5 Tricks to Getting Real ROI from Your Facebook Business Page

Social is just fun and games and the thought of getting an ROI from something like Facebook is just a farce, right? Wrong! That couldn’t be further from the truth. Getting ROI from Facebook for your business is possible; you just need to be clever in how you convert your “likes” and views into something that you can measure with a dollar sign.

ROI Success Metrics

The first step in getting ROI from Facebook is to determine what success metrics make the most sense for your business. If you’re in real estate, for example, you eventually want your fans to buy/sell a home through you. Your likes/fans will most likely convert to leads somewhere other than Facebook, thus your measure of success would be traffic to your website from Facebook, with that person reaching out to you in some way.

However, a business owner with a shorter sales cycle like a massage therapist or salon owner would look more to direct call-to-action (CTA) metrics. A click from Facebook to schedule an appointment or recommend a friend would be the metrics you could measure for success.

Likes to Leads

With either of these approaches, the end result is you getting a Facebook fan to reach out to you. While Facebook is a great way to stay top-of-mind with your past clients, the real money is made through email, which converts three times higher than social media.

Use Facebook to keep your name in front of people; use automated emails to convert them into new (or repeat) business.

With all of this in mind, here are five ways to start getting ROI from your Facebook business page.

1: Grow Your Email List Through Contests

Running Facebook contests is a great way to grow your email subscriber list because it’s relatively inexpensive (depending on what you choose to do) and the leads you get are coming from people who have already liked your page. Getting someone’s email address and adding them to your email campaigns is the best way to nurture a new or existing prospect into a qualified lead.

Also Read: The Usefulness of Lead Nurturing for Small Business Owners

Social Media Examiner put together a great list of contest ideas that you can run on your Facebook page to capture email addresses. There are two ways that you can run these campaigns.

The first way is just a straight-up drawing with some sort of prize. One company gave away three huge chocolate stashes, while another kept things local and gave away four tickets to a football game that weekend.

The other way is to encourage user interaction. My most favorite campaign highlighted in the article was a Halloween contest for the best-dressed dog. Fans uploaded pictures of their dogs and the one with the most votes won. This method keeps your fans engaged and interacting with your page.

And thanks to Facebook changing their contest rules, you no longer have to use a third party app to run your contest. However, apps like Wishpond and ShortStack will make running a contest much easier for you.

2: Utilize On-Page Facebook Apps

A lot of people forget that Facebook’s business pages give you a few layout options to choose from, apps being one of those options. Think of these as highly customizable features of your business page.

We actually build custom Facebook apps for the clients we serve. For example, for our loan officer clients, we offer three apps for their page: newsletter board, refer a friend and mortgage calculator.

As you can see on this page, the newsletter board and refer a friend apps are present. When you click the newsletter board, all of this client’s past email newsletters are clickable and readable. This is a great way to keep fresh content on your page and capture the email addresses of people who want to sign up for your newsletters.

In addition to OutboundEngine’s custom apps, there are a ton of apps that you can install to make your Facebook page more interactive. The SME folks put together a comprehensive list of apps (some free, some paid) that you can install to your page with just a few clicks. Some of my favorite apps are:

• Social Portals: Lets you showcase another social account through Facebook, like your Pinterest or Instagram page.
• Quizzes: Pretty straightforward. If you combine this with a contest, you can collect contact info too.
• Blog Integration: In addition to posting your new blog posts to your page individually, your latest posts are easily accessible through a tab.

Whichever apps you use, make sure you’re keeping them focused on helping you build your email list.

3: Facebook CTA Button

 

Back in December, Facebook quietly added a nifty little feature to business pages. Right at the top of every page is a button that can do almost anything you want. While Facebook truly wants to keep users on the site, it also has the interests of business users in mind; thus, a customizable call-to-action button.

You are limited to seven button options (“Sign Up,” “Shop Now,” “Contact Us,” “Book Now,” “Use App,” Watch Video,” and “Play Game”), but unlike Facebook apps, visitors can click directly from the page to an external URL.

On the OutboundEngine page, we’re always looking to show off our product demo to people, so we could choose either the “Sign Up” or “Watch Video” options. We went with Sign Up because, when clicked, the CTA takes you to our website where you’ll see the video regardless and have a chance to see a live demo.

This CTA button is a great tool for salons, spas, and retail business pages too. Hubspot did an excellent overview of all the options you have to choose from.

4: Play Nice with Instagram

Continually posting great content on your page is the best way to keep your posts in the news feeds of potential leads. Photos have always been more likely to get attention in the feed, and more recently, video has jumped up in importance too.

Facebook bought Instagram a few years back and has done a great job of integrating it into the Facebook experience. While Instagram isn’t a direct way to get contact info, it is an incredible tool to boost the attractiveness of your page and get others to engage with you.

Also Read: 10 Killer Examples of B2B Companies on Instagram

5: Highly Targeted Ads

If you’ve wondered why I’ve emphasized throughout this post the importance of building a strong email contact list, here’s one of the top reasons why: Facebook lets you create ads that specifically target customer audiences based on your email list.

What this means for you is that if you wanted to run an ad for a spring sale at your salon, a new home listing in your neighborhood, or even just a promotion of your latest blog post, you can make sure that everyone on your email list sees that ad … on Facebook.

How it works is pretty straightforward. Prior to creating an ad, you create a custom audience on Facebook using your email list. So if you were to upload your entire contact list, that custom audience would be titled “Past Clients” and could be used to target people to let them know you’re still in business.

Or with my favorite use case, you use your custom audience to run an ad promoting your business page to the friends of your contacts list. You’re always trying to crack into the social circles of your past clients, and this is a direct way to do it. These ads are pretty slick, too. They’re the ads in your news feed that you didn’t even realize were ads. Take for instance the ad for DollarShaveClub.com below. I have yet to “Like” their page, but they are running ads targeting the friends of friends who have. Notice at the top of the ad it shows the 26 other friends who have liked their page already? This is how custom audiences work to help you get ROI from Facebook.

Also Read: How to Set Up a Small Business Facebook Page

Wrap-Up

The purpose of this blog was to show you the nifty ways you can convert Facebook likes into leads, but figuring out the actual ROI math specific to your business is a tutorial for another day. However, I did come across the easiest way to calculate social media ROI in a short guide from Buffer.

Like any social network, you need to strike a fine balance between being fun and social and making sure it’s helping you accomplish your business goals. Have fun with your page, but remember to stay focused on getting the most ROI you can from it. In this case, that means growing your email list.

Much of your business growth comes from referrals and past clients, and the best way to reach them is through exposure to email marketing and social media marketing touch points. Leverage your Facebook fan base using the tips above and focus on converting them into new business through email.