Facebook Organic Panic

The recent changes at Facebook announced by Mark Zuckerberg have caused panic and meltdowns by some so-called social media “experts.” These one-trick marketers think it’s the end of the world for Facebook and are spreading false fear to brands. I hope your competitors listen to this insanity.

Please share this terrible advice with your competitors:

Yes, Facebook is dying. It will probably go away forever very soon.
Facebook organic reach will be so low that it’s just not worth using Facebook anymore.
Facebook ad rates will go up. So instead of advertising to grow your business in the midst of the biggest business boom in 30 years, you should pull back and start hoarding pennies.
Stop using social media altogether.
Go back to relying on direct mail ads, newspaper ads, and yellow page ads, because, sure, that’s where customers are spending time.
Also, the sky is falling! Eek!

Don’t Panic

Let your competitors lose their heads. If they’re going to pull back on Facebook due to decreased space, that’s more space for the rest of us!

I’m not sure if any of these social media “gurus” really believe Facebook is falling, are just trying to get noticed, or have a deep resentment of Facebook’s success and are looking to celebrate a decline. But make no mistake – the only failure here will be made by those not constantly adapting and capitalizing on changes in social media.

What to Do

Here are my three recommendations in dealing with these changes on Facebook:

1. Double down on Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads. Will ad rates go up? Of course they will. Facebook ads are more effective and more efficient than any other ads available today. Prepare for a year where the US economy will grow 3-4% (finally!). So yes, ad rates will go up and so will your revenue if new customers can find you and can engage with you.

2. Create even better, more sharable content. The value of organic content is no longer about hitting many current fans with a message. The real value comes from getting a few fans or customers to share your content or their experience with their friends. As per last week’s news feed changes, these shared posts by friends will dominate screens.

3. Consult a professional. Do you really want to spend your entire day navigating these increasingly complicated waters?

Reaching Franchise Candidates on LinkedIn

More franchisors have asked me about using Social Media for franchise development in the past 6 weeks than in the previous 6 years.

At recent events including FranTech, Franchise Leadership and Development Conference, The Chicago Women’s Franchise Network, and Springboard, my conversations have focused on using Facebook for not only generating new leads from your consumer customer base, but also engaging with candidates further down your franchise development sales funnel using Facebook’s Custom Audience Targeting.

And often, the next question has been: “But what about LinkedIn?”

Franchisors at these events ask about improving their results in finding candidates on LinkedIn. Many tried LinkedIn early in their online marketing journey but got bad results and quickly moved on.

I suggest that LinkedIn may not be appropriate for engaging with some types of potential franchisees, just as Facebook or other channels may not work for other types of prospects.

Recommendation #1: Before jumping into any social media marketing for franchise development, look at who your candidates are and where they spend their time on social media.

The Facebook Side

If your best franchise candidates are those folks who will be operating their own store or other franchise location day-to-day, Facebook is the best place to engage. They may be customers of a current franchisee who could visualize themselves running their own shop. They have an interest – and hopefully a passion – for your brand’s type of service, work, food, or culture!

At our FLDC panel discussion, Wild Birds Unlimited exemplified this type of brand. Chief Development Officer Paul Pickett shared how individuals on Facebook can engage with a brand that shares their passion and then picture themselves as owning their own store. I would add that being a great storyteller and sharing appealing images and videos is key in developing these relationships! Facebook is the most important place to spend your development time as this is where such future owners are already spending their time.

The LinkedIn Side

If your best franchise candidates are looking for an investment or for their next franchise award, let’s look at LinkedIn. Those candidates are in “the business of business” and invest in a franchise based only on return. LinkedIn is an excellent place to share information about your franchise’s value.

On the same FLDC panel, LinkedIn success was represented by ZIPS Franchising. ZIPS Vice President Aaron Goldberg does a fantastic job communicating on LinkedIn with potential business partners who are multi-unit owners investing in franchises.

At my FranTech Roundtable on Social Media in October, many Franchisors shared with me that they burn through their LinkedIn ad budgets quickly. Unlike Facebook where your boosted posts are easy for the right prospects to consume, LinkedIn puts you in a very competitive position to get a franchise development ad viewed.

Recommendation #2: I’m currently recommending not initially buying ads on LinkedIn. Instead, use LinkedIn as the one-to-one communication tool that Twitter was meant to be. There’s no advertising cost to engage with a person as another person!

LinkedIn may not be a great place to generate a completely new lead, but it is the best place to communicate with potential business partners with whom you’re already engaged.

Recommendation #3: Use LinkedIn for franchise development via your personal profile, not your company LinkedIn page. People buy from people. The goldmine of LinkedIn for any brand is in its use by company representatives as individuals. Sure, your company page needs to be updated and appealing. But the heavy lifting needs to be done from you as a business leader.

Recommendation #4: Use these tactics every day to get to the next level with your franchise prospects on LinkedIn:

*Share relevant business articles and blog posts that would be of interest to your candidates.

*Reach out to them via LinkedIn messages and InMails. Both have a significantly higher response rate than emails.

And remember the most important thing when promoting a business to prospective buyers on social media: even when you’re not engaging with them, they’re watching you!

Reaching Franchise Candidates on Facebook

Are you using Facebook to sell Franchises?

For nearly all Franchise Development executives with whom I’ve spoken this year, the answer is “Sure!” Less than 2 two years ago, the answer was, “Why?”

I have recently spoken to several groups about Social Media and Franchising including the International Franchise Association Convention 2016, FLDC in Atlanta, and IFA’s Women’s Franchise Network in Chicago. At these events, the subject that attendees keep coming back to is Facebook Custom Audience Targeting for franchise development.

Custom Audience Targeting allows you to upload a database of email addresses and then serve up Facebook ads to only those people. While Facebook won’t open the floodgate of targeting your prospects by name, it will match the person’s email address from your list to a Facebook user profile.

Here are step-by-step instructions on uploading your email list to Facebook Custom Audience Targeting.

An Easy Touchpoint for Your Prospects

While consumer marketers have been taking advantage of this capability for nearly as long as there have been ads on Facebook, many franchise marketers have not yet discovered it. Most franchisors are focused on creating awareness with larger audiences based on demographics. They’re missing an easy touchpoint with their leads and candidates who could be engaged in a place where they are easy to reach.

And REACHING them is what it’s really all about! This isn’t about finding people who you never knew existed. It’s about not discovering a whole new species of humanoid who wants to be a franchisee. This is about getting in front of your candidates where they already live.

The average American adult spends nearly 7 hours per week on Facebook. Insert yourself and your brand into those hours among the political memes, game highlights, family photos, and cat videos.

Multiple Stages, Multiple Messages

If your email database is updated and well-managed, you can serve messages appropriate for every stage in your sales funnel. One message may be great for an old lead that faded away a while back. A very different message may fit a candidate further along in the pipeline. The more narrowed-down your target audience, the more relevant your message, and the more efficient your ad spend!

A Unique Marketing Opportunity for Franchising

Franchise Development is different than other Business-To-Business sales types in that prospects and leads use their home or personal email addresses on whatever submission forms brought those email addresses into your database. This is perfect for Facebook Customer Audience Targeting, as most people sign up with Facebook using their personal email address. Selling other business services can be challenging using this method, as most B2B sales pros have prospects’ work email addresses, not the ones that match Facebook’s database. In this way, as in many other ways, Fran Dev is much more like B2C selling in the digital world.

Facebook for Franchise Development

Thanks to everyone who attended our Facebook for Franchise Development panel at the International Franchise Association annual convention last week. It was just 500 or so friends getting together on a Sunday in San Antonio to chat about Facebook. Fellow panelists Paul Pickett, Ashley Pollard Sawyer, Lorne Fisher, and I were thrilled with level of engagement and enthusiasm from the crowd.

Facebook Ads, Not Just Posts

I should note that when I say Facebook for Franchise Development, I’m talking about Facebook Ads. Your consumer marketing counterparts can and should rely heavily on organic / unpaid content and updates. But when trying to reach potential franchisees, it’s all about the paid posts where you can target specific messages to certain groups of people based on demographics, interests, and location.

Surprise Audience Engagement

Three things from the audience have really stuck with me. First, an amazing crowd of 500+ came to hear about best practices in using Facebook for Franchise Sales. The overflow crowd was spilling out into the hallways by the time we started. 15 to 20% of the entire IFA Convention was attending this session on a Sunday morning!

Second, I was shocked and impressed that a majority of the CEOs and Franchise Development executives in the room answered affirmative when I asked if they were at least starting to use Facebook ads for franchise lead generation. One year ago it would have been under 20%. Five years ago I would have been laughed at for asking that question. When I first attended IFA in 2009 to discuss “emerging media” in franchising, suggesting spending money on Facebook would have gotten me kicked out of the convention.

Third, a great question from the audience allowed our panelists to drill down into a deeper discussion of what to do if you’re not getting results. A franchisor had tried some Facebook ads, got a lot impressions or clicks, but no real prospects and no deals. Many see this as Facebook advertising not working; I see it as working well, just with the wrong content. She had touched many people but didn’t tell the story she wanted to tell the first time out.

If you’re not getting the results you require from Facebook ads, you have only three options:

Step on the gas and get that content in front of more people
Change your content & try again
Quit!

(And #3 is not an option)

Plan Your Facebook Tactics Now Around the 2016 Elections

The first votes in the 2016 Presidential race are less than 3 weeks away. The Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire & South Carolina Primaries in February mean an explosion of political messages in an already-crowded media space. It’s estimated that approximately $500 Million may be spent on Facebook ads for the 2016 Presidential Election.

Franchisors, franchisees, and all business owners need to figure out their Facebook plans now.

Even before this massive spend leading up to each state’s primary, the organic updates from candidates, increased posts from political bloggers, and campaign stories from news outlets are already consuming most of the attention on Facebook.

Ted Cruz is broadcasting using the new Facebook Live streaming video every day. Ben Carson’s campaign took off entirely from Facebook fans spreading his messages. Donald Trump posts pictures and remarks from the campaign trail several times per day. The campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders manage multiple pages for their organizations in each state showing a strong local community focus and ground game.

Imagine how much more crowded the space will be in 30, 60, or 90 days. And that will pale in comparison to later this year when the two eventual nominees, their parties, and their PACs throw hundreds of millions into Facebook ads for the general election. Imagine the competition for consumers’ attention!

Organic reach using your current tactics will be zero. How can your message get to your potential customers and candidates? Here are a few ideas to try to rise above the noise.

1. Post when others are not posting. Get a calendar of upcoming primary events and avoid the days before, during, and after a primary in any state or a debate. Instead pick other days of that same week to post. This may mean moving out of your comfort zone of days / times for posting. But that’s a good thing; I’ve never been a fan of so-called “best times” to post. Your customers are active on social 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

2. Plan on buying more ads and increase your ad budget. There’s no way around this!

3. Be prepared with a non-Facebook Plan B. If Trump and Clinton (or whoever the 2 nominees are!), as well as the DNC, the RNC, and the PACs all start dumping a half Billion dollars into Facebook, you may have to explore alternative channels. If your business is not already set up on Instagram, Periscope, Snapchat and other places, do so now and run some tests. Get ready to move into that space if you find engagement.

Facebook Custom Audience Targeting with Your Emails

It’s been said over and over that Content Is King. Sure. But if the content is never read, viewed, or heard by anyone, then it’s not very royal.

If content drops but no one sees it, does it make any impact?

You must spend some dollars on advertising to promote your content or no one will ever see it. But what’s the best way to throw some money at this problem? Advertise to only to targeted demographics or geography? No.

Take one step back – do you have email addresses of your current or recent clients? Let’s start there. Facebook’s Custom Audience Targeting allows you to serve up that ad to a specific group of people for whom you already have an email address.

Facebook won’t let you pick and choose specific people by name to whom an ad will be served but we can serve up ads to people whose email addresses match! In Facebook’s view, if you’ve already got an email address, then there’s a reason to speak to these people in specific voices.

Here’s for whom it works:

Business to Consumer – Create targets ads for:

Your current customers
Specific customers part of your loyalty program
Potential customers who have signed up for specials or info

Business to Business – Create targeted ads for:

Prospects and candidates

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to Manage Ads on Facebook and click Create Audience button (far left)

2. Choose Customer List
.

3. Click Upload File and select your spreadsheet with your email database

One issue to watch is the percentage of your email database that matches with Facebook users. One large franchise system with whom I spoke at FranTech 2015 has seen a match of between 60 – 70%. And an even larger global brand client of mine saw only about 50% match. Why the discrepancy? Consumers are signing up for your offerings with a different email address than what they used to sign up for Facebook.

But still, specifically targeting half or more of the people in your email database is a fantastic and economical way to reach your customers.

Is Facebook Replacing the Internet?

Facebook. It’s where your customers are.

Just a couple of years ago, many digital marketers frequently forecasted the end of Facebook:

It surely won’t dominate for long. There must be some Facebook killer out there. Be platform agnostic – don’t build your business only on Facebook.

But now, unless your customers are a small niche group, they are on Facebook and spending more time on Facebook than ever!

Sure, there’s also still great value in Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and … well, I guess just Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Snapchat, Pinterest, and the rest all have their place, and are great for some brands and audiences, but not all.

Play the numbers. Your customers are on Facebook and spending less time on the non-Facebook portion of the Internet. And that portion may be replaced or eaten by Facebook. Here are some parts of your digital world that may soon be replaced by Facebook and a next step for each to help you prepare.

1. Facebook Replacing Your Company Website

Some consumers already won’t leave the “Friendly Confines” of Facebook. In the months and years ahead, fewer of them will be likely to leave and go to some corporate website.

If your digital marketing strategy only focuses on driving people from Facebook to your website, consider skipping this step and engaging that audience while they have given you some attention.

What activity can customers do on your website that grows your business? Ordering product / eCommerce? Making appointments? Downloading videos? Do that same thing on your Facebook page.

Next Step: Look at your website and replicate the business-driving activity.

2. Facebook Video Replacing of YouTube As a Social Video Channel

Facebook is taking a big bite out of YouTube’s video ad business. At the same time, we should look at the current state of using these platforms to share organic video content.

YouTube is amazing, but it’s a repository, not a social channel. Sure, continue to upload all of your videos there for consumers to find through YouTube / Google searches, but don’t drive your Facebook fans there. Where would you prefer customers spend a few extra minutes? On your Facebook page where they can engage and communicate with you or on your YouTube channel, which lends itself more to snark from trolls than genuine customer engagement?

Next Step: Start posting your original video content direct to Facebook, not links from YouTube.

3. Facebook Ads Replacing Online Ads

The Ad Blocking trend is a HUGE opportunity for your brand on Facebook.

Ad blocking tools block nearly all types of mobile ads. But what’s not stopped? Facebook boosted posts (as well as Twitter promoted Tweets and other social ads).

Steve Rubel of Edelman recently wrote that this situation will make earned media more valuable and I absolutely agree. The way to best draw new customers to your brand is with interesting and relevant content. And the best way to attract consumers to that content in the first place is by paid ads on social channels.

Next Step: Jump into Facebook ads, particularly boosted posts now.

What other parts of the Internet do you think may soon be eaten by Facebook?

Please share in the comments section below. We’ll continue this discussion on this week’s episode of Social Geek Radio with my guest digital strategist and author, Chris Adams!

Franchise Sales Using Facebook

How much of your brand’s Facebook activity should be devoted to franchise sales efforts versus consumer marketing and engagement?

Many franchise systems with whom I’ve spoken in the past several years have struggled with balancing their social media communication for consumers and their engagement with potential franchisees. Some designate a certain amount of content on the page for consumer marketing and an amount for franchise development. Others create completely separate Facebook pages for their franchise sales messages.

I don’t recommend either of these practices; all goals of marketing a franchise on Facebook can be achieved in a more holistic approach.

Your Page Versus Their Feed

First, let’s stop thinking of Facebook pages like websites with certain amount of real estate devoted to various parts of your organization. A Facebook page is really just your starting point.

The true power of Facebook communication lies in users seeing your brand and your news on his or her news feed, not on your Facebook page.

It doesn’t really matter what’s on your page. Very few people are ever going to seek out your page and view it the way people once did with websites. Typical consumers won’t be confused by your franchise sales messages because they don’t see them.

Organic Versus Paid Target

Your messages may be seen as organic (free) posts, which will reach 2% to 20% of your fans, depending on your fanbase size. But more likely, your messages will be seen in the form of boosted posts or other types of paid advertising. The reach or size of audience depends how many dollars you want to spend.

Target your paid content by the demographics of your franchise sales candidates. This goes beyond just age and gender; target according to your typical candidates’ interests, industries, and more.

Even within your group of franchise sales posts, you may want to change up content or demographics based on location. Messages promoted to Texas candidates might need to be different than those promoted to Florida candidates.

Your brand’s fans and your franchisees’ customers won’t see that content. With a few exceptions, I typically don’t see anything wrong with showing consumers some franchise sales-specific social media content. But when paying to boost and target Facebook posts, it is cost prohibitive to show all messages to all people.

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