Let me guess, this is what’s happening. . .
You’ve heard about all the success that others are having on Facebook, and you finally gave in to the temptation and started advertising on Facebook.
And money didn’t come pouring in. . .
In fact, as you put more and more money into Facebook, the only place money poured was into Facebook’s bank account.
What happened?
It sounds so easy, create an ad and watch the money flow in.
All the experts make it sound that easy, as well as those people who say they are making piles of money from Facebook.
What are they doing to make that happen?
Is everyone exaggerating the truth?
Is it a Facebook conspiracy? After all, they control the content. Are they tricking everyone into spending money knowing it doesn’t work?
Actually, it is none of the above.
What happens to most of us is that we don’t have a plan when we start using Facebook. After all, how hard can it be? It seems like all we need to do is set up a quick Facebook page, post a couple times, run a few ads, and our business will take off.
To fix this, there are three steps you need to take:
- Create a plan that details what you want people to do, and what steps they need to take to become your customer.
- Gain knowledge about how Facebook works, so that you can make the best choices to attract the people you want to attract.
- Start running ads (notice that this is the last step).
Let’s see how this works.
First, you have to have a system, sales process, or sales funnel in place. These phrases all are describing the same thing. What they are describing is that: you must have a process for bringing a prospect from “I’ve never heard of you” to “here’s my credit card, please take my money”.
To go through the entire process can take minutes, hours, days, months, or years depending on what you’re selling and how ready your prospect is to buy.
Don’t think everything must happen online, you can go from online to offline and back again in different combinations.
If you already have a defined system that works, you have a great start. Facebook will help you feed more people into your system.
If you don’t have a system that works, you’ll have to build one first before you start spending any money on Facebook.
Next, you need to consider what message you’re going to use, and how is a message that works on Facebook different from a traditional copywriting message?
A Facebook friendly message is focused on the positive, and only brings up a hint of the negative if it brings up the negative at all.
I know it goes against what experts teach about writing copy, but it works on Facebook.
You do need to get your prospects attention, you want to enter the conversation happening in your prospects head, but the message you present should be a positive one.
Also, you need to make sure you’re following Facebook’s rules and guidelines as you’re creating your message. If you run astray of the guidelines, Facebook will just shut your account down and it takes time to get it back. It’s their playground and they make the rules.
Next, who are you targeting? Your Market.
When you’re getting started with Facebook, targeting could be causing some of your challenges.
While Facebook has incredible targeting, what really matters is: do the people you’re targeting know you?
If not, you need a different message for them.
You want to get in front of people who know you or have at least heard of you in order to sell.
When your goal is a phone call, appointment, or sale from Facebook and the person doesn’t know you, you’re taking a big step in your relationship, maybe too big.
How can you take a smaller step and give the relationship time to develop?
After all, out in the “real world”, we all have relationships.
The most successful salesman isn’t the one with the best closing tactics, but the one who can build meaningful relationships with people.
Can you imagine a salesman walking up to you at a live event and saying “Hi I’m Brian, buy my stuff”?
Well, that happens on Facebook more times than I’d care to think about.
It takes a good salesman many meetings and calls to get a sale in most situations. Why are you expecting Facebook to get sales for you without a similar effort or investment?
This isn’t to say that Facebook can’t sell items for you, but it takes a system to do it successfully.
One of our clients sells a course for $1,644 and we sell it regularly using Facebook and have been selling it for a couple years now, but it takes more steps to accomplish this than selling a t-shirt on Facebook.
You can find your audience on Facebook geographically, demographically, psycho-graphically, and any combination of other ways.
Once you have your targeting zeroed in, start developing your relationship and amplifying your ACE.
What is your ACE you ask? Your ACE = Authority, Celebrity, and Expertise.
How does your market perceive you?
Why should they buy from you?
The better you position yourself, the faster you will get results and the more money you can charge.
The final item to consider as part of your system is what kind of media are you going to use?
For our example, we’re using Facebook.
However, Facebook is never the only media to use. It is especially powerful when combined with email.
Facebook and Email are a powerful 1-2 combination.
Now that you know your message, target market, media, and have everything in place there are a few other items to consider.
After all, we are doing this work to make a sale and create a profitable business as fast as we can.
There are six rules for Direct Response marketing that Dan Kennedy teaches and these apply to your Facebook posts and ads.
- There will always be an offer– This doesn’t have to be a sale. We can be offering a chance for them to get a free download or it can be offering them a video to watch. Anything that is strengthening your relationship and moving it to the next stage.
- There will be a reason to respond now-If not now, when? How many times have you looked at something and thought I will come back to it, and you might have even saved it in Facebook or to another tool and you find it weeks or months later forgotten.
- There will be clear instructions-People will follow your instructions. Tell people what to do, clearly.
- There will be tracking and measurement-What are the results of your efforts? Did you get the number of opt-ins from ad one that you wanted, so that you can get the number of results from step two of your sales process?
- There will be follow up-How are you following up? Did you get their email and have a system set up to message them? Did you pixel them on Facebook? Are you going back to the same audience more than one time? Remember a core teaching is a three-step series. Do you have one set up via Facebook?
- Results rule-What results are you looking for? Exceeded them, great. Didn’t get them, what are you going to change? No one is successful 100% of the time, especially the first time out of the gate. What are you changing to ensure you get the results you want?
Following a well-defined system and Facebook’s guidelines you can create a profitable system using Facebook. Soon you will be one of those people telling others how easy Facebook is to use, and that you can’t believe how much money you’re making with Facebook.
If you’re serious about creating a profitable system using Facebook for your business, you have two choices. You can take the time and figure the whole system out through trial and error, or you can hire someone who has done it before and have them train you or better yet have them set a system up for you.
If you have any questions or would like more information, email me at bhahn@gosocialexperts.com
Brian Hahn