What do bicycles, marketing software, and luxury travel all have in common?
They’ve all sold like hotcakes, with the help of Facebook!
Facebook can be a powerful sales tool for any small business looking to grow, and the company’s favorite success stories prove their case:
• State Bicycle: regularly enjoys $500,000 in annual sales through Facebook
• Hubspot: sales increased 71% using Facebook
• Luxury Link: site visits increased 30% using Facebook, and sales doubled
And this isn’t just Facebook tooting its own horn. In a recent study by Aggregate Knowledge, it was learned that companies with media plans that include Facebook activity see 24% more sales than others.
So, how can you get in on this action? Here are a few tips:
Don’t sell
Or at least, don’t spam. Your posts should very rarely be “sales” posts (perhaps 10% or less). Focus instead on user engagement.
If you’re a bakery, for example, post a photo of a baking disaster and ask users to share stores of their own miserable kitchen failures. Then, offer tips to help them avoid the same mistake next time.
Activity like this will earn you likes, increase fan loyalty, and will ultimately increase sales indirectly. And once you’re involved in a conversation, you could always drop a comment like: “If you want to see what I mean by heavy cream being the key to dense cupcakes, swing by and try out our new purple velvet flavor! We’re sampling it out this week and would love some feedback.”
Ways to increase sales will arise organically when your fans are engaged, and will be received a lot more favorably than: “Buy our cupcakes! We need money!”
Provide discounts
Everyone loves a deal. If you want to make your Facebook page a hot destination, post a deal or discount every now and then. It doesn’t have to be anything drastic, but should be something that rewards people for keeping up with your business. It’s simple: what people are rewarded for, they’ll do.
Once your page is seen as valuable, activity will increase (and so will sales)!
Invite people to events
Social media is all about connections and bringing people together. Invitations to events are a natural item to post on your wall. They could be for a special event at your location, an invitation to check out your stall at a fair, or a notice of something you aren’t directly involved in that your fans might be interested to hear about. Events provide a way to enrich the connection by developing it offline as well as online, and “3D” fans can provide a lot of information to you about your core audience.
The things you learn from meeting your fans will help you tailor your offering and can help boost sales tremendously.
Enable sales within Facebook
Why ask people to travel over to your website when you could simply book a sale within Facebook? F-commerce, as some have called it, involves tweaking your Facebook page to allow fans to place orders without ever leaving Facebook. By removing a barrier to sales, your sales can only increase.
In addition, after a fan has made a purchase, they’re in a prime position to post about it, so the sales cycle can continue naturally. For this reason, social media can be very powerful for gaining recommendations, spreading by word of mouth, and earning your business “viral sales.”
How mobile apps and mobile websites can help
Increasingly, users are browsing and enjoying social media through their mobile devices. In fact, if current trends continue, mobile usage will soon overtake desktop usage. If your business publishes a mobile app or mobile website that includes Facebook functionality, you will be riding a cresting wave that could ultimately create the bulk of your sales and leads.
The opportunities presented by Facebook are almost incalculable. Make the most of them, and your business might well reap the benefits.
