How To Build Your Brand And Sell On Facebook: Dos and Don’ts

Facebook has recently made moves to make the platform more ecommerce friendly. As a result, ecommerce business owners are realizing the potential that Facebook offers and taking advantage of new features.

To help you get start and allow you to take advantage of these new features as well, here are a few Dos and Don’ts to help build your brand and sell on Facebook.

Build your business page

If you don’t already have a business page, that should be your starting point. If you do have one, these tips still apply to you.

Dos

Do: Add your logo as a profile picture and make sure to complete the page with relevant information, including contact details. This will help you keep your page in line with a consistent brand image. Add a professional cover picture and don’t forget that people are more likely to trust a business that pays attention to every detail and displays a clean and professional image.

Don’ts

Don’t: Make the mistake of adding all of your products in one image hoping that people will fall in love with a product and look for it in your store. They won’t. The only thing they will see is a greedy company with a messy image.

Don’t: Leave any blank field in your page info. Your customers need to know as much as possible about your company.

Attract fans/customers

Even the most well developed page is useless without an audience. But how do you build your audience on a new or lightly trafficked page?

Dos

Do: Start by inviting your friends and family to “like” your page. Ask them to also invite their friends. Even if you won’t get any sales out of this move (unless your family and friends make a few pity buys) it’s a simple and inexpensive starting strategy.

Do: Email your previous customers and offer some incentives to make them visit and like your Facebook page. Offer discounts, vouchers or free products. Keep in mind that it’s about 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to keep the old ones. You want previous customers to be a part of your Facebook community since by interacting with your brand more often there are bigger chances for them to return for more purchases. Once you have them, run contests and offer discounts and products as prizes for your fans.

[ctt template=”3″ link=”SKcwE” via=”no” ]It’s about 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to keep the old ones. #customerrelations https://ctt.ec/SKcwE+[/ctt]

Do: Advertise your Facebook Business page on your website. Add calls to action and invite people to share website content to their Facebook profile.

Don’ts

Don’t: Pay for fake likes just to increase the number of your page fans. It’s way better to have 100 real fans who could become customers and who plan to engage with your content than 1000 fake likes that won’t bring you any sales.

Don’t: Offer prizes that are too big or you’ll risk getting too many fans outside your target group. Your goal is to attract people who could actually become paying customers. On the other side if the incentives have zero value people might not be interested at all, so don’t be too cheap either.

Create quality content and post regularly

Fans won’t like your page for a long period of time if you’re not being active or if your posts are irrelevant and uninteresting.

Dos

Do: Post regularly. Experts recommend posting at least once per day (possibly two as need be).

Create quality content that brings value to your customers. When your posts do get seen, you want them to have impact. All your posts should be informative and helpful. Provide solutions to your customers’ problems.

Do: If you target international customers from different time zones, use a tool like Buffer to schedule posts so your page stays active even when you sleep.

Don’ts 

Don’t: Make every post about your brand and products. The ratio should be about 1-to-3. Out of every 3 updates, only 1 should be an advertisement of your brand/products.

Also, don’t spam your audience. It might be frustrating that not all your fans will get to see your posts without paying for boosting them but posting 10 times a day won’t help either. Those who will see your posts might get annoyed and click “unfollow”.

Help fans interact with your business

Dos

Do: Ask questions, run surveys, invite customers to upload photos and give incentives for engagement.

Do: Respond to your fans’ inquiries and comments in a positive and helpful manner. Customers might not always be right, but if you really want to tell them that, make sure to do it with a smile on your face.

Do: Add pictures or videos. People are more likely to engage with visual content.

Don’ts 

Don’t: Ignore negative comments. The way you reply to criticism tells a lot about yourself and your business. Always use criticism to improve your services. If a user becomes too rude or obscene, report their comments to Facebook and ban them from your page.

Don’t: Fight and be impolite. Getting into an argument with your audience will never help you in any way, so keep your emotions in check.

Don’t: Wait too long to answer your messages. Customers usually expect you to answer within an hour, so unless you receive messages in the middle of the night, be prompt to solving your customers’ issues.

Set up a FB store

Now that you have a popular Business Page with quality content and engaged fans it’s time to actually make some sales. The easiest way to do that is by adding a store tab to your Business Page and allowing customers to buy and pay without leaving Facebook.

Dos 

Do: Use a tool like payever to start your Facebook Store. It allows you to add an unlimited number of products and accept multiple payment gateways, making it possible for clients to pay via their preferred method without leaving Facebook.

Do: Add professional pictures and cool descriptions to your products to make them appear more appealing.

Do: Invite your fans to share their purchases with their friends. Word of mouth is the best way of attracting new customers.

Don’ts

Don’t: Use services that only allow you to upload a very limited number of products. Your business might grow in the future and you won’t need the hassle of completely changing your service provider.

Don’t: Use a service that only displays the products in your Facebook Store but then sends customers to your website for check-out. Keep things quick and simple and be ready for the future.

Now that you have an outline to get a solid start using Facebook as a revenue generation tool, what are you waiting for? Oh, and check back on the AG Integrated Marketing blog next week for a follow up article about Facebook for business.

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Alice Calin
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