Facebook can Increase your sales this holiday season. And you have to get started now. No kidding. Sorry. I know. Who’s got time for social media websites when the holiday buying season is upon us?
Well, you do; that’s who. Don’t laugh. If you’re reading this article, you have a Miva Merchant powered online business and you know enough about my monthly articles (and perhaps even my presentations at the Miva Merchant Conferences) to know that I don’t espouse nonsense. If this wasn’t going to make you money, I would be bothering you right now. Read on, be sociable, and make more money this holiday season.
Facebook –
If you don’t have a facebook page for your business, set up one up now. Facebook provides information and instructions to make things easier. Follow the bouncing ball…
Think of the content you put into a Facebook page as an advertisement, couched in conversational language. In other words, DON’T blare out advertising messages as though they were headlines in print media or a billboard.
No: Buy Now! Sale on Tuesday! Holiday Specials
Yes: Did you see the hot discounts section on mywebsite.com? (link to the url of your website’s specials pages) Someone just bought 100 mini-bones with the pink bow for a baby shower!
Yes: Our annual sale is almost here… can’t wait to see the photos of holiday pooches come in. You DO know that the sale days and photo contest come together, right? Check it all out here. (this assumes you run a contest, a sale and create some cool promotions, photo libraries of your customers’ pets and more around this issue.)
The idea is be creative in your promotions, engage your customers to become more than simply people who send you cash – relationship sales, we used to call it – and then leverage your facebook page to be one more place you can spread the word.
Getting Facebook Fans
Once you have a page up, you’ll want to get some fans. Start with an email to all your current and past customers asking them to ‘like’ your new facebook page (don’t just say, ‘follow us on facebook’ – that’s lame. Say, ‘We’ve just created our first facebook page. It’s fun and it will get even better over time. Follow us so you don’t miss any news of specials, events, and hot deals. See you there!’
Facebook Advertising
The cost of facebook advertising is pennies on the dollar compared to google advertising. This is the hottest tip for online marketers for the holiday season 2010.
Even if you don’t have a single fan yet, you can attract new buyers to your site with amazingly inexpensive facebook advertising. Once again, the wise folks at facebook put up some info on facebook advertising to make this easy for you.
Getting Facebook Ads Right
On google, you know what people are THINKING. You target keywords and searchers find you by typing in those keywords. They’re thinking about what you’re thinking about. On facebook, you know WHO PEOPLE ARE, but not what they’re thinking about at the moment. You target demographics, not keywords. So you’ll need to know something about your customers. In this test scenario, you’d want to target dog/pet owners living in a certain geographic area who mention their pets (indication that the pets are important to them) and who have jobs in a certain category, or some other binding factor – running or swimming or dog shows or dog jumping groups, etc. Now you can
write ads and include images in those ads that VERY TIGHTLY target just those people. Dog jumping group members will respond if you write just for/to them. For example:
Jumping dogs RULE!
Check ’em out –
Put an image of a great dog jumping into a lake with ears flapping, tail going, etc. and link it to a special landing pag on your website where there are lots more photos of same. Hopefully, you’ll get those photos from your customers who are kind enough to share them with you because you’ve asked them to and you have provided a great place for them to share them with their friends. Tight niche market – shared experiences and interests. These are the things that make social media interesting and what can now make your advertisements much more appealing and compelling.
And finally, to help you get started, there are companies that have service packages to help you get started. I’m going to use BlitzLocal to help me make pages. You can reach them at Dennis @ BlitzLocal.com Look for my facebook pages about my radio show CEO Coach coming soon. Oh – and (shameless plug) I hope you’ll listen to the show, Mondays at 10AM PST on WebmasterRadio.fm or download the broadcasts through iTunes.
Happy Sales!
Gillian Muessig
Guest Contributor