The keys to leading a person from being a casual visitor to Liking a FB fanpage, and through making a purchase, depend on having a solid social strategy and compelling offers that get your community excited about. So how can your company make a successful conversion? Let’s go over some of the key factors and talk about how they can be applied to marketing on the world’s largest social network:
The Fewer, The Better – Liking with Limited Quantity
Scarcity is a powerful tool. Offering a product with limited time period or quantity can be very enticing. This is what drives impulse buys in social commerce. If your customers know they can’t get it anywhere else and there’s only a few left, they are much more likely to buy. Scarcity will attract new Likes (and customer acquisition) by word of mouth.
Quality Over Quantity
Popularity may be awesome but can be a tricky thing. A brand with 20,000 fans on Facebook is popular compared to one with 100 fans, but pales in comparison to the brand with 20 million fans. The real lesson is what you do with your fans and less about how many you have. So engage with your fan base and continue to offer a unique and awesome experience. In turn, your community will grow. The bottomline is that authenticity, consistency, and great content that generates a reaction are big drivers in developing a community. Posts with photos and powerful videos encourage sharing, and therefore expand a brand’s reach. An authentic brand voice will build trust, leading the casual brand fan to have a deeper sense of personal connection and ownership. This makes them pay more attention to your updates that appear in their news feeds.
Go Directly to Your Customers – Remove the Middle Man
So you have a community of fans. They are there for a reason – they like your products, your customer service, your stores, your marketing, etc. You are the authority on your brand and your fans want to directly deal with and buy from you. So take out the middle man and go directly to your fans. That way, you’re in control of the experience. Fans appreciate that direct experience much more than just buying your products at a big retailer. This is a big factor in the conversion funnel. People buy from the direct source because the sense of trust is very high. They know that the direct source cares more for the customers more than anyone else. Thus, a great social experience that ends with a sale builds affinity and is an opportunity for brands to build repeat business. The keyword here is “experience”. The experience flows all the way from the initial introduction to the offer through the message a person receives after the transaction. The experience ensures repeat customers.
Friends get Rewards
Reward your fans for being loyal to your brand and you can easily turn them into your evangelists or advocates of your brand or products. This is the beauty of the social loyalty program. You don’t only retain your existing customers. (Remember, new customer acquisition costs 8 times more than retaining your existing customers.) In essence, your evangelists give free testimonials and help you acquire new customers. You get free advertising. And for the first time ever, Facebook makes it so much easier to do word-of-mouth marketing and use existing fans to acquire new customers. Find what reward system works for your brand and make it a part of your overall strategy. It does not only drive down your costs, but it is a very effective marketing tool.
Be Consistent
The key to success in any endeavor is consistency – Show Up! When it comes to Facebook Commerce, you need to just stay on top of it. Your fan base is built over time. This can be accomplished in the form of polls, photo caption contests, giveaways, quotes, choosing a fan of the day, anything that engages your fans or get them involved. Facebook Commerce is about building a community. When used well, the Facebook conversion funnel is a loop. By being smart with the offer and providing a great experience along the way, you can build your audience’s expectation and make them shop through your Facebook page. So what else are you waiting for? It is right at your fingertips!