Let me start by asking you this, do you sell a one-time service or is it ongoing?
This is an important question. Selling a one-time service is very different from selling an ongoing service. When you sell a one-time service, you are only required to engage the customer in a single point transaction. The value is built initially with the intention that the service itself will satisfy the customer’s need. In a perfect world, this is a piece of cake, however, depending on your method of customer follow-up, you may never know if the customer was truly satisfied until they post a review. And we all know that most customers are more eager to complain about a service in a review then praise a service. So the choice is yours, but in my opinion, regardless of if you sell a one-time service or an ongoing service, the customer follow-up should be an integral part of your sales and marketing process.
Last week we broke down how to market a Product on Facebook, so if you missed that article, you can check it out here. So let’s break down how to market a Service on Facebook. There are 6 stages to the Customer Lifecycle Model, however, for this article, we will focus on 2 main stages, Aquire and Engage. Since Marketing is all about Acquiring and Engaging consumers, this is how we will break through into a crowded market using the power of Social Media, specifically Facebook
My favorite method for marketing a Service is to use a limited time offer, and promote that offer using a combination of Video, Paid Ads, Emails, and a Landing Page. By using this combination, and promoting to a defined audience based on Behavioral and Geographical targeting, you can capture potential consumer’s attention using my Aquire + Engage strategy.
My 10 Step Guide to Marketing a Service on Facebook
Step 1: Come up with a Limited Time offer for your service. And when I say Limited Time, I don’t mean 30 days, I mean one day, or even a few hours in a day. This offer needs to be substantial, something that would really push a consumer to take an interest in the offer. 5% off just won’t cut it. 15%-20% is better, and you can always throw in some extras that will help offset the reduction in revenue. Pick add-ons that are cost effective for you to throw in, but that add value to the consumer’s purchase.
Step 2: Write a video script that discusses the benefits of the service and the offer. Don’t go into detail about how the service works unless that is vital for you to stand out to your competition. Humor works great, so throw in a joke or two, but stress that this is a limited time and won’t be back. This script should be 60 seconds long, and for reference 50 words is roughly 30 seconds of video dialogue at a normal cadence. You can shoot this yourself, or if you want to add some professional appeal, you can check out a local video company like Ideal Impact Media that specializes in creating short impactful videos for Social Media.
Step 3: Create a Facebook ad, and use the video as the centerpiece, while using the Text portion of the ad to show off the benefits of the special offer and service. This ad is all about selling the offer and the service, but the stress should be on the offer.
Step 4: The ad conversion can happen in two ways. One is to use a Facebook Lead Form.
This is a great option, and Facebook loves this because you are not taking people off of their platform, so their algorithm will be favorable to your ad and show it more often. The problem is that you only get the Ad to sell your offer and service and you have to complete the sale by either sending them an email with the details and sales options or you have to call them. Oh, and be sure to have a Terms of Service ready to upload with your Ad if you want to run a Lead Form ad. The other option is to use a Call To Action (CTA) button in the Facebook ad and have a quality landing page built to drive them to. Be sure to have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website or landing page that you are sending people to. In my experience, a landing page is better than a home page. This landing page should have a similar message to the ad. This page is all about the special EXCLUSIVE offer that you mentioned in the ad, only available for people that view the ad. Put a timer at the top as well counting down how long the offer is valid for.
And they can get the special offer by filling out a form and receiving the information via email, or if you are set up to sell online, then there can be a coupon code that is applied at checkout.
Step 5: For the audience, you should know the geographic radius that your service applies to. You don’t want to market to someone that is 100 miles away if your service price does not compensate for travel like that. Behavioral targeting is where things get fun. There are all sorts of segments you can choose from. And a tip, just because you don’t see it in the available selections, doesn’t mean you can’t choose it, just start typing and Facebook will start displaying behaviors and interests for you to target and choose. [ add an image of behaviors form]
Step 6: For the ad spend on this ad, you should aim high. You want to get the most engagement on this ad in the shortest amount of time, and you are only running this for a limited time. So depending on how much you can make from selling with the Special Offer Price, spend some money to make some money The exact amount is up to you, but $20 won’t cut it. Go for the hundreds, you want this add shown and re-shown.
Step 7: Run the ad on both the Facebook and Instagram platforms. Since they are both owned by Facebook, as long as you keep the video 60 seconds or less, you can run it on both platforms using the same single ad.
Step 8: Once the ad ends, you will have gained two valuable things:
1. Sales and Email Address/Contact Info
2. Engagement with the add and the accompanying metrics saved
The 1st is a no-brainer, you will know if you had sales based on how you set up your conversion. The 2nd is for future use. You spent a lot of money to get engagement on this ad. So even if someone doesn’t buy, but viewed your ad, you can remarket to them in two ways; by retargeting them with a future ad on Facebook or if you were able to get their email address, you can remarket to them by email, which we will discuss next.
Step 9: Email, email, email. I don’t care what anyone says, email still works as long as it is not spammy. If you used the Facebook Lead Form ad or created a Lead From on your landing page, you hopefully got an email address. Both of these methods of collection can be tied to Email Systems like MailChimp, Drip, Convert Kit, etc. You should create two tags for this so that when an email comes in, you know where it came from. Depending on which email platform you choose, will dictate the ability to use multiple tags. The whole point is that you don’t want to send a sales email to someone that already purchased, so you must have a Thank You page that you can capture if the consumer made it to that stage in the conversion funnel, so that they are segmented/tagged accordingly and receive a thank you email rather than a marketing sales email.
Step 10: Now comes the Facebook remarketing ad. For this ad, you will create a targeted sales-focused ad, and you choose to create a custom audience, known as an Engagement Custom Audience. This is all about selling again. These people have already shown interest in your ad, but at the time they did not buy, so it is ok to hit them with a sales ad and drive them to the conversion funnel. This ad should run for about a 1 week or you can try a 2-day (last chance) extension to the offer, but that may cheapen the offer itself, but the offer should be less than before, but still interesting. And you can be much lower on the ad spend because you are remarketing which, in general, has a better Cost per Click rate. $10 a day should be ok. To accompany this, you will also send out a remarketing email to those that never made it to the Thank You page, with the same details as the Facebook remarketing ad. The conversion funnel remains the same, but your landing page should be updated to reflect the new offer.
Conclusion
There are so many ways to market your service, but customer follow-up is the backbone of any effective strategy. So be sure to get their email address one way or another. This can be used for selling, cross-selling, thanking them, asking for a review or referral, or just saying hi. The more you engage with them on a human-to-human level the more willing they will be to either buy again or recommend your service to a friend or family member.
Be sure to join me next week when I breakdown how to create a proper Marketing Funnel.
