Social Media Sales 2.0: Leveraging Facebook as a Sales Tool

April 4, 2011

Do you feel like your Facebook sales and marketing strategy is not working and you are wasting time with it? If so, you are not alone. Many companies complain that they have developed company profile pages on Facebook and regularly post updates, but have not seen this hard work convert into sales. Some companies have opened up Facebook storefronts as well, but these efforts have also yielded limited success.
So what should firms do to better leverage Facebook as a sales tool? For one, Facebook is not an extension of your web page, so don’t treat it like one. If you want to transform your company’s Facebook profile into an effective sales tool, then you are going to need to generate a reason for people to visit your page regularly and offer a different sales experience on your Facebook page than you do on your website. If your social media sales and marketing strategy is properly executed, your customers will self select into the sales process that they prefer. This will open the door to new customers and provide more frequent contact with your current customers. 

There are lots of ways to generate traffic on your Facebook page. One great way to do this is to offer an exclusive daily deal on your page. Another way is to host a contest that in some way relates to your products or services. For example, uTest, a software testing company, regularly hosts bug catching contests and several luxury clothing companies host fashion contests. You can also generate interesting polls, active discussion boards or videos to attract visitors. The key to generating sustainable traffic is to regularly host events and turnover content, so that your customers will develop a regular routine of visiting your profile page. Also, make sure to advertise this new marketing medium through your website and your targeted customer email marketing campaigns.

Making the sales experience different from the one you offer on your website could be as simple as offering an exclusive daily deal. However, the most effective strategies are those that utilize the community and thus make shopping a community experience. For example, eBay hosts a Group Gift platform on its company page that facilitates group gift purchases. The way it works is a person sets up a group gift and then invites their friends to help purchase the gift. This is a creative sales approach as it leverages a person’s network to generate a new customer type. This model could be utilized by almost any retail company.
So now you know how to make Facebook a more effective sales tool for your company.

Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy

<strong>Brandon Hickie</strong> is Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>. He previously worked at OpenView as Marketing Insights Manager. Prior to OpenView Brandon was an Associate in the competition practice at Charles River Associates where he focused on merger strategy, merger regulatory review, and antitrust litigation.