By now everyone has understood that posting an event, discount, product on their FB page only works if someone actually sees it. FB have convoluted rules about which people, pages, group posts you see thus reducing the number of people who see your post. This means they must actively go looking for your page to find your product or service.
You can create a page or a group on FB and people can follow this. Still does not mean that they actually get to see your post. In my experience your FB feed is populated with 20 or so of your most viewed feeds. This means that if you, like I do, follow https://www.facebook.com/weffrancais and you engage with it regularly it will filter to the top of your feed. If you don’t engage with the page, it will drop below the 20 and you will occasionally see some posts till finally it hardly ever shows up on your feed. One fine day you will suddenly remember hey I haven’t seen any posts from WEF and wonder what they are up to.
In response to this filtering people started joining interest groups with the aim of posting advertising for their products. This is where the spamming comes in as suddenly the Living in Thailand FB group got inundated with advertisement for things completely unrelated. The discussion forum was hijacked by companies spamming them. This puts off group members, so moderators put on approval gates and declined many of the adverts. Group administrators then added group rules stating no spamming or advertisement. Many groups became quite militant with regards to adverts.
For FB this a desired outcome as it helps drive us to use their paid promotions. If you pay for FB advertisement you get your posting listed on your chosen demographic prospective buyers feed. But wait, didn’t I tell you at my marketing workshop that 65% of consumers don’t trust advertisements and 71% of people have no faith in sponsored posts on social media. The general consensus is that ads are bad. The product could be great and just what you never knew you needed. However, 71% of people won’t look at it, let alone buy it because it’s a sponsored ad.
So why do people hate ads? Ads have always been with us, in newspapers, magazines, clay tablets, posters and billboards. Radio and TV initially started out with a license fee and no ads interrupting your enjoyment of Hawaii Five-O or The Archers. My theory is that when non state entities could finally purchase licenses to operate TV stations, they did not get state funding and so had to rely entirely on license fees. To stay competitive their license fees could not be more than the state funded media offered.
Which meant to become a profitable media company they had to sell ads. They sold airtime within the program time and now earned really big bucks. As a consumer all you saw was that just as they were about to discover the dead body, or Reth Butler carry Scarlett off to Tara a Coca Cola or Marlboro add interrupted your enjoyment.
Now then, what can you do to avoid spamming and still promote your product successfully. You want your product and service out there. You want people to know about it, build a good customer base, get noticed and recognised. Here are some tips for you.
Use FB groups to get engagement – choose the right group for your engagement, don’t promote meat in a vegan group, alcohol in an AA group, or Danish pastry in a forum for diabetics. I am building an experience holiday for Taylor Lam’s 333 Shooting Range. This will be a 007/Rambo style survival week. Now I am not an expert, so I asked in a Danish FB group here in Thailand what people thought about the idea. 25 constructive responses and 1 stupid comment. They were helpful, interested and had great suggestions about it. 40% were ex-military and wanted to try it out, 2 were travel agents who want the tour on their books. My next step is for a follow up post on progress and what we have decided, again asking questions looking for feedback. The post was viewed and liked by 500 people.
YouTube is a great channel for your sales. You should create informative and entertaining videos. How is your product made and how is it used. How do you get it to your customers, provide tips and knowledge. Make them short and informative. If you sell organic eggs and have 500 chickens. Video them, give the egg-layers inventive names. Talk about the feed they are given, the impact on chickens having to lay eggs. Maybe massaging the chickens has a beneficial effect, give them aroma therapy, play opera or other music that makes them lay more eggs. Have a webcam people log into to see what your chickens are up to.
Billboards are a great way of making you noticed. For some reason it’s not seen as invasive. Many years ago, I was in Robertson Valley, South Africa. On the highway there was a huge sign that simply said ‘Please don’t hoot your horn 3000 chickens resting’ That was back in 1998 and I can still see it in my mind. You need to make an impression.
Events are a great way to get your product out to an audience. Maybe it’s a market stall or you approach a venue to co-host, you can sell sponsorship for others to join you. Maybe it’s a made in Chiang Mai Sunday market. Get an influencer to talk about your product and event. One thing to promote is getting people to click the interested button or of course the going button if they are going. This shows up in their friend’s news feed that so and so is interested/going to this event.
Now think about this – I posted this article giving my take on spamming and how to market your product differently. I have shared my insights freely; you now regard me as a person of knowledge on the subject of effective marketing ideas and channels. You like what I wrote, you want help to develop some inspired marketing for your product – so who are you going to call?
I also told the story about the experience that Taylor is building. You now know that he will have this amazing 007/Rambo experience. You are interested in this, and you reach out to Taylor to know more.
This is the power of informative content. People want experiences either directly or vicariously. Tell a story that interests, amuses, and engages people. That is the way to build a good following and loyal long term customer base.
LAN Business Consulting 