Let me tell you a story about how one long-time business added Facebook to their marketing and accelerated their growth.
I met one of the owners of Workamper News, Steve Anderson at a mastermind meeting. We were both members and we talked many times over meals and on breaks.
Workamper News is a community for RVers who travel in their RVs or want to travel full time in their RVs, who are also looking for ways to either reduce their expenses or who want to earn some extra income in a fun place doing a job they enjoy.
I could see what Steve had and the advantages of using Facebook to market his business, but as an experienced business owner, he didn’t see the possibilities right away.
Here are the reasons why I was so sure that Facebook would work for them:
- They had a large email list they communicated with regularly (They jumped on the email marketing bandwagon in the mid-90s).
- They had an active website that many of their members and people exploring the possibility of Workamping came to often (Again, the first website was put up in the mid-90s).
- They had an active Facebook page with over 15,000 Likes and the fans were engaged in posting, Liking, commenting, and sharing the posts from Workamper News.
- They had a large library of articles and information that RVers found valuable.
- They had a recognized name in their industry and they are well liked by their audience.
- RVers are active on Facebook. After all, even though they are living their dreams, they want to keep up with family and friends all over the country, and Facebook is a great way to do that.
All of these items are assets that can be leveraged into success on Facebook. When you combine these assets with offers that your audience likes, you can really amp up your results.
After some consideration, Steve decided to “test” Facebook and see what might happen.
We started by taking Workamper’s email lists and uploading them to Facebook.
Steve had an email list of 10s of thousands of people that we uploaded to Facebook. This let him reach these people in a different way. Yes, you can email them for free, but do you have 100% open rates in your emails?
When you combine Facebook ads with emails both delivering a similar message, you’ll find that the response from both types of media will improve.
The next step we took was getting the Facebook pixel onto Workamper’s website. Until you put the pixel on your site, Facebook doesn’t start collecting data. Once you start collecting the data, you can target the visitors to your site with messages when you choose to.
Next, we moved to their Facebook fans and the friends of their fans. This group is very receptive to the messages we sent them. We told this group about any new events we were having or any new products we had, as well as offering people who weren’t members the chance to become members.
We took advantage of Workamper’s large library of articles by promoting information from their library to these different groups of people. This helped strengthen Workamper’s great reputation within the community.
All of this ensures that Workamper’s audience kept growing and that they were more engaged than ever.
What has this enabled Workamper to do?
Workamper has been able to add over 30,000 new intro members in the past year. Since then many of these people have taken the next steps to become full-fledged members.
Facebook has also enabled Workamper to sell their Training Triad course they created in combination with Terry Cooper from The Mobile RV Academy. This is a live 5-day course that teaches the students how to fix 80% of the issues that they could have with their RVs.
This course sells for $1,644 and over the past several years we have helped sell 100s of these courses using Facebook.
Facebook is also used to fill webinars for Workamper. When Workamper wants to talk about a new product or service, it is announced via Facebook and many signups are generated. We talked about generating sign ups to webinars in another blog post, if you are interested in learning more, you can access that article here.
Workamper also uses their Facebook audiences to sell out their yearly gathering (Workamper Rendezvous), which is held each fall in Heber Springs, AR. Once the event information is put together, they use Facebook to promote it to interested parties.
Workamper is using Facebook in many ways.
They are creating a steady stream of new customers who are being introduced to the idea of Workamping, and in many cases, they are enabling their members to live the life of their dreams much sooner than they anticipated.
Next, they are staying connected with their existing members, helping them to live the life they want a little easier. This has helped Workamper keep their members for a longer period of time.
Along with staying longer, their members are also are more willing to buy more from them. They sign up for events sooner, and they regularly purchase products from Workamper.
All of this has helped Workamper grow and thrive over the past few years. The combination of a great product and promoting it in many different ways (including Facebook), is a powerful combination.
If you have an existing business and you want to find out how Facebook can benefit you, Click Here to schedule a free 30-minute consultation call. We’ll look at the resources you have now and where you want to go, and put together a plan that will enable you to use them to their maximum benefit. After we talk, you’ll have a plan, and if it makes sense for us to work together we can help you implement your new plan.
Have a great day!
Brian Hahn