Facebook isn’t just for looking through your aunt’s cake pictures and stalking your ex on the sly anymore. With its community and gathering mojo, it’s a prime place to do your wedding marketing, get some leads, and land some customers.
Alright, fine. You knew that already.
But what you may not know is how to capitalize on the social media behemoth, how to market your business and generate leads effectively and honestly.
We’re here to help.
- Join relevant Facebook Groups
Goodness gracious, are there ever scads and scads of wedding groups and forums for brides- (and grooms) to-be to converge and shoot the wedding breeze with their fellow travelers.
Some of these groups will even be local to you. So join them.
But for the love of all that is holy, do not join a Facebook wedding group and immediately post, “HAY I’M THE BEST WEDDING PLANNER FLORIST AROUND SO VISIT MY WEBPAGE AT www.smlwindia.com!”
For starters, such spamming will get you banned from most groups. Secondly, even if it doesn’t get you banned, such obnoxiously forward advertising doesn’t work very well.
Do you like to be hit up in that manner?
No, using Facebook groups to drum up business calls for finesse, grace, and subtlety.
Read and respond to the posts of the group. Engage in the group as a friend, not as a business owner or salesperson.
It doesn’t hurt to become known in the community as a caring and interesting poster. Then, when somebody makes a post looking for recommendations for someone in your line of work, then you can make your pitch.
But – and this is important – pitch like you would to your Aunt, not the virtual stranger that they are to you. Do it with warmth and familiarity as opposed to a hard sell.
All of the above becomes infinitely easier if you actually care about the Facebook wedding groups you are participating in, rather than cynically exploiting it to generate business.
Sure, that may be the primary goal, but if making genuine connections, engaging in mirthful conversation, and giving sound and caring advice (good advice mixed with referrals to his peers in other areas of the wedding business is a favored cocktail of wedding videographer Brandon Morgan) are secondary goals, the primary goal becomes a lot more achievable.
Those referrals can become crucial too.
As Morgan puts it, “I’ve found some particular vendors that I like in these groups and when someone asks for a service that they can fulfill, I refer them. This has gotten me referrals from those vendors, but also it’s kept me in the minds of some of the brides as well.”
That, he says, has lead to indirect bookings for him.
- Pin It!
Eventually, by following the above, you will become known as a good and reliable wedding florist (or whatever your wedding professional work is) and you’ll be able to market your services a bit more directly (which reminds me – familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations of each group and follow them, and don’t try to hide or obscure the fact that you are in the wedding business; you don’t want to look like a double agent).
When that happens over time, people will start visiting your Facebook business page (you have one, right?).
Over time, some of your posts will be more popular than others and generate more leads than others.
Maybe the winning post will be one where you show off your best and most unique work, or maybe one where you are running a evergreen contest of some sort.
At any rate, when you have a post that attracts a lot of attention, pin it. Pinning a post means when someone visits your page, they will always see that post first.
It’s easy to do, and it has a way of keeping your most popular posts perpetually popular as more people join the Facebook wedding groups and get to know you.
- Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
According to Lindsay Kolowich, over a billion people use a mobile device to access Facebook every day. That billion with a B, and indeed, more people each day look at Facebook on their phone than they do on their computers.
As fleshed out above, people will eventually visit your Facebook page, which in turn means they will eventually be visiting your actual website, if you have one.
It’s therefore critically important that your website not only “works” on mobile, but looks good on mobile. Incredibly, this crucial bit is often ignored, resulted in untold lost business.
If your website provider doesn’t automatically render your website well on mobile (test this yourself, extensively! Click on all your links. Make a dummy purchase), and you aren’t a web developer youself, treat yourself to one. They can be hired inexpensively, especially if you look overseas. You owe it to your future bulging wallet!
What do you think about using Facebook for leads?
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