Be An Intrepid Marketer – Recommendation No. 22
Every day, someone asks me what possible business value Facebook has for their business? Actually, I can cite many reasons. But today, I am going to talk about using it to learn more about your community.
I once had a client ask: “Why should I give a hoot – and waste my time – looking at photographs from someone else’s family trip to Disney World?”
I tell you why – that information is money!
My friend and business partner, Mark Walker, taught me that the critical first step in the sales process is developing a rapport with your prospect. He’s right. And usually – it takes time to develop that rapport.
Spending time on a person’s Facebook page allows you to look a little deeper into who they are: their politics, their friends and family, their favorite TV shows, favorite movies, and yes, even scrolling through and viewing pics from their recent trip to Disney World.
Now, the most common push back I get is this: “But that means I actually have to “friend” that prospect on Facebook.” To that I say: well, yeah.
This makes a lot of people uncomfortable. They don’t want to just “friend” someone they don’t even know.
I don’t actually friend anyone for no reason. In Facebook, I only friend people who share a lot of common connections with me, or is someone I met at a networking function. If you meet someone personally, it is perfectly appropriate, in my opinion, to friend them on Facebook.
If you have NOT met this prospect in person, but do want to approach them about doing business – you might consider using these two social media tactics:
Find a connection on LinkedIn that knows your target, and ask their help in making a connection. Or, see if you can strike up a conversation with that person on Twitter – which actually is an easy tool to meet new people.
Assuming you get connected in one of these two ways, it becomes much easier to friend them on Facebook.
But once you friend them, start reading about them – see what motivates and moves them. Learning about them, trying to find that connection – that common bond – so that you have something valuable to talk about when you do sit down face-to-face.
And when I do finally land that opportunity to grab a cup of coffee with them, I can hit them with “wow, that trip to Disney looked fun! My family went their a year ago! Wasn’t it great?”
Boom. Suddenly you are connected. You just made a big jump in moving that rapport along. And now you are on your way to moving that relationship forward!
Share with us some of your strategies for leveraging Facebook for your business!
