Step 5 of the Success System for Facebook: Sell Them Something

There is a proven formula that you can use to market your business on Facebook. One of the key advantages of this system is that you and your staff don’t have to spend hours on Facebook, but you’ll still get great results.

The steps to the formula are:

  1. Create a sales-orientated Facebook page.
  2. Find your ideal audience.
  3. Deliver value before you ask for a sales
  4. Get contact information.
  5. Market to these people (sell them something).

In the last step, we talked about getting your audience members’ contact information before you ask for a sale and some examples of how you can get this information in a way that members are excited about giving their contact information to you. Click here if you want to refer back to that article see what these options are and how you can collect this information.

If you missed the article outlining the entire Success System for Facebook, click here to read it.

Now, we’re moving on to Step 5 of the Facebook Five and talking about the process of selling something. After all, selling is why we’re putting our time into creating a Success System, correct?

We’ve invested time and money into creating relationships with a group of new people before arriving at this point. Now, we’re going to talk about selling to these people, the ones we have a relationship with. This will give us our highest potential for sales.

Market To This Group Of People in Every Way You Can

There are many ways to sell products, and we need to make sure that we are using every means available to do so. If we limit the media we’re going to use before we test them, we are limiting the potential of our companies.

The trick is getting someone to buy the first time. Once someone has spent money with us, that person is more likely to do so again. Often, the person will buy a second product before they finish the sale of the first item.

There are many ways to get people to buy the first time. For example, many stores offer special discounts for new customers or gifts when they make their first purchase.

Online, many of these work as well as low-cost trials (a month for a dollar) or low-cost items (a product that you originally sold for $97 now sold for $7 or $9 this one time).

Offers such as these entice people to get out their credit cards and buy, and then you have them. Now you can work on getting the second and third sales from customers, not just prospects, and you know that they are willing and able to buy because they have already bought from you.

Use Every Tool Available

Here is a partial list of tools we can use to sell, and I’ll break these down in detail in separate sections.

Because we are talking about Go Social Experts Success System for Facebook, we’ll start with Facebook.

On Facebook, we can target ads to people who have interacted with us. Many different types of ads can be used. The most common ads that are used are link click ads and video ads. Both have specific uses in different situations.

The next tool we can use to sell from the information we gathered is e-mail. E-mail is a powerful tool for creating relationships and selling products. Once a person’s contact information is acquired, the sales process can start.

Now we’ll move offline. If you want to go old school, great results can be attained by calling people on the phone and having a conversation.

The last method I’ll mention is direct mail. Put a letter or postcard in the mail and send your prospects something. This is a reliable source of revenue for many companies, and it’s used heavily by politicians as well. Because there is not as much of this going out currently, there’s not as much clutter in the mailbox.


Facebook Ads

There are many different types of Facebook ads. The most effective are the link click ads and video ads.

A link click ad is one in which a picture captures your eye and the headline and text entice you to click on a link to get you to do something such as read a blog post, sign up for a webinar, download a report, or go to a sales page and buy something.

A video ad is just what it sounds like. It’s a video in an ad on Facebook. The power of video ads is that you can educate people and take them to a sales page in one step. Done well, you’ll get steady sales from a video ad.

Carousel ads use three to five pictures or videos in one ad with links to separate pages. These ads have been working remarkably well since they’ve been introduced. These ads give you the option of advertising multiple products and services in one ad or telling a story in an ad differently or in more depth.

Since you started creating this audience using Facebook, there is a good chance audience members will respond to your offers on Facebook.

The Two in Facebook’s One-Two Punch

E-mail!

E-mail? Isn’t that dead? I never read my e-mail, at least not the messages under my “Promotions” tab if I use Gmail or I send all my promotional emails to my spam folder.

Well, you might or might not, but many others do read these e-mails. If e-mail didn’t work, not as much would be sent. Many e-mail marketers quietly amass customers—and sales—using e-mail.

For eCommerce companies, 35 to 40% of their revenue comes from their email efforts.

E-mail and Facebook make a great team. Remember: people need an e-mail address to create a Facebook account.

People check their e-mail regularly. If they don’t check it several times a day, they check it at least several times a week. If nothing else, most of your audience at least have to check e-mail for work.

When people give you their e-mail addresses, they’re saying they trust you with valuable information and they know you won’t abuse it.

Make sure that all e-mails deliver value to your list. Remember, you have that marketing bank account I referred to in Step 4 of Go Social’s Success System for Facebook. Click here to refer to that post. The higher the balance in your marketing bank account, the more willing your customers are to do what you ask, including buying your products.

Facebook and e-mail reinforce each other. If your list members see an e-mail in their inboxes with a subject line that captures their interest but don’t open it, then shortly afterward see a Facebook ad talking about the same topic, you’re getting noticed, and they are more likely to recall seeing the offer and then click on one or the other.

In this way, Facebook reinforces the power of your e-mail marketing, and e-mail reinforces the power of your Facebook marketing. Together, they are a powerful duo.

Let’s Use a Classic Tool

How about the phone? Even if it’s been around a long time, it’s not as old as some media. Can we use the phone to sell something?

If you asked for potential customers’ phone numbers in Step 4 (click here to refer back to that article), you have phone numbers. And because potential customers provided phone numbers, you have their permission to call, and, if you do it well, people will thank you for calling them.

One of the best ways to be helpful and put a deposit into your marketing bank account is to call to make sure they received the item they requested from you and ask if they have any questions about it. Offer to help them.

When you’re successful with calling, you will have moved your relationship with the customer to a different level than an online relationship. You will find that a phone call can quickly lead to a sale.

One of the Oldest Tools

Direct mail has been used for many years. Aaron Montgomery Ward is credited with being the first to use direct mail to send out catalogs for his store in 1872. Since then it’s been used to sell almost every imaginable product.

Direct mail is a great way to connect with the people you’ve gathered from your Facebook marketing efforts. Targeting these people using a media in which there isn’t as much competition lets you limit distractions from other marketers when you’re talking with them.

In addition to Facebook ads, e-mail, and phone, direct mail will strengthen your relationships with your audience members. It’s a valuable method of follow-up.

All of the above are especially powerful when used in conjunction with Facebook. You’ve used Facebook as your wide audience broadcast tool to connect with people most likely to buy from you and followed up with them on a more personalized level after you obtain contact information from them.

Know Your Numbers!

When using all of these methods to sell something, you need to make sure you know all of your numbers.

  • How much is the value of a customer?
  • How many letters do you need to send out to get one sale?
  • How much time do you commit to getting this done?
  • How long between sending out an offer and getting a sale?
  • How long before the second sale?

The better you know the answers to these questions, the better you are at judging the profitability of a campaign and knowing what you can afford to spend to acquire new customers.

Since you will be investing time and money into the process, you want to make sure you can sustain your marketing.

Keep Selling Even When You’re Not Asking For Money

In our case, we’re talking about selling or giving information to our audience and collecting their contact information or selling them a product and collecting money.

In the various steps of a sales funnel or sales process, we might be working to get other information or commitment from the members of our audience, to lead to the collection of information or selling a product to our audience.

Even if you are asking for their information rather than money, audience members will still feel as if they are paying you. In these cases, the best way to be successful is to keep selling even if the item or information is free.

Yes, FREE also requires selling. We’re living in a time when people won’t trust you or your offer—they know there will be strings attached.

You overcome this objection by continuing to remind audience members of all they’re going to get from giving you their information. What transformation is going to happen to them? Why are they even reading this first article to consider giving you anything?

The Secret to Selling Using Facebook

The number one secret to selling on Facebook is to ask for the sale. Many people don’t want to appear salesy, so they won’t even ask for the sale. They assume that since they’ve provided great value to their audiences, their audience members will buy from them.

Not so. In fact, many may not even know what you sell or they may think they can’t afford your products.

To get the best results, you’ve got to have an offer that audience members will be interested in that they find hard to refuse, then follow up with them.
In another blog post, I talked about the fact that people don’t buy until between the 5th and 12th contact with you, so it’s your job to nurture these relationships until audience members are ready to buy from you. Click Here to read the post.

As you keep putting opportunities for people to buy from you in front of your audience, you’ll find that more and more people buy. It’s about conditioning. If they don’t expect you to offer anything for sale, they’re not conditioned to buy.

You don’t have to beat people over the head, but you do have to make an offer to sell on Facebook or anywhere. Assuming people will “just know” they can buy from you is a fast way to go broke.

Last Thoughts

Make sure you keep your marketing bank account in mind with each customer. Are you depositing more goodwill than you’re withdrawing, or is your balance negative? Remember, the higher the balance, the more willing someone is to buy from you. For a more detailed description of a marketing bank account, click here.

There really is no limit to the value of what you can sell to an audience you created using Facebook. The lowest value items are low-cost trials at $1. The highest value items I know of that have been sold this way are jet airplanes. Most products cost substantially less than a jet, so you should be able to use Facebook to put wings under your marketing.

Have a great day!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Jan 19, 2016 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness

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