Facebook as a marketing tool for small businesses

When people think about using Facebook as a marketing tool they primarily think about how they can attract new customers to their business via the social networking platform. I like to recommend that businesses use Facebook as a customer retention tool, a way to remain in contact with current customers to ensure they stay loyal to the business.

In general people use Facebook to connect with and remain in contact with people they already know, I know from my own personal experience that I have never used Facebook to meet new people. So would it not be fair to say that the same would go for the way people use Facebook to interact with businesses? Again from a personal point of view I have only ever added businesses to my Facebook feed that I have used previously, I have never used Facebook to shop around for new services. Based on this, Facebook would be better suited as a tool to remain in contact with previous customers, search (and in particular Google search) would be the better strategy for sourcing new customers.

Of course that is not to say that Facebook cannot be used to generate new customers but I believe it will go hand in hand with looking after previous customers. For example by offering incentives to previous customers to recommend your Facebook page to their friends you may end up getting new people arriving to your page that you could sell to.

In researching for this article I looked at many Facebook pages setup by small businesses, most of which had been initially set up, used for a while and then largely abandoned. This would suggest that businesses are creating Facebook pages hoping and expecting to tap into the user base thereby generating new sales leads and when this doesn’t happen they quickly lose interest and give up on the page. I also noticed that there was a high percentage of small businesses sending the same message day after day to their Facebook fans. These messages were just copy/pasted from the previous day and largely involved them trying to push some product or service to the follower. Obviously this is going to lead to people ignoring whatever that company puts up on Facebook or even deleting the page from the Facebook profile.

Small businesses then develop the opinion that Facebook marketing is not something that they should be spending their time on. The reality is that, if you are providing a product or service to the public, a massive amount of potential customers can be found on Facebook. The key is getting your service and business in front of these people.

Using Facebook as a Customer Retention Tool

Firstly lets take a quick look at what customer retention is and why it is important to small businesses. Too many small businesses put all of their marketing focus on finding new customers and attracting new sales opportunities while completely neglecting their past customers. After spending so much time and money on gaining the customer why would you then, after finishing the work or delivering the product, wash your hands of them and give your competition another chance of getting them further down the line?

Plumbing companies are a perfect example of this, we may use a plumber and be very happy with the work we had done but then not need the services of another plumber for months or longer. During this time there is a good chance that we may forget who we used last time and we will probably be inundated with advertisements from competing plumbing companies in the area. If the plumber who we used, and who we were happy with, made no attempt to stay in touch with us there is a chance we will pick somebody else next time.

Facebook is the perfect tool for keeping in touch with your past customers, though I must stress not the only tool you should be using. Again going back to the plumber, once they have completed the work and made sure the customer is happy with everything they should be switching back into marketing mode to make sure they get to retain this customer for future work. Ask for their email address, take down their postal address and ask them to Like your Facebook page so that you can keep them up to date with offers and related news.

Ok so you are starting to get customers “Liking” your Facebook page, now what? Well don’t feel the need to constantly be posting things to your page to keep them there and, more importantly don’t try to sell to them everyday. The quickest way to get people to ditch your Facebook page is to be constantly trying to sell them something. As an example, going back to plumbing, I had Liked the page of a local plumber so that I knew where to turn should I need one in a hurry (I had been recommended this plumber by friends who were past customers). My patience lasted a week before I deleted their page from my profile due to the fact that all they did was post the exact same thing every few hours trying to sell me plumbing services, it became tedious very quickly. Try to stick to the 80/20 rule, 80% of the time post informational or interesting content and the remaining 20% of the time post about your products or services.

Modern Day Word of Mouth Marketing

If we go back a few years before the internet was as huge as it is, long before Facebook or Twitter, local services used to rely on word of mouth marketing to keep the business coming in. The basic premise being, if you do good work and provide a good service the customer will tell their family, friends and work colleagues which will lead to more work.

This type of marketing is still alive and kicking it just has a modern twist. These days people connect with their friends, family and work colleagues via Facebook and other social networking sites and so there is a massive opportunity to get them to share about their great experience using your company. For this reason small businesses need to make sure that they make an effort to stay in touch with customers after the work has been done or the product has been sold. Here are a few things that we recommend doing:

• Get some cards made up to send with your product or to give out once you have completed the contracted work. On one side have your Facebook page link and ask them to join your page, on the other thank them for their custom and point them towards your Google Places listing for a review.
• Make sure you get their email address so that you can send them a follow up email.
• Ask them to refer your company to their family and friends, either via email or through your Facebook page. You may want to offer an incentive for referring new customers.