Facebook or not?

Lots of our clients sell to other businesses and I’m often asked, ‘Is it worth doing Facebook?’  I think it’s a mistake to completely ignore it and the secret is in having the right strategy for your business and your target customers.

Facebook is a social platform, now highly optimised for advertising revenue.  So your free-to-post business information isn’t going to appear in individual members’ feeds when an ad for the latest gizmo is delivering revenue to Facebook for every click.  This has made it much harder for business page owners to gain traction without investing in Facebook advertising.

Facebook for B2B business

Of course, there are millions of business owners who are active on Facebook.  The big question is what is their focus while they’re active on the platform.  In most cases the answer is that they’re likely to be looking at personal stuff so:

• Keeping in touch with their friends and family
• Entertainment via video material that appeals to them
• Buying things they want - including lots of impulse buys

This list doesn’t include ‘looking for useful business solutions’!  However, that doesn’t mean that the right posts won’t attract their attention.

At this point you might have to make a decision on your connection strategy.  Do you accept friend requests from your business contacts on your personal Facebook account or not?  Do you ask them to like your business page instead?  My personal strategy is to only connect with people as friends who are actually friends.  Remember that, they see what your other friends and family post on your profile, that may not necessarily be something you want to open to your business contacts

The next step is to consider what material would influence casual browsers to actively engage with your business post.  Then you’ll have to bite the bullet and invest in some Facebook ads to get the traffic you want.

There are two strands to this - firstly, having good content on your Facebook page, secondly, having ads that intrigue and engage strongly enough to bring people to the page.  If you do ads before developing a bank of good content, you’ll spend a lot of money on people who arrive on the page, find nothing useful and leave, never to be seen again!

Facebook likes people to post on the platform, not send posts in from elsewhere.  So your plan needs to include time to post directly, rather than use a social media management tool like Hootsuite or Buffer.

Your ads need to be carefully thought through - and tested - before you jump into a full campaign.

Facebook for B2C business

A successful Facebook page is easier to get right if you’re selling direct to consumers.  They’re open to buying stuff they like and want whether that’s for themselves or as gifts.

That doesn’t mean you should chuck any old stuff in - there is plenty of competition, so your material has to stand out.  Follow the same process of understanding what your target market is looking for and how to hit those hot buttons.  The rules for sales still apply - get attention, engage the reader/viewer, make them want what you’re offering by stressing the benefits and the problems of NOT having it - and then make an offer they can’t refuse.

If you’re thinking, ‘What’s that got to do with Facebook pages?’ - remember you’re running a business and the idea is to encourage people to want to spend time on your page, return to it and - become a customer.

Case studies, customer feedback and anecdotes are great - but don’t forget to entertain them too.

5 steps to get press coverage

Getting a press release published is a very hit and miss activity.  There’s no way to ensure an editor publishes your press release, even with a PR expert on the team.

So how can you get more exposure in the press?

1. What do your target audience read?  While it might be good for your ego to appear in the national dailies, it’s much harder to crack them, simply because they have thousands of people like you also trying to get their foot in the door.  Take a look at what else your audience reads - trade journals, industry magazines, local publications, digital only publications - and don’t forget social media.
2. Quality before quantity.  Don’t get diverted by circulation figures.  For example,  it’s easy to look at the 335,000 circulation of the Telegraph, compare it with the industry magazine for printers Print Monthly with just short of 11,000 and feel that the numbers don’t stack up.  But, if your target market is printers, you can be sure that almost all of that 11,000 are the right people for you, whereas it’s almost impossible to work out how many of the Telegraph’s readers match your ideal client profile.
3. What kind of material do those publications publish?  If you know what the editor wants, giving them material that is close to that is going to have a higher success rate.  If you’re delivering formal, traditional press releases to a publication that features a chatty, information-driven style, you’ll miss the mark.  So both content and style are important.
4. Build relationships.  A good PR executive will actively get in touch with the chosen publication and talk to the right editor.  That’s not the editor-in-chief, but the one responsible for that section of the magazine, although in smaller publications there may only be one editor.  Emulate their strategy and pick up the phone, get to know their process and lead times so you deliver what they want when they want it.
5. What does the editor actually want?  Often smaller journals will welcome good quality articles as they often have a small budget to fill their magazine with good quality articles - and are usually happy to add your contact details at the end of the article.  Know what features and supplements are coming up and, if you have something relevant, ask if they’d be interested in looking at your article.  Typically you’ll need to give them a subject and a two line description of the content for them to decide if it’s right for their publication.

Make the editor your friend - don’t bombard them with inappropriate material.  And don’t take them to task for not publishing what you’ve given them.  They’re doing their job of publishing what they know their readers want.  Never ring and ask if an article is going to be published - read the publication and you’ll see whether your item has made it or not.

Follow the process and you’ll get more of your material in print.

A plan with purpose

At this time of year many business people are winding down and the focus can be more on pleasure than planning.  However, if you own a business and you’re responsible for its ongoing success, the end of a year is often an opportunity for reflection and planning.

Here are a few things to think about:

The financial picture

It may seem obvious, but when your bottom line is healthy, it’s much easier to grow and develop the business.  My accountant tells me that having his numbers in line has been the defining factor of the success of his business.

Being an accountant you would expect him to say that, but he’s more of an entrepreneur than an accountant that only works with what’s gone.  His advice is to know exactly what each month’s, quarter’s, year’s outgoings will be and look at the projected income.  If these two numbers are very close, it will only take one customer leaving to cause catastrophe (as I know only too well).

And don’t forget to factor in tax - it still has to be paid.

The marketing landscape

Keeping business flowing in starts with marketing.  Very few people enjoy the hard sales process, so marketing is essential to keep the ‘sausage machine’ stuffed with warm leads.

This means getting the mix of social media, PR, online marketing, advertising, promotional activity and direct sales right.  Every business is different and the best place to start is with your ideal client profiles, understanding them thoroughly so your targeting is accurate and your marketing appears where they’re looking.

Hot tip:  Check out where most of your clients come from and do more of that!

The people package

Unless you’re a very small business and can do it all yourself, at some point you’re going to need help.  That might be staff, but could also be contractors, outsourced services or a combination of all these.

It’s never wise to try and do everything yourself.  Quite apart from the fact that you’re not an expert in everything, your stress levels will rocket as you work many more hours than you need to.

Decide what you WANT to do and work out how much more you could earn doing what you enjoy, than it will cost to get someone else to do it.  If the idea of being an employer isn’t filling you with joy - book a chat with an HR advisor so you understand what you’ll need to do as an employer and ensure that you’re properly protected.

Hot tip:  Read Michael Gerber’s The emyth revisited.

Put the plan on paper

This might be digital paper, but I’m a big fan of having something on the wall to remind you what you’re aiming at.  At the least you should have a chart of target income per month and the monthly outgoings, so you can see your profit line.  However, the marketing plan showing activities to be carried out in view will ensure things get done rather than forgotten.

Your people plan will show at what point you’ll need another pair of hands so that recruitment - whether of a member of staff or an outsourced service - can be done in plenty of time.

Good luck!

Not-working or networking?

If you do business networking you’ll be familiar with the concept of meeting other business people, getting to know them, building relationships, educating them about how your business helps people and seeing if there’s synergy between you to become a customer or a supplier.

Of course, there are some people who think you can attend one networking meeting and sell at everyone and come away with an order.  It doesn’t work like that!

So why do many of these same people complain that LinkedIn doesn’t work?  When I ask a few questions they:

• Haven’t optimised their profile to help other members to really understand what they do, or better still how they help their customers.
• Don’t open conversations with the people they connect with.
• Open conversations with a sales pitch - often pitching something that the contact already does themselves (I can’t count the number of times a web company has pitched ‘copywriting services’ to me - haven’t they read my profile?)
• Don’t continue conversations beyond ‘thanks’ or the automatic LinkedIn responses (and, yes, I know when someone has pressed the button and when they’ve bothered to type something).
• Don’t actively look for the kind of people who fit their ideal client profile and make connections.
• Haven’t found out which groups their ideal clients are active in and haven’t joined them OR
• Have joined a group and proceeded to pitch the members instead of being helpful and knowledgeable.
• Don’t refer other connections where appropriate.
• Don’t engage with posts on the home feed by liking or commenting.
• Don’t post updates on the home page.
• Don’t post articles on their profile.

There’s more - but this is beginning to sound like a serious rant.

At present all these things are possible with a free account.  If you’re not using them to their utmost, don’t pay for a Premium account.