How to use Facebookto Attract New Customers

as a Small or Mid-SizeCommercial Trade Business

A Practi

cal G

uide for B

eginners

How to use Facebookto Attract New Customers

as a Small or Mid-SizeCommercial Trade Business

Why does social media matter?

Setting up a Facebook page

Generating content for your Facebook page

Audience engagement

Generating leads through Facebook

Paid campaigns

Compliance

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Table of Contents:

A decade ago, marketing was a drastically different game. Companies used to send out spamy, no-value-added newsletters, run ads in a few relevant publications, perhaps rent out a billboard or two and send out flyers via snail mail – that was about it. What a different world we live in now! Digital marketing has taken over. Thousands of businesses collapsed due to their inability to adapt to the digital era. Early adopters have come out on top. At this point, digital marketing is a term that includes but is not limited to, social media marketing, influencer marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing – the list goes on. “Personalisation,” “A/B Testing,” “Inbound Marketing,” “Optimisation” – these are the terms and the guiding principles of successful marketers.

Now, you may think, “My business has been going well without all these channels. Why bother!” The answer is simple: “If you don’t bother, you will be slowly pushed out by your competitors who understand and utilise the power of digital marketing.” It may not happen tomorrow or in one year, but ultimately it will happen. So don’t wait much longer and hop on the digital marketing train. Take it one step at a time and use this guide to get started with social media marketing.

Introduction

0

20

40

60

80

100

18-29AGE

LAPTOP

%

30-39 40-49 50-64

SMARTPHONETABLET

Australian population is a little over 23 million people. An overwhelming majority of Australians use at least one device to access the internet on a regular basis.

Why does social media matter?

2403

of eligible population that used social media channelsin 2015

Facebook appears to be a goldmine for reaching any audience a business desires.

%

Facebook

93% 28%

26% 23%

17% 17%

LinkedIn

Instagram Google+

Pinterest Twitter

2504

Proportion of businesses that have a social media presence

YET only 30-32% of small and medium-size businesses here are actively present on social media!

30%

Small Businesses5-19 employees

Medium Businesses20-200 employees

Large Businesses200+ employees

32% 56%

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This is your chance to get ahead of your

competition!

Setting up a Facebook page

Step 1: Getting started. Go to facebook.com/pages/create and select a classification and a category for your business and enter its name.

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Step 2: Fill in the blanks. Be thoughtful and strategic about sharing information about your company. For example, since you only get 155 characters to describe your company’s services in the ‘About’ section, make that space count as it’s one of the first things a potential customer will see and pay attention to on your page. Do you want potential customers to be able to reach you by phone? Make sure to add your company’s phone number. Did your company win any awards? Make sure to showcase that information.

Step 3: Add the visuals. As users, we are very visual creatures. Whether we like it or not, we often times subconsciously make decisions based on the visual appeal of a product. Use this to your advantage. Upload a cover photo that is both visually captivating and represents your brand’s identity. Even if you don’t know how to use Photoshop or InDesign, there are numerous free tools online to help you with creating stunning visuals, while requiring no prior knowledge of design programs. For example, Fotor.com offers templates for various types of social media image formats.

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Step 4: Familiarise yourself with admin options. They fall into two general categories: monitoring and modifying.

‘Settings’ in the upper-right corner lets you add other employees in your company as page administrators, editors or moderators. You can adjust audience targeting, publishing rights of users and a number of other settings here.

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To stay up to date with the incoming messages, comments, likes and audience reach, you will be using the navigation panel at the top.

Now that your page is set up, it’s time to populate it.

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Generating content for your Facebook page

There are four main types of content you should be posting on your Facebook page:

• Photos • Videos • Links to articles/pages • Status updates

Your content will typically be a mix of all of the above. Share a video tutorial on using a piece of equipment, share a photo of the last completed project, post an informative article on a new piece of regulation or write an update about an upcoming industry event.

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Always keep in mind your audience before posting content

Clicking ‘Like’ on your business page means that this user will see your company’s Facebook updates in their news feed. As users, we’ve gotten so bombarded by spam and irrelevant content that we’ve become extremely selective about which pages to follow.

Almost 50% of Facebook users access this social network once a day or more. Your goal is to put your content in front of them as much as possible. How do you achieve that? By ensuring that your content adds value to these users.

Example: Say you run a commercial electrical contractors business. Commercial facilities, plants and production sites are probably some of the businesses you are after. How do you add value to this audience through your Facebook page? By offering them content that directly impacts their work. For example, an article that identifies top 10 common mistakes plants make when going through an audit is more likely to grab the attention of your target audience than an article about landscaping.

How often do I post?

This, in fact, is not the right question to ask. While some studies show that pages with fewer than 10,000 like should post less frequently to increase the number of clicks for each posting, what you should primarily focus on is quality. It is better to post less frequently, but to post content that is informative and relevant.

Post consistently. Social media marketing is about commitment. You will not see the results immediately. However, growing your social media presence and learning to generate leads through it will yield results eventually.

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Audience engagement

Your company’s Facebook page should be used as a communication channel. It is there to get a wider audience to notice your business and its services. Therefore, it can’t be a one-way street. You can’t bombard your network with content without listening to what you audience has to say in return.

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Ways of engaging an audience

There are numerous ways to engage your audience. Once you network starts growing, you will notice patterns on what grabs your audience’s attention and gets it to respond. These are some of the ways to get you started.

1. Ask questions“What type of lighting do you prefer in an office?”“What was the biggest impact of regulation XYZ on your business?”“What type of installation…?”You get the point.

2. Tag relevant partiesWhen posting an article about a new development in company X (say a potential customer), tag that company’s Facebook page. It’s a simple way of increasing your chances of getting noticed by a prospective client.

3. Run competitionsWant to get some warm leads? Run a competition. For example, post a picture related to your business and ask your network to like it for a chance to win a free consultation on their XYZ needs. Get in touch with the winners and set up a meeting!

4. Engage in a dialog.Follow Facebook pages of other businesses and leave comments on their posts.

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Generating leads through Facebook

One of the easiest and most effective ways to capture information on a potential client is by getting him/her to leave his/her contact information behind. Keep in mind, though, that most of us receive dozens of spam emails on a daily basis.

As a result, we are very cautious about giving away our information. No one will do it for no reason. Not one single person.

As a business, it is your job to give your audience a reason.

It is never too early to try to monetise on your Facebook presence. By “monetise” we mean generate leads.

It may not yield great results at first, but as your presence on this social platform grows, so will the number of leads.

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1. Create an e-book. What you are reading at the moment is exactly that – an e-book. It’s a short document that contains useful information for your target audience. Say you run a business in the construction industry. You are targeting real estate developers. An e-book on ’10 Tips to Ensure Compliance with Zoning Regulations’ is likely to be of interest to your target audience. Use Facebook to promote the e-book and ask those interested in getting access to it to leave a few pieces of information about themselves – name, company size and an email address, for example. Once you manage to create content that generates lots of interest, your database of prospective clients will start to grow. Utilise it to send these people relevant offers and news.

2. Run competitions.In the previous chapter we mentioned competitions as a great way to increase engagement. It is also useful to generate leads. Come up with a prize that would be appealing to your target audience – a free consultation, a 30-min training, etc. – and ask your audience to do something in return (to like your status, share your status, leave a comment, etc.). Follow up with the winners.

3. Launch paid campaigns.If your presence on social media is not yet strong enough to draw in traffic organically, consider purchasing ads. See the next section for further information.

Here are some tips to get your lead generation going:

16

17%

SmallBusiness

MediumBusiness

LargeBusiness

32%46%

Paid campaigns

It takes time to build a network that brings results: to have over 1,000 followers, to see meaningful engagement and to successfully generate organic traffic. If you are not willing to wait that long, there is always an option of investing in Facebook ads. As a small- or mid-sized business you, luckily, will not have that much competition.

Proportion of businesses that paid to advertise on social media

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Facebook offers a range of ad options. Your choice will depend on your goal.

Are you trying to get more followers on Facebook? Do you have a special offer you’d like to promote? Perhaps, you’d like to send people to a specific page on your website? Facebook has options for all of them and then some.

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Types of ads

Since you are still trying to figure out how to navigate Facebook to generate leads and grow your business, let’s put all different types of ads into three goal-categories: expand your audience, generate leads and increase brand awareness.

Expand your audienceThis ad is inbound – it keeps people on Facebook, without redirecting them to other websites. You will use this ad to generate more likes of your business page.

Generate leadsLeads must be captured with a form. Facebook gives you two options: send your audience to a form on your website or generate one within Facebook and export the list after.

Increase brand awarenessThis type of ad is outbound, meaning that upon clicking on your ad, your audience will be directed to a different page (your website, presumably). Say you won an industry award or upgraded your service offerings. You can use this type of ads to let your target audience know about it.

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Target audience

Facebook offers numerous filters to identify and target a specific audience: country/region/city, age, gender, interests, job titles, operating system, industry, mobile device, Facebook behaviour, company, etc.

Based on the criteria you select, you will see the number of people your ad will be potentially reaching. Make sure your audience size is at least 1,000 people. However, be careful about setting up filters for an extremely broad audience (100,000-200,000+). There is a good chance you will be spending money on reaching people not relevant to your business.

Ad content

You have three options for content: text, video and pictures. We are highly visual creatures, which is why we don’t recommend to go for a simple text, but rather to capture your network’s attention with a video or an image. Does your business have a promotional video? That’s the perfect time to use it. You can also create a video out of numerous images – you will see that option when you are setting up your ad.

Compliment your image or video with a short text – a description of your offering and what the audience can expect to happen next (a download of an e-book, a free consultation, etc.). Make sure your text is clear enough to further filter your audience to only relevant people.

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1. Don't make misleading claims on social mediaExample: You can’t say that you are the only company in Australia to offer environmentally-friendly services if that’s not the case.

2. Don't allow others to make misleading claims in commentsYou are also responsible for the comments made by your audience. Example: your customer/friend/family member makes a comment on one of your posts/ads claiming that your company is the only one in Australia to offer environmentally-friendly services.

3. Don’t make statements on your Facebook that you wouldn’t make in any other type of advertising.Treat Facebook as any other advertising medium, be it an industry publication or a TV ad.

4. Monitor your Facebook pageFor example, if your company has 200 staff members, you are expected to react/moderate comments and content in a prompt manner. If your company has 10-20 employees and 80,000 followers, “the ACCC would expect [you] to devote adequate resources to monitoring [your] Facebook page and to remove any false, misleading or deceptive posts soon after they are posted.”

Compliance

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has a number of rules that you, as a business, must follow in your social media activities. The summary of the rules is below. For more details, visit www.acc.gov.au.

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Sources:

http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-april-2016/

https://blog.hootsuite.com/the-state-of-social-media-in-australia/

https://www.sensis.com.au/content/dam/sas/PDFdirectory/Sensis_Social_Media_Report_2015.pdf

https://www.accc.gov.au/business/advertising-promoting-your-business/social-media

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