The following three key factors is what I am going to focus on:
- Offer Value.
- Be different.
- Change Consumers Minds
This year we experienced a viral phenomenon that will be taught in Social Media and Marketing Courses for years to come. In the beginning the goal was said to be unrealistic and was viewed as just a joke. However, this unrealistic goal would soon raise over $100 Million dollars and it quickly became a Social Media gold mine. This is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Many of you may have done it as well and know exactly what I’m talking about. Yes, you may be a small business and don’t believe you can acquire much engagement and don’t really know where to start with using Facebook but I’m going to make an attempt to get your hopes up.
Offering Value:
Offer Something! Make people feel like it’s worth it to Like the Page and to Engage in something. Give discounts! Go on Pinterest and find new fun homemade cleaners, spot removers, and projects and post the ideas on Facebook. Always remember to have photographs because that’s the first thing that will catch someone’s attention and remember to always add your website so people know where to go to find out more about you. You may say, “Well, that’s in the About Section so I don’t really need to worry about it.” Wrong! People don’t look for things and we all want instant gratification. That’s advertising right? Instant gratification and longevity is a successful marketing campaign.
One of the best marketing campaigns was in 1960 with the Volkswagen ad. People had a bad perception about the car being a “lemon” and about the group of people who liked the car. American’s were also buying big American cars at the time and they didn’t want a German vehicle. So, the ad came out and it was a little black Volkswagen towards the upper left of the blank background and at the bottom it read, “Think small.” This campaign changed the company and kept them going. This leads me into my Second point I want to focus on being different…
Be Different:
So, Volkswagen was facing a horrible time as a company. After World War Two nobody was going to buy a German Car right? On top of that cars at that time were peoples way of flaunting their money and success so they wanted big flashy American cars. That’s what every car ad was as well. Car ads depicted people in their big cars and focused on advertising the flashy and big American Car. Volkswagen did the opposite. The showed consumers the advantages of having a small car and they capitalized on it. We’re in a market where there are tons of other companies doing the same thing we are so research! Go to everyone’s Facebook pages that have the same business as you and look at what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. And then do something completely different!
I use to work at an animal shelter and I managed their Social Media and they wanted me to post about the dogs that needed to be rescued and it was all very generic and NOT FUN! So, I went onto every animal shelter’s Facebook pages and they were all depressing! I was working at an animal shelter that was really focusing on changing their reputation in the community as well because they were only known for being the place that kills animals. The shelter wasn’t like that. The employees had a ton of fun and a lot of animals were being adopted but no body knew about it. So, I started taking pictures of people and their new pet and posting it on Facebook. All of a sudden the Post Likes and Page Likes soared because people would rather see happy endings than this “dog has only 12 days left”. So, think different!
If you want to participate in Social Media have fun with it and make it count.
Change Consumers Minds:
This “Think Small” campaign for an example did just that and Volkswagen became the best selling car of all time by 1991. So, lets take a carpet cleaner for an example and let’s find ways of changing people’s perception of this industry being a boring topic. I searched carpet cleaners Facebook pages and saw the majority of everyone is posting before and after pictures of carpet. What I saw mostly is no one had any Likes on any of their posts. I can kind of see that I mean I’m on Facebook and I see clean carpet and I think oh that’s nice and I probably am just going to keep scrolling down the page.
I know only 10% of your fan base see these posts but lets change this. I did see 30 Likes on a post of the company’s office dog. I’d probably think the dog was so cute I’d hit like on that. I did see 67 Likes on a post of the company’s truck broken down and they snapped a photo of the difficulty they were having. I’d probably say I’ve been there and I’d Like it. What I kept seeing is that people liked the posts showing the workers and owners throughout their workday. They liked posts of kids helping dad roll up a rug or vacuum.
So, let us change consumer’s minds if you will about carpet cleaners. What do people fear from this industry? They fear you will come into their home and charge them double what your estimate was. They fear they won’t be able to trust you in their home. They fear you don’t know what you’re doing. What changes people’s perspectives on this? I believe it’s appearance, reviews, and integrity. How do we delegate that to consumers?
Let’s face it people are Facebook spies and when I hired a cleaner I went to their Facebook page and attempted to go to their personal profile to see who they were. A lot of the cleaners didn’t even have a privacy setting on their personal profile so I was able to look at their newsfeed. I hired the family guy with pictures of his kids and animals. Who I didn’t hire? I didn’t hire the guy that had posts of hateful things about the president, posts of girls “gone wild”, posts with anything disrespectful towards women, animals, or our country in any way. Here’s what I’m getting at if you want to do those things have two different Facebook profiles (one for whatever you want and one just as a business owner) and set your privacy settings correctly!
Get over the attitude of Privacy and how everyone’s spying on you so you hate social media blah, blah…and blah! Let’s start at, guess what you are a business owner so act like an adult and play the game. Get over yourself and begin to realize that your consumer base wants to know who you are. People want to buy local and support companies they want to stick around. This is why your image is important. Social Media has changed the way we do business and we have to accept that. And I say Capitalize on it! Stop hating it and embrace it.
Follow these steps to ensuring not everyone in the whole world see’s you doing shots at a party last Saturday:
Privacy Settings:
- Log into your personal account and in the top right is a triangle pointing down – click on that.
- Select Settings.
- On the left Select Privacy.
- Follow/Answer the questions.
