Businesses are always looking for innovative ways to attract new customers. This comes as no surprise seeing as having a steady source of new customers is critical for any company operating in the service industry.
Facebook has become a powerful tool with which to achieve this. This ultimate guide outlines the essential things you need to know to use Facebook to grow your customer list.
Involve the whole team
Social media posting requires you to be organized when it comes to scheduling regular posts. Updates with rich content like photos and videos can get the most engagement but curating this content takes time, dedication, and focus. Encourage everyone in your team to become a social media advocate of your business.
For business operating within the field service sector like plumbing for example, incentivize your technicians to take before and after photos, provide answers to frequently asked questions, and share funny or interesting moments while on the job at work.
Sharing rich content that can be managed and scheduled by the social administrator can be made really easy by using business management technology such as Jobber. Jobber has been designed specifically to support companies operating within the field service sector like plumbing, cleaning and landscaping. The software acts as an all-in-one platform to streamline business operations such as appointment scheduling, route optimization, invoicing and payments.
The app can be fully integrated with Facebook so that data from the CRM can be used to create targeted ad campaigns and any content you upload can be designed and published from the platform.
Show off your service and products
The culture of social media is inherently one of promoting a positive image of yourself. As a business, you can take advantage of it and integrate it as a part of your marketing tactic.
To attract and wow your prospects and customers, and engage them in conversations, make it a point to post photos or videos of your latest job orders or on-site work with the help of your technicians. Using the plumbing example, before and after pictures can be a perfect way to showcase your expertise and skills.
Humanize your brand and build a connection with your followers
Connecting to people on a human level is what Facebook is all about. Make your posts and content relatable and seemingly created or posted by a real human being, with real experiences and emotions.
Some of the ways you can do that are the following:
- Add emojis to your post to warrant an emotional response and connection
- Insert some sense of humor to make your content fun and informative
- Speak using everyday language and avoid business or shop talk
- Engage and reply to comments
- Acknowledge if you made a mistake or disseminated false information
- Add the name of the person who posted the content
- Be helpful and provide solutions
Take advantage of Facebook’s business suite
Social media analytics (SMA) is essential in enabling data led decision making to inform and run your social campaigns whether paid or unpaid. Data insight will inform you what is working and not working so that you can use your learnings to become more and more effective in engaging your audience.
Until July 2021 Facebook Analytics was used to gather insight, but this has now moved to Facebook’s business suite which is a very helpful tool in supporting you to optimize your Facebook business page.
Network on Facebook
You shouldn’t just focus on your followers to grow your customer list on Facebook. You should also interact with business users and pages. Utilize the social media platform and expand your network by finding other companies you can collaborate with.
For instance, you can contact other businesses and partner up with them. For companies in the field service sector, plumbing businesses may want team up with an HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) company. Whenever you deem you share the same audience, it’s a good idea to collaborate and share the social space for mutual benefit.
Check the competition
Aside from partnering with other businesses, you can also use Facebook to keep a close eye on the competition. Find them through Facebook’s search function and be sure to follow them on other social media platforms. The goal is to observe how they execute their social media campaigns.
Say that competitor A is dominating your local business area. You may want to take a closer look at how they conduct themselves on their social media accounts. Are they showering their followers with gifts, promotions, and discounts? Are they heavily invested in engaging in every follower they have? Try to find out what sets their social media strategy and yours. If their tactic works for them, it may well work for you.
Take advantage of influencers
A ‘social media influencer’ is someone with a large following online who is able to gain significant traction on social platforms.
The reason these influencers are popular varies considerably. Some of them may be great at presenting their content. Some may be experts in their field. And some may be good at amassing people. Whatever the reason, it’s in your best interest to utilize them to your advantage.
There are multiple ways on how you can benefit from social media influencers, and some of them are the following:
- Sponsor them to advertise your product or service
- Collaborate with them to produce content
- Imitate how they engage their audience
- Get under their radar and let them talk about you
- Hire the influencer to be a part of your marketing team
Be laser-focused on people who appear to be your model customers
Remember, not all your social media followers will become customers. Some of them will never do business with you.
With Facebook, you have the power to cherry-pick who exactly will see your content and advertisements. You can even choose them based on their behavior. With an established demographic and configuring your Facebook account to only target them, you can tailor all your communications towards them, with a higher chance of conversion.
By identifying your target audience and really understanding who they are, you will be able to optimize the use of your marketing budget to where it can be most effective, thereby getting the most you possibly can from the budget you put in.
Conclusion
Remember that more than half of adults in the US use Facebook. Even if only a fraction of these people need your service or product, be smart about how you utilize your social media account and speak to them directly. You will find your customer list getting ever bigger if you can make this a success.
