The next thing you’ll need to define is how to get your audience to the consideration stage. For example, if your goal is for your audience to request a quote by filling out a form on your website, they have to land on your website first, and the website has to give them a reason to fill out the form. Or, if you want someone to call, they first have to, one, know your number, and two, have to have a reason to call.
Always have a simple, logical sequence of actions you want users to take in the back of your mind and clear pathways to get them there. Make it so easy to complete your goal that anyone could do it. Keeping with that same example where your goal is to get people on your website filling out a form to request a quote, every piece of content you put out should in some way lead back to that goal. Ask yourself questions like…
As mentioned in our Networking Playbook, people like to work with people they trust, so it’s vital that you build that trust and connection on social media. This can be done by sharing information that’s valuable to customers in a way that’s either entertaining, inspirational, or educational.
For example, you might share tricks and tips based on your expertise and show how you’re uniquely equipped to answer customers’ needs. You can also utilize fun memes related to your trade, quotes and personal success stories, reviews, case studies, behind the scenes content, or employee/customer features, also known as highlights.
A general rule of thumb in marketing is that 80% of your content should be aimed at nurturing your relationship with customers while only 20% should be sales. Remember that by no means do you have to stick strictly to this 80/20 ratio. Use whatever ratio and method that best suits your businesses’ needs.
This is where you can finally get shamelessly promotional. Your goal for that other 20% of content is to directly get sales and collect potential leads. This content should be aimed at either pre-qualifying customers and collecting their contact information. It’s best to ask for an email address or phone number, that way, you’ll have a reason to call and make your pitch, giving them that final push they need to explore your offerings.
Your 80% nurturing content can go a long way in helping keep you top of mind and showcase your expertise, so you’re the first person that your future customers will think of to call when they run into issues. You should also consider utilizing an exclusive offer, which can make a customer that’s in the consideration phase finally pick up the phone or sign up to get a quote on your website.
But for any of the considerations or conversions to happen, you’ll first have to find a way to get on your future customers’ radars. Simply creating a website and Facebook page isn’t going to cut it and get you sales.
You’ll have to find ways to make your presence known online, and the easiest way to do that is to go into spaces where your audience is already spending time. Think about what you and your friends/family do online. What kind of people do you follow on Facebook? Are you in any groups? Where do you go for local news? Are there any local events or places you frequent?
Your goal now is to get those people and communities to share information about you, or jump into conversations in those areas so they’ll end up seeing that consideration phase content you’ve created above. Or, in some cases, you might be able to just directly link them to your website.
Let’s say for example that you’re marketing your plumbing business on Facebook. You’ve got a killer Facebook page with top-notch content. You’re sharing all kinds of great plumbing tips and tricks. You’re funny and personable. Your offers are irresistible, like offering free water testing. But the problem is, no matter how great your content may be, nobody’s seeing it. It’s just you talking into the void – well, a void and two people you haven’t spoken to since high school and your distant aunt from Jersey you’ve invited to like your page.
So, how do you get more people looking at your page? The answer is simple: you share it! Join a few local Facebook groups and share tips and tricks, as well as industry news that impacts them. If there’s going to be a snowstorm or freezing temperatures, jot down a couple quick suggestions of what people should do to avoid their pipes freezing on your Facebook page and share that post to the group.
You should also tag locals with a lot of followers, or other businesses, in your posts. If you go to the local hardware store, take a photo and tell your followers how you’ve trusted them for XX amount of years, and tag that business. Comment on other people’s posts from your Facebook page’s profile – or your own if you’re sharing content to your personal Facebook about your business.
At the end of the day, social media is a numbers game. The more people that see you (awareness), and the more people follow you (consideration), the more sales you’ll get (conversions).
At the risk of getting a little meta on you, you should know that you’re actually in a marketing funnel right now. Sure, we genuinely enjoy creating content like this that helps individuals grow their businesses, and making a daunting task like marketing simple and accessible for the everyday person.
But, if you’ve taken the time to read the rest of this overview, you should realize that you’re currently in that relationship nurturing/consideration stage where we help you get to know us by providing something of value to you in the hopes that you’ll like it enough to keep engaging with us. Then, we can quietly slide you a promotional offer relevant to your interests. An example of this would be telling you…
“Hey, while you’re thinking about growing your business through social media marketing, you know what would also really help? Our business management software. It’s going to reduce how much time you’re spending on administrative tasks by streamlining and automating your day-to-day so you can spend more time focusing on promoting yourself online.”
On the off-chance you click that link we provided, you’ll notice a handy UTM code at the end of the link you clicked so we can track how you came to our website, which will tell us where you came from so we know where to put more time and money into advertising.
And odds are, the reason you found this post is because we were employing some of the methods we just discussed above, like sharing our content to relevant groups and people on Facebook. Or maybe you came from another form of online marketing in that awareness stage like a Google Search or paid advertising. Take a page out of our (play)book and try this method on your audience!
It’s far better to be really good at one social media site, like Facebook, and learn its intricacies than to be just ‘okay’ at a lot of them. Keep in mind that even social media experts usually don’t bother to learn more than 3-4 social media channels.
At most, you’re going to want to focus on 1-3 platforms, not including local listings and directories like Yelp and Angi. As a local service business, the odds are those platforms are going to be Facebook and Instagram, sheerly because of their popularity. However, you should also consider utilizing TikTok, as it’s one of the fastest growing social media platforms of all time.
The first, and most essential step, is to make sure your social media accounts are set up correctly, following best practices, and fully filled out. This is easily the most common mistake people make, and there’s about an 80% chance that if you have a business social media account, you’re not following best practices and it’s impacting your numbers.
To make this simple, we’ve created these social media cheat sheets you can reference: