If you’re like most companies today, you have a Facebook page. You also are not 100% sure why you have a Facebook page. You may have a few vague answers if someone were to ask you why you have a Facebook page:
- It’s part of our social strategy
- It’s 2017, everyone has a Facebook page
- We use it to build a sense of community around our brand
But deep down, you probably want to know how to turn more of those people who follow you and engage with you on Facebook into paying customers. As marketers, we want to know the ROI.
There are two problems with this desire of ours. First, the strategies that have worked for us on other digital channels are almost definitely not going to work on Facebook. Second, the way we measure the success of other channels won’t work on Facebook.
To solve the first problem, we must build a new strategy. And to solve for the second, we have to change the way we measure success.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to Facebook for brands. But the actions listed below are key parts of the most successful strategies that have been developed to solve these problems to date:
- Give people a reason to engage with your brand – perhaps you offer the kind of content they can’t get anywhere else. Perhaps you offer special deals, discounts, contests, and other promotions. Perhaps you highlight their work or lives in some way. Whatever it is, you have to give them a reason to come after you build it.
- Spend the money necessary to grow your reach – many marketers don’t want to hear this but nowadays it’s almost impossible to significantly grow your audience on Facebook without paying to advertising or boost your content. The key is to be smart about how you spend that money, targeting the right content and ad types to your target customers.
- Drive people to your website – it’s all well and good to create a piece of content, or engage with fans in ways that are contained to Facebook’s platform. But the real impact to your business will come when you get people off of Facebook and onto your website. You can do this with links to content or new product information.
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) – the path to conversion on your website should be well thought through and constantly tested for weaknesses. Conversion rate optimization is the process of fine-tuning this path so that more of the people who land on your website turn into customers. Start by analyzing the data you already have and see where people are most likely to drop off. Get an outsider to traverse your site and find out how to do it. Then start filling in the gaps and making it easier for visitors to find what they need.
- Drive sales with promotions – though Facebook is not, and should not be treated as, a sales channel, that does not mean you can drive business with valuable offers. Take advantage of post and ad types that highlight discounts and time-specific offers that are exclusive to your Facebook followers.