and you can create a folder with all your
product lines. There are plenty of online companies that can install a
shopping cart on your business page. Take a look at Soldsie (www.soldsie.com) their free
application can take orders through the comments section on your posts which
will make life really easier. Try other internet searches for "Facebook
business page apps" Most are free so take advantage. You may have to pay a
small set up fee but don't pay over the odds, if someone wants a product that
they saw from your business page they can simply send you a message asking to
buy. A shopping cart is just a way to make things easier.
I
hope you learned a lot from this blog post. People who already knew this
probably have an very active page that generate a great stream of business from it. They have a great head start on you but at one point they started with 0
fans. It may have taken two or three years to work up to 10,000 but the costs
associated with building and maintaining a business page is zero, you only have
to put in the labor to keep the content updated, so be patient. Stick to what you're good at,
don't try and compete with the big guys; you can’t and you don't need to.
There's no 'get rich quick' schemes out there. To become financial self dependent takes
a lot of hard work and not a lot of pay in the beginning. I worked building
Cubbies up for two years without paying myself a cent. I kept telling myself, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Lee
Cubbies
