As of mid-2017, Facebook has 1.32 billion daily users, and the average Facebook session lasts an average of 20 minutes.
The takeaway here is: people are spending a lot of time on Facebook. A LOT. I absolutely, 100% guarantee you, no matter who your audience is, they are on Facebook. So if you’re not using Facebook to its full marketing advantage, you are missing out on some serious potential cashflow. The problem is that frequently, the things that have the most potential to make you money, cost you a ton of money, right? Well, today I want to give you some tips for using Facebook as an income generator, without spending any money.
Now, as you know, I’m officially on the Facebook Live train, so if you’re an auditory learner, or if you just want to hear all about my deep, eternal love for Top Gun, you can listen to the Live version of this post:
(Please ignore the gardeners in the background.)
3 Ways You Can Make More Money And Get Noticed On Facebook Without Spending A Penny
1: Set up your Facebook Shop. This isn’t a brand new feature but it is fairly new so if you haven’t heard about it, you’ll definitely want to do some research and get on it. Whether you sell a physical product, a digital product, or even a service, you need to be utilizing this amazing feature.
Honestly, when I first started looking at the Facebook Shop, I thought there was no way it was for me because I don’t sell physical products. But after looking at it more, I decided to try it because, really, I would’ve been crazy not to.
If you go look at my shop, you’ll see that I have about 10 different services listed. I’m not going to get into all the details of creating your Facebook Shop (if you need directions, start here), I’m just going to tell you, you need to do it.
Here’s why:
- It will make Mark Zuckerberg love you. As the creator and owner of Facebook, Mark’s goal is to keep people on his website for as long as possible. That means that he’s not super inclined to give a ton of visibility to posts and ads that direct people off of Facebook. But if you have your shop set up right there on Facebook? Well, he really wants people to see your posts because you’re keeping them right where he wants them. Win-win? I think YES.
- You can tag your products in your posts, making it easier than ever for you audience to find what they need. Imagine, you can write a post that says “I just released a brand new book! Get your copy of ‘How to Solve All Your Problems, Right Now, With Ease’ today!” and the title of the book, links directly to your Facebook Shop listing where they can purchase with a click of a button. This. Is. Brilliant.
- You can presell your products. Think Kickstarter, but directly on Facebook. This gives you the ability to create hype, bring in the income you need to finish developing your amazing products, and easily give your dedicated buyers something extra.
It actually is pretty easy to create your Facebook Shop, but I’ll be honest, it is time-consuming. If you don’t have the time and there simply isn’t any way you’re going to get it done yourself, you can hire someone to do it for you. Here’s the good news: This is a service we offer at SizzleForce Marketing! If you’d like us to step in and create your shop for you so you can focus on what you really love to do, let us know and we’ll take care of it.
2: Get people to review you. We live in the age of social proof. From Yelp and Angie’s List to Facebook and LinkedIn, people are looking to social media to help them decide who to buy from. And let’s not forget Amazon. How often do you buy something from Amazon without first looking at the reviews? The truth is, you need social proof. People want to buy from people they know, like, and trust and having reviews displayed helps people to trust you more quickly.
How To Get More Reviews:
- Ask for them. Duh, right? Make this a habit. For me, I typically work with clients on a long-term basis so I try to ask somewhere around the middle of our working relationship; when I know they’re happy, when they’ve just told me about the amazing results they’re getting, when they’ve had a great week and just sent me a gushing email or called me to tell me how well my marketing efforts are working, I jump on the opportunity to thank them for their kind words and ask that they take those same words and write a review for me. I can tell you, I have never had someone tell me no. Never. Every single one of those phone calls, texts, emails, turned into a raving review for others to see.
- Make it easy for them. Make sure they know you don’t need a page long essay. Ask them to write a couple of sentences about what they loved about you or your product and I guarantee, they’ll be more than willing to take a couple minutes and do that for you. Send them a direct link to Facebook or LinkedIn where they can leave a review.
- Send the request their way. If your customer is a texter, send them a text. If they’re an emailer, send them an email. If they prefer over the phone communication, take a few minutes out of your day and call them. This should be an across-the-board rule, but especially when asking for a review. Make it as nonintrusive to their normal day as possible. If you look at my LinkedIn page, you’ll see I have a ton of recommendations. But I didn’t send the requests for those recommendations through LinkedIn’s built-in system because honestly, most of my clients aren’t just hanging out on LinkedIn every day and I don’t want them to miss those requests.
- Get people to check in. If you have a physical location, put up a sign that says “Check in to get an automatic 10% off at the register!” or “Check in for the Wifi password!” or whatever you want to use as an incentive. This creates more visibility because every person that checks in has just shared your location with their Facebook network. It also has another benefit – every time you check in somewhere on Facebook, you’re asked to review that place. Sometimes it’s the next day, or two days later, but Facebook always asks for a review. And honestly, it takes just a few seconds to leave 5 stars and a one-sentence review so chances are, the majority of people will do it.
- Networking events. If you attend networking events, it would be wise to suggest setting time aside at your next meeting for all of the members to leave reviews for each other. Now, obviously you want to make sure you get reviews from people who have actually worked with you, or who have referred friends to you and have a good knowledge of how amazing you are. People can smell a fake review from a mile away.
3: Create a no-brainer offer. In the marketing world, this is also sometimes called a tripwire. It is super high value, at super low cost. This is something you can list in your shop for $1, $5, maybe $10 at the absolute most. The lower the cost here, the better. The goal is to offer something that your audience would be crazy not to buy. Now, you don’t want to focus all of your attention on pushing sales, but realistically, sometimes you have to ask for the sale. Some people suggest a 80/20 split, I actually say it should be closer to 90/10 – 90% of the time you are providing valuable content, 10% of the time you’re doing sales pitches. And when it is time for a sales pitch, it needs to be a no-brainer.
Maybe you’re releasing your first book, so you offer it to your audience on Facebook for a dollar or two, just for a few days. They would be crazy not to buy it, right? And even better, you can then ask those same people to review your book after they’ve read it. The point here is, you are offering a really high value for a really low price. Nobody wants to pay for something lame, no matter how cheap it is. Right?
Choose something that you can do that won’t require a ton of ongoing work, but that is still of high value to your audience. The goal is to take those people who have been followers for a while, and turn them into paying customers; because once they’ve purchased from you, the likelihood of them spending more money with you as time goes on skyrockets.
As an example, I just relaunched SizzleForce Marketing Academy. When we first launched, I promoted it at just $7 for the first month. The content in the Academy is worth hundreds of dollars (and constantly growing as we add new content) but my goal was to convert those people that had been watching me but not actually moving toward doing business with me. I wanted to get them into the habit of buying from me so I made it really, really easy for people to buy in. The goal of your no-brainer offer is to get people into your funnel because once they’re there, the chance of them buying your higher value products and services goes through the roof.
Remember, no matter what business you’re in, Facebook is your friend. If you take the time to learn how to do marketing on Facebook well, you will be in very, very good shape. And if you need more personalized help getting going, contact us today to find out how we can help.