The best place to start is always with the end in mind. So what is your end goal? Is your goal to get customers to your shop, or your restaurant? Maybe your goal is to create awareness around a particular brand. Once you’ve established your end goal it is easier to work out a strategy.
Let’s start with Facebook
For most small business owners, this is probably where you start (or think you should start). Facebook, along with other Social Media websites like Google+ and Twitter, are wonderful platforms to increase your online presence. But if your goal is lead generation (fancy term for getting more enquiries), then once again Facebook is only a means to an end. Facebook is fantastic for creating brand awareness and for growing your followers (and you do get the odd enquiry from Facebook), but the place you want your followers to go to is your website.
It is on your website where a potential customer can get all the information they need to make a decision and to contact you … thus a lead or enquiry. From when you receive the lead/enquiry and what you do next is something we’ll tackle in another article. Most importantly is to move visitors down the sales funnel to make contact with you.
How do you get potential customers to visit your website with Facebook?
The best way is with a Blog. Don’t wait for someone to search for you on Google – once you have written your blog and updated your website pages you need to get the message out there.
Enter Facebook.
Every bit of new information, blog or news that you put on your website gets posted to Facebook, along with a link. When a potential customer wants to read more about an article they see on Facebook, they click on the link that takes them straight to your website. Once on your website, they visit other pages, gain more information, click on a call-to-action button, fill out a contact form, and the email enquiry lands in your Inbox.
So in conclusion, your website is still the most important part of your online presence. Everything else is only a tool to get more visitors to your website. Once you treat your Facebook like this, your posts will be less about sales and more about engaging people to visit your website.