Let’s face it. We’re all getting jaded with being ‘sold to’, ‘listened to’, ‘re-marketed to’. And this is rich coming from us right? After all, we’re definitely involved in marketing for a wide range of businesses, and naturally being a marketing company, we use all the latest techniques in marketing to get in front of potential customers on behalf of our clients.

But the market does always somewhat dictate what works. After all they’re the recipient of any given marketing message. So if they’re over it and start spending time in another medium or changing their behaviours online, we have to change ours to get in front of them again.

I’ve been noticing a changing tide. And my sentiments on the game changing were echoed at the Social Media Futures conference which I attended recently in Melbourne. Like any conference, with a couple of days of content being shared by a range of industry leaders (including myself) some themes emerged. And one which stood out to me and I thought worth talking about in a blog, was the need to ‘get personal’ as in market to people in different ways on social media to just posting on your business page.

In case you hadn’t heard, posting on social media business pages is still worthwhile, but it is becoming increasingly harder as a marketer to achieve results unless you have a decent advertising budget allocated (see our blog post here on that), are consistent with your posting, and really know what you’re doing in terms of producing quality content in terms of professional photos, graphics, video, clever copy + calls to action.… 

Where we are now often seeing the best results in social media for our clients, is communicating with them in more direct, personal and relevant ways. And often this involves getting a Social Media Outreach or Messaging strategy happening.… 

So what exactly am I suggesting?

1/ Do More Social Media Outreach

Whilst most people think being active on social media for business is all about posting on your business page, using your personal profile to seek out relevant Linkedin or Facebook groups, seeking to join them, and then getting active in an authentic and relevant way can help you connect with potential clients in a much more personal way. And it doesn’t require any advertising budget – just your time (which in our experience most businesses are pretty short on!)

So how do you Social Media Outreach? In short, using your profile (yep, that’s the one with your name on it, not your page although posting as a page in groups is also possible in some cases on Facebook subject to the groups rules), you are able to find relevant groups to post in, request to join, and once accepted, post your carefully crafted message in them.

Knowing how powerful this strategy is, but also how busy businesses usually are, we’re now offering Social Media Outreach packages which can be utilised on their own, or in combination with our other social media posting + advertising packages. You can read about these over here.

2/ Encourage people to message your Facebook page and BE RESPONSIVE!

If you have a Facebook page, people have the ability to message your Page. Perhaps people are already messaging your page. But the question is, how responsive are you?… 

In my experience, quite a few businesses mean well, but are quite slack in this department. In one breath they’ll tell you they want more business, but in the next when you politely point out there are quite a few unanswered messages sitting in their page inbox once you’ve activated their page, the excuses come thick and fast, generally about being busy. But here’s the thing. Surveys have proven that people prefer messaging OVER phone and email. Think about it. Phone and email are both pretty flawed as communication mediums. With phone, you’re generally restricted to phoning a business during their nominated business hours. Which even with the best intentions isn’t always possible. Lots of us do our ‘life admin’ early in the morning, and late a night, or just when ever we get a moment in our busy lives. And that’s not to mention phone mazes and the joys of being ceremoniously cut off.

And email? Well you send one, and maybe in a day or two, perhaps even a week, you get a response, but they haven’t answered your question or you’ve got more based on what they’ve told you.

Compare this to messenger where if you’re both online at the same time (even if you’re answering them from the comfort of your home in your pyjamas), you’re effectively having a real time live chat. Which is good for all parties. You’re there to answer any questions they may have and hopefully get them over the line/provide a good customer service, and they feel listened to, responded to, and can now make a decision on whether they wish to engage with you for business. Personal. Instant. Direct.

And the fact of the matter is customers often turn to Facebook as they perceive that they’ll get a QUICKER response than email or phone.… 

Facebook recommends aiming to respond within the hour, particularly with local businesses where the decision to come and ‘visit’ you may be made within a short time frame. Say for example which restaurant you might dine at tonight. If you don’t get back to them in time, you run the risk of quite simply losing the business.

3/ Consider a chatbot campaign of some kind to get people ‘opting in’ to hear from your business via Messenger

Open rates on Messenger are insane. When you send emails to your database, you can lucky to get 10-20% open rate. Compare that to an on average open rate of 80-90% on messenger and the answer is clear on where the best place is to message your customers. Messaging via your Facebook business page is personal, direct and instant.

So how do you get people ‘opting in’ to your Messenger system? Essentially anyone who has messaged you on your Facebook page, you are able to pick up and continue to have a conversation with. But if you really want to take things up a notch, we’d highly recommend talking to us about getting you started with one of our comment to bot chatbot campaigns. We’ve run quite a number of these now and they have all worked a treat. The formula is pretty simple – offer up a prize of value, get us to set you up a comment to bot campaign using our third party software, and launch!… 

To whet the appetite, here’s some recent results from campaigns we’ve run for clients:

TRAPT – Bar & Escape Rooms in Melbourne

Off an ad spend of $900: Over 32,000 reached, 2010 reactions comments & shares, 1793 post clicks, 3803 engagements & a 7% increase in page likes (+685 likes)! See the full case study here: https://thecreativecollective.qwilr.com/CASE-STUDY-TRAPT-Comment-to-bot-competition-T8XaJ88PT8qO

Miss Cheri – Body Contouring – Malvern Victoria

Off an ad spend of $700: Over 16,134 reached, 1099 reactions comments & shares, 790 post clicks, 1889 engagements & a 63% increase in page likes (+345 page likes). See the full case study here: https://thecreativecollective.qwilr.com/CASE-STUDY-Miss-Cheri-Body-Contouring-Comment-to-bot-competition-bqj5lGZyQZG2

Interested? Find out more about this service here.

4/ Create your own LI or FB groups

Yet another way to beat the algorithms and get personal with your customers is to establish a Linkedin or Facebook group.

Having your own Facebook group has many benefits apart from getting personal with your customers and beating the algorithims too. You can also:

• Announce offers
• Receive immediate feedback from polls
• Build trust by providing value
• Go live to a small group
• And more!

SUMMARY

So there you go. Lots of ways to communicate with your prospective and current customers in more direct, personal and relevant ways. Whether you use on or more of these strategies, based on our experience, they’re definitely worth giving a go if you want to try and beat the algorithms and diversify your strategy from the ‘pay to play’ environment that is a business page on social media.