Many companies who sell online find that Facebook still has quite a bit of potential when it comes to making sales. Other social media sites are making great strides toward dethroning Facebook, but it remains the King of the Hill for the time being. That means you should still put some effort into getting sales through the channel for your own company. It can be a great way to build your brand, grow your audience, and start driving traffic to your site. Of course, you won’t see successful companies going for the immediate hard sell through this or any other social media sites. Why not? Those tactics don’t work, and they turn people off.
Instead, the successful companies are learning some good ways to sell through FB without really trying for that hard sell. Here’s what many are doing.
Using Good Images
People love images. The popularity of sites such as Pinterest is a testament to that. Thus, adding photos for Facebook becomes a very good way to garner more interest for your company and the products that you sell. Images tend to perform better than other types of posts on FB do. They are simple, direct, and don’t require the viewer to do any reading other than perhaps a caption. High quality images that are mostly self-explanatory are a good choice.
Show, Don’t Tell
Instead of telling people why they need your product, which seems too much like a sales pitch, you can show them. You can talk about people using the product. Link to some video of customers using the product, or show how you and your employees use it. Just don’t tell people that they need to buy the product. Show them what it is and how it works through your posts, videos, and photos, and they can make that determination on their own. If you create compelling and fun content, they will be more likely to conclude that they need to buy.
Contests and Giveaways
Through FB, you can create giveaways and contests, and that is a great way to get some more attention for your brand. People like the idea of getting free things, and this could be a good way to get more likes and more eyes on your company. However, it is important to keep in mind that some people simply like anything that is free. Even though you will find some people who come for the contest or giveaway that have an actual interest in your company, others will just be there for the chance to get something for nothing.
A good way to lower the number of people who don’t have any actual interest in the products you sell is to give away one of the products that you sell. The people who come to your FB page for the contest will have an interest in what you offer already.
Here’s another trick to get more sales during this time. Offer a coupon that runs during or after the contest. If the visitors aren’t winners, they will still have a coupon that can get them a nice discount. This might tempt more to buy during this time.
Start a Conversation
To get sales through FB, or any social site, for that matter, you need to get people excited about what you have to offer, and they need to know more about you and your company. Start interacting more on the social networks, reply to people, comment on their posts, and actually use the social networks for their original intention. Building that trust is ultimately the best way to increase the chance of making sales.