Over the past two years, I’ve been pushing across the benefits of Facebook groups to promote your Facebook business page, by educating and connecting with potential customers looking for or becoming intrigued with your services. Groups are amazing at helping you grow your Facebook page for free. However, groups take longer and need more time than alternative growth strategies such as Facebook Ads.
Many decorators we’ve taught over the years have been highly successful in groups and seen the rewards. They’ve spent time expanding to new audiences and finding new leads. But there is still a large section of decorators that rely on friends and family, bringing them work believing that their close circle is infinite, and with a growing pressure to use social media to do nothing more than invite people they know to their page like friends, family and other decorators.
This strategy would be fine if other decorators were your target audience, but they’re not. Or if your friends and family know dozens of others with the budget to pay for your services, but with the cost of living crisis and growth of DIY services, they don’t.
Your Facebook page is your sales tool. It’s where people learn about you and your services, ask questions and get in touch, so having decorators like your page is like trying to sell to no one but your competitors. With family, it’s great for a few vanity likes to boost your numbers but nothing more.
To expand, I’ve outlined three reasons why you should avoid asking other decorators, or friends and family to like your page.
You’ll forget the audience you should really be targeting.
We’re human; we love to be told positive things, and in a social media world we need to get likes on our Facebook business page to feel validated. So, when you post images targeting your ideal buying audience and get no likes or comments, you feel rejected and you feel something isn’t working, you even begin to think marketing professionals such as myself are wrong. In response you seek out likes and comments from those who know you by posting content you know they’ll love. Your content goes from images/videos of you working and the projects you complete to a meme of an apprentice being tricked into buying tartan paint or sharing images of your family holiday because decorators love that stuff. Your friends see you as the funny, interesting guy who loves to laugh with you. BUT your page is no longer a slick marketing tool to target a buying audience, instead it’s a page full of memes with no serious intention behind it.
I might be over-embellishing my example, but look at your page and see if you’re drifting in the same direction. Getting 2 to 5 likes from a post when you have 1000+ followers that are your potential audience is not uncommon. Customers tend not to interact with posts like they used to but it doesn’t mean they’re not looking. Instead create a landing page on your website with a tracking tool, such as Google Analytics or Hotjar and see how many people land on it when sharing via social media.
Facebook can’t help you.
Whether it’s your Facebook business page, Instagram or one of the other channels, the platforms want to help you. They want to push your content to other people they consider would be interested in you. But, if your followers are mostly friends, family or other decorators then their behaviours and demographics are the only information Facebook have, so don’t be surprised if your content is only seen by other decorators or people that support the same sports team, have the same age children, or like the same tv shows as you do rather than those with wealth or hobbies that can afford your services. Not those with expensive cars, not those who are into expensive items, not those currently looking for a new house or shopping at Tom Howley.
You need to stop worrying about the number of page followers you have and focus on getting your ideal audience onto your page. It may take longer to increase your page likes, but Facebook will find your ideal buying audience quicker. That’s because Facebook will have the information they need on those more likely to buy from you and send your content to the same type of people. This is also the same for Facebook ads, which we advise using to grow your page likes quickly. It costs money, but to find your audience in 2022/2023, you will need to commit to an amount of money for Facebook advertising.
LinkedIn is the only exception to the rule. Connecting with decorators on LinkedIn opens up their network, allowing you to connect to more relevant connections and again will take time and need a strategy but not physically cost you money.
Keep it respectable.
I know from experience the type of comments I can expect from my friends and family, ‘I’m proud of you, ‘ohh that’s what you’re up to these days, ‘you’ve come a long way’, stuff that’s not relevant to my audience, things that can me look like a ‘chancer’. Then there’s the range of comments I could expect from my competitors. The less professional comments are aimed at bringing down the reputation of my business, even those I deem my work friends. Your competitors are very capable of bringing you down to make themselves feel more important, your competitors can undermine your hard work, even decorators you deemed as friends, so they feel better about their inactivity or the fact that you’re doing better than they are.
Conclusion.
Although connecting with friends, family, and other decorators may seem a great idea to help raise your Facebook business page numbers, it’s detrimental to your growth across social media. Use Facebook Ads or agree to take it slow, building your Facebook page correctly will ultimately create a sales tool that can evolve and create new leads from outside your current circles of influence.
If you would like to know more, the best thing I could advise is to join the Pro Members group of The Decorators Growth Club for just £25 per month. I’ll be walking you through how to set up everything I discuss in this blog, plus a lot more on social media in 2022 and beyond.
