Social media marketing is “the next big thing” for many local businesses and many business owners think Facebook is the next best thing after toast bread, and it’s as easy to use as ABC. Unsurprisingly, there are tons of online marketing agencies that are more than happy to exploit this openness of business owners.
There are tons of sales stories to get you started with Facebook, here are a few that stand out:
There are close to 1 billion users on Facebook. Every American is on Facebook. Get your brand in front of them on Facebook and you’ll get tons of business.
Facebook is a must. It’s more important than owning a website. Nobody browses websites, everything happens on Facebook and if your business doesn’t have a Facebook Page you’re losing a lot of business.
You may have a Facebook Page for your business. My dog has one too. The point is to have tons of Likes. Otherwise, people won’t know you even exist.
So as a business owner, you’re faced with tons of day-to-day logistics and management headaches, and now you get bombarded with sales pitches from people promising you the moon, stars and every parallel universe out there for $299/mo.
It’s all in the way how data is presented to you and how you’re led to focus on the stats that may not be as important to you anyways. Here is a quick way of learning to peel off the sales lingo and see if your potential service provider understands what business benefits you get from being on Facebook.
Targeting
There are close to 1 billion users on Facebook. Every American is on Facebook. Get your brand in front of them on Facebook and you’ll get tons of business.
This sales pitch tries to use rough statistics and scale to convince you that your business must be on Facebook. For the sake of convenience, let’s say you own a car repair shop in Nashville TN. so we can go through the peel-off easier.
The problem with this pitch is that you don’t really care if there are 1 or 10 billion Facebook accounts. As a local business firmly tied to your address, you can care less for all the millions of people in India. They will never be your clients. It’s all about targeting, pre-qualifying users by geo-location, age, employment status etc. You don’t want to target your marketing efforts at people who live on a different continent, or to people that don’t even have a drivers license.
If you don’t hear key concepts like the number of people on Facebook from Nashville, a percentage of car owners, a frequency of Facebook mentions of “car repair shop in Nashville”, don’t close the deal because chances are you won’t get quality service from that marketing agency. This is not to say that you won’t get ANY service. Sure you will get some benefits, but in this tough economy remember that good is the biggest enemy of great. When online, strive for perfection.
Channeling
Facebook is a must. It’s more important than owning a website. Nobody browses websites, everything happens on Facebook and if your business doesn’t have a Facebook Page you’re losing a lot of business.
This sales pitch goes after the way traffic flows on the net. You’ll notice absolutes like “nobody”, “everything”, “everybody” etc. These are generalizations that you as a shop owner in Nashville should not deal with. The underlining principle in this sales pitch is that the sales agent has mixed up who owns what and why. The website for your business (assuming you have one) is in your hands. You own it. You don’t own Facebook. Your website is all about getting found on the net and lead the web visitors to call you or stop by at your shop. Facebook’s role is to get tons of activity every day so that they can sell Ads to businesses like yours.
While you do want a Facebook Page, this page is NOT the end in itself. It’s just one venue/street that people can use to get to your website. THAT is what you want to achieve with your activity on Facebook. If the sales agent doesn’t understand how web traffic flows and why it’s crucial to get traffic to your website you don’t want to do business with them. Period.
Effectiveness
You may have a Facebook Page for your business. My dog has one too. The point is to have tons of Likes. Otherwise, people won’t know you even exist.
Sales agents that go after simple metrics to showcase success underestimate your intelligence and the complexity of the web. You know full well that you can’t pay your bills with Facebook Likes. So why should you care about a service that offers you “Get 1000 Likes for $100”? The number of Likes you get on your Facebook Page has no measurable business benefits for your car repair shop.
A better option is to count the number of Shares instead of Likes on each post you make on Facebook. Likes will never make a message go viral. Sharing (quoting you) is the coveted thing on Facebook. But in order to be quoted, you will need to share smart things. If the sales agent doesn’t understand the importance of Shares and tries to get you on simple Likes count, walk away. You will spend your money and end up with Likes from people who live in India and will never become your clients.
A Sentence To Remember
The point of Facebook is to serve as a channel of getting pre-qualified visitors to your website where solid content will encourage them to call or visit you since you are the best and most reliable car repair shop in Nashville.
