Hey Crow. Prepare for a massive rant about Facebook and marketing as Im bored at work anyway and nothing else to do while eating my chicken and rice
Getting your head around Facebook (FB), Likes and how FB can be used for marketing is difficult. Took me a while and a lot of trial and error. I do the marketing for my wife's business so have a bit of hands on experience in it. This is just my experience and it may vary depending on vertical market, so if any seasoned marketers jump in, don't slam me down
First question I would have is what are you trying to achieve with Facebook for you business? Any strategy needs a defined goal. The biggest mistake people make is thinking that they can generate lots of new business from Facebook. It may be possible but its better used as an addition to your other marketing strategies. Attracting new customers is pretty difficult on Facebook as realistically, who goes searching for companies you don't know about on FB? If i was after information on "hormone replacement therapy" I would use Google, not FB. So use Google and look at your SEO strategy for attracting new customers.
Facebook is better served as a way to keep customers or seal the deal with prospective customers. By getting current customers to Like you, they see your posts and you are always there in their mind, so the next time they need your type of service or product, you will be the first person they think of. We also use it as a way to seal the deal with new customers. My wife runs a niche catering/cake decorating business and makes posts on FB while she is creating her food and cakes. When a person places an order, if they follow her on FB they can see their food or cake as it is being created. One thing we have heard customers say is its a big risk buying from someone online. After all, you can see pictures on our site and read testimonials, but how do you know they are our pictures or real testimonials? How do they know we will actually turn up on the day? FB tends to reduce that risk for people because they can see the finished product. They can also see what others have purchased and they can see comments from those people on how happy they were and how great it tasted.
Now back to your original question on how to get more Likes. Its hard, really hard. But do you need lots of Likes? Most marketers will agree that no-one can really quantify what a Like is worth. It varies. You see FB pages with 10,000 followers but virtually no interaction, no Liking of posts/pictures and no comments. You then find other pages that might have 20 likes, but every single one of those people is interacting. To me, i would rather have the 20 people because those Likes are quality Likes that will lead to business. Either those people will use you when the time is right or they will mention you to their friends and colleagues. The 10,000 Likes on the other page probably dont even read the posts and will generate zero dollars.
You can pay for advertising on FB now. We tried this twice and gained a few extra Likes out of it but they were pointless Likes. They have never interacted, I can tell we will never get business from them and the majority were from overseas. Being a local food related company, its not much point having someone in China following you. I was actually reading an article the other day where a marketer had been analysing FB advertising and the Likes he had acquired and a large proportion were people in unrelated areas of business, on the other side of the world, and a lot of the Likes were from bogus/zombie accounts. He was wondering if FB was fudging the advertising to make it more appealing to people. If you advertise and get more likes from it you will probably advertise again. After all, most people think any Like is beneficial so they got something out of the money they spent. No idea if this theory is true or not. Seems strange because he did very specific targeted advertising which shouldnt have returned these results.
We've tried running competitions, prizes etc but it had no real benefit. The only way we have found to get more likes is create quality and engaging posts. If you do, the followers you have will interact, Like and share. When they like and share other people they have friended see it and they may like you. This expands exponentially. Every time my wife has a post or picture that gets really high interaction, she ends up with an extra follower or two.
Last point, with any social media strategy you have to commit to it. You cant just post 10 times one week then dont post for a month. People need to see constant activity and they know you are serious and will more likely click that Like button. Also, you need to find where your customers and prospective customers are. It varies by vertical market and your geographical location. You may find there is no-one you are looking for on FB, they might be on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc. You need to experiment. We gave up on Twitter as none of our customers were using it. They were all on FB. We've just moved onto Google+ to see how that goes.
I noticed you have the FB link on your site. Are you tracking clicks via Google Analytics? If you dont get many people clicking, you could try changing location of the icon, size etc. If you are getting people click through but they arent liking you, you may need to think about the quality/topic of your posts. You need to ask why arent they Liking me? What are my customers looking for when they go to my FB page?
Hope this rant helps or at least gives you some ideas or food for thought.
A.
