You’re Missing The Buyer!
Facebook is an exciting medium. There are amazing success stories and equally amazing monumental failures. Everyone seems to know that they need to be “on Facebook,” but very few people seem to know why other than to say that it’s “where your consumers are” or “you’re missing out on free advertising” or “its the most exciting advertising vertical in history”. Sound familiar?
It’s true. There are some really impressive numbers. If you break them down in your own market you will be astounded at the number of people you can reach. There are over 157 million people over the age of 13 in the US alone – THAT’s OVER HALF THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES! How about this stat? Of those 157 million people, half of them spend 24 minutes on Facebook EVERY DAY! That is the equivalent of 215,000 man YEARS EVERY MONTH — and thats only the people who sign in every day!
It’s almost incomprehensible. And yet with all of those impressive numbers; with all of the incredible technology available to us to reach those people, we’re still not doing it right. The few Facebook experts like myself out there aren’t educating business owners how to do it right and we’re not providing the tools that will make their marketing efforts in the space successful. We’re all failing and it is unacceptable!
Automotive Facebook marketing, in particular, is an area where this is most apparent. Most car dealer fan pages have a few hundred fans. There is nothing more unimpressive as a consumer than going to a Facebook fan page to find ZERO presence. But what about the few automotive Facebook fan pages out there that do have thousands — even tens of thousands of fans?
Even they are missing the boat. We are spending far too much time trying to “qualify” our fans. Are they “in market”? How long will they take to convert? How do I know if they’re buying? If I get them to become a fan because of a contest or giveaway why would they necessarily buy my product or service? I hear this and I just can’t help but think, “WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!!”
The motives of the fan are irrelevant, if they also happen to buy your product then that’s great! WIN! But I don’t care if a single fan ever buys anything. You simply want them to be loyal to your page. You want them to be active on your page, and you want them to (pay attention here) help you advertise. Let me say that again. The purpose of your Facebook fans is to become your own free marketing agency. Every single one of them comes with an average of 130 leads–130 referrals–130 opportunities to earn a customer. And the best part is that when they market for you, they bring more credibility to the table than the most brand loyal company on the planet.
Make Them All Market
You’ll never get all your Facebook fans to comment or like all your posts every day. So how can we tap in to all of their 130 friends? The answer is simple: Give your fans something they want. Something that they will gladly trade access to their profile for. Once you have access, you can speak to their friends directly.
Wikimotive is working on such a product now. We will be announcing this product at the Automotive Marketing Bootcamp in Orlando, FL on April 18th. The time has come to put the power of Facebook into the hands of business owners in a way that leads to duplicatable results.