Facebook Is Re-educating Your Customers

It's been said here before, relying solely on a free platform for your marketing is risky. What TechCrunch had to say further demonstrates that point. So, you've plunked down a healthy chunk of change for that Facebook app. It has been working like gangbusters bringing in customers spending money until all of a sudden… Crickets. What happened? And more importantly, what you can do about it.

Facebook re-education

Facebook developed a program to “re-educate” its users about oversharing their “privacy.” It's going to force people accessing their site via desktop to go through the privacy lesson. Part of the users reclaiming their privacy is clearing unnecessary apps from their permissions list. What that means is the app you had created shows up on their app list. As people get ever more paranoid (Is it paranoid to think people are watching what you do when Facebook really is watching?), they will remove your app in a second. They didn't have a problem with it when they signed up, right? So why now?

The benefit is too far removed

When they signed up, the benefit clearly outweighed the value of the information they gave up. Now they only see your app (even with your name on it) as just another to clear off the list. So how can you stop this from wrecking your social marketing?

Get prospects and customers off of Facebook ASAP

Your social marketing strategy should always be to get prospects and customers out of Facebook and into your own system immediately. You want them to be where you have the “home field advantage.”

Get them into Your System

You do have a system, right? For far too many local businesses, Facebook is their marketing system and strategy. Facebook is a tool, and a quite powerful one if used properly. However, it is not a system nor strategy.

Your marketing system

Should consist of a place to gather prospects. This is ideally where your prospects gather naturally. That is Facebook's role in your system. Next is a place you control (your website) to capture prospects, take them from Facebook, and place them into your filter process.

Your customer filter process

Separates and identifies people who are Right Now Buyers as well as those who are not yet Ready Willing or Able to buy from you. How would you like to have that power to know who you should be sending offers to and who needs more time to really understand your business, product, or service is right for them? That makes all the difference between getting sales or getting frustrated chasing off (and pissing off) people who aren't quite ready to buy from you.

It's time to develop your strategy and build your system that gets you right now ready to buy customers.