10 Ways How To Achieve Your Social Media Goals

Every marketer that delves into social media is doing so in hopes of achieving success. Of course, the reality of the situation is that some marketers are going to end up failing; and a great way to avoid becoming just another statistic is to create and achieve reachable goals one at a time.

Biting off more than you can chew, so to speak, is often the cause of failure.

Marketers setting their hopes too high and then spending too much time and money in the wrong areas is a recipe for disaster. Below, you will read some tips to implement in your social campaign pertaining to brand achievement.

10 Tips For Creating And Reaching Goals In Social Media

1. Create An Outline Of Obtainable Goals

What types of goals do you have in mind as a social marketer? The first thing you want to do is ensure that your goals are realistic. Instead of having a goal like cornering the market and outshining the competition, start with the goal of competing with a few thousand fans, increasing your sales by 10%, building more overall brand awareness, etc.

Social media goals should remain realistic.

Not every kid playing hoops is going to reach the NBA, and having that sort of goal, while there’s nothing wrong with it, is rather lofty and likely to fail. On the other hand, there are many milestones along the way that are much easier to achieve and all of which stand out as successes.

2. Understand Your Audience

When you outline goals such as increasing your fan base and your brand awareness, the next step is understanding the type of audience you’re delivering material to. For instance, a brand that deals in the tech industry might not make a splash if the material they’re releasing deals with everyday news and gossip.

Understand what your audience expects from you.

As it stands, no one understands your brand and your mission better than you. Relay this message in your material and deliver it to the type of person most likely to respond positively to the message. Niche marketing is smart marketing.

3. Take Part In The Conversation

No social media marketer reaches success without actually focusing on the social aspect of the genre. In order to be successful in reaching the goals you have outlined, you need to participate in the social experience. Whether on Facebook, Twitter,Google+ or any other site, be a social brand that seeks to treat people well.

Respond to people, show fans that you appreciate them in your material, and engage with people by Liking, sharing and commenting on their material at times. Engagement can’t be a one-way street if you’re hoping to be successful.

4. Choose The Right Platforms

Part of reaching your goals has to do with the social media platforms you choose to participate on. Although there are some popular options to choose from that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, many social networks come and go like the seasons.

Choosing steady networks is a huge plus.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even a video site like YouTube are all great options. With a site like Facebook, for example, you get a full range of customizable features, a slew of ad options and different ad management apps to choose from, and your content distribution can be streamlined and focused on a direct target without fear of an audience dwindling or a site collapsing.

5. Develop A Strategy For Content

The next step in this process is to actually devise a strategy for releasing your content. This strategy can be broken down into sections to help you better understand it:

• The Target Market
• The Quality Of The Content
• The Release Schedule

Refer back to the previous tip about understanding your market. You want to target your material—your ads and posts—directly to an audience that is more likely to engage with you.

Secondly, you want to ensure high-quality content that actually aims to solve real problems within your niche. Don’t present generic content for the sake of releasing something.

Thirdly, you want to focus on a release schedule. Find out when the bulk of your audience is online and deliver content at times they’re most likely to see and engage with it.

6. Develop A Schedule

Following up on the previous tip, let’s speak in a little bit of detail about developing a posting schedule. Since you may have more than one active platform, you need to understand how the traffic flow works on each one.

Your Facebook audience might be at its peak when your Twitter audience is fairly slow, leaving you with a lot of work to do if you’re trying to keep up with your posting times. This is why you should implement a program to help you release content on a schedule. You can simply put the content into the management system and set the times for release. This decreases your workload while helping you to get the most engagement.

(See related post: The Secret Of Timing In Social Marketing)

7. Keep Up With Trends

“Quality” is often dictated by the viewer, not the poster. In other words, something that’s popular may not be something that actually earns points for its craftsmanship or forethought. This is often the case with hashtags, and also with memes, polls and other material that’s frequently shared. Part of your social media marketing campaign should involve keeping up with these trends and playing to the crowd.

TIP: The Secret To Crafting Killer Memes

Developing and using hashtags, for instance, gives you a great opportunity to track your content, to see who’s saying what about your brand, and to reach a much larger audience. Sharing other material also puts you smack-dab in the middle of the social experience, allowing you to play to that proverbial crowd and to generate more of a buzz.

8. Ask For Engagement

The call to action has long been one of the best ways any Internet marketer induces follow-through after the material is released. Relying on people to click-through on something has never been a marketing principle; instead, inserting a variety of actionable calls—“Click here”, “Want to know more?” and “Act now while supplies last”among others—has always been a preferred way to coax the traffic in the right direction.

You can use a call to action in the material you’re releasing to increase your odds of engagement. Actually, asking for engagement, such as comments, Likes and shares, can have a very positive effect on your marketing.

9. Be A Generous Brand

Social media is unique in that you have so much control over the material you’re releasing to the public. It’s also unique in terms of how many options you have available to you for marketing your material. Take a site like Facebook for example. You can operate a contest from the site and develop new lists of thousands of members.

For example: Creating a contest on Facebook, where you’re offering a monetary prize, can create a lot of buzz and traffic. Supplementing your marketing efforts by using Twitter, Instagram and other social networks, you can draw huge exposure and end up with a lot of interested subscribers.

Getting 100 new customers out of 1,000 new leads more than pays for any prize you’re giving away; and look at it this way: The bigger and better the prize, the more people who join to win it. The end result could be a huge windfall.

10. Monitor Your Results

Last up on the list, you want to carefully monitor the results of any content you release. You can check your analytics on a site like Facebook, or you can get a third-party monitoring system to help you make sense of everything.

Keeping up with your results helps you to achieve your goals a lot quicker and without having to trash a campaign to start from square one. You can see what you’re doing correctly and incorrectly, and you can subsequently double-down on what’s working to increase your odds of success.

Start with goals you can actually reach.

Overall, the best way to achieve your goals is to start out with goals you can actually reach. Once you approach social media marketing realistically, you will find that the tools are available to help you achieve success as long as you’re willing to follow a formula.

http://socialmediarevolver.com/10-ways-achieve-social-media-goals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+socialmediarevolver+%28Social+Media+Revolver%29

5 Steps to Content Marketing Awesome – You Can Do This!

Successful content marketing programs are ongoing communications efforts that empathize with customers and deliver useful experiences. Each content object published is a promise to the community that something relevant, useful and info-raining is in store.

Consistently producing content experiences that inform and inspire creates one of the most powerful customer states: anticipation. Few things are more powerful for attracting a loyal following of customers and advocates than the anticipation to see what’s coming next.

But how can companies with slim budgets create such a content marketing program? While there are entire books on the subject, I think these are the 5 essential components for initiating a growing momentum of content awesome.

1. Identify customer segments – Start with something as simple as best and worst customer scenarios. What are the common characteristics of the customers you want to do business with? What distinguishes the need or reason to buy your products and services for one group of customers compared to another? What are the demographic and behavioral differences amongst groups of customers? Create profiles or personas for each distinct customer group.

2. Map the buying journey – For each customer segment, what are their preferences for information discovery, consumption and taking action? What channels are influential during the buying cycle? Do they use search? Do they use social? Do they respond to paid or social ads? Do they subscribe? What is it like for them to buy from you from awareness to interest to consideration to purchase. Map it out – for each customer segment.

3. What questions do buyers have during the sales cycle? – Every customer has questions that lead them to purchase. What are your customers asking? For each customer segment and each customer journey from awareness to purchase, identify the important questions your buyers need answered into order to gain the confidence and certainty needed to buy from you. Survey your customers, look at your on-site search engine for logged queries to find questions used as search terms, look at social networks for relevant common questions as well.

4. Leverage those Q & A’s for your content plan – The most fundamental and impactful thing a business with little marketing resources can do to create awesome content marketing results is to answer the questions customers have as they go from awareness to purchase. BUT: Don’t just inform your customers, help them feel that your business is the best answer by providing experiences. Articles are great, but videos, interactive tools and engagement with other customers in the same situation is even better.

5. Optimize for search, social, and user experience –  Don’t fall victim to random acts of marketing disease. Organize your content Q and A according to customer segment and how they will discover, consume and be inspired to act on your content. Optimize your content for what buyers are searching for – use the language of the active buyer, who is looking for solutions. Optimize for social discovery and sharing too. Also optimize to info-tain and to create a great user experience. Make it easy to find the right information and for buyers to act with speed and convenience. Solve information problems with your content but also create great experiences when finding, consuming and acting on that content as well.

If you have to, start small focusing on your best customer segment with a blog, video and one or two social networks. Walk before you run and develop some kind of hypothesis for your initial experiments with answers based content. Just understand that these 5 steps are the content marketing muscles you’ll need to exercise on a regular basis to create momentum, anticipation and content awesome that builds community and grows revenue.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/04/content-marketing-awesome/

Why You Shouldn’t Be A People Pleaser

Pleasing people is probably holding you back from your dreams…

You know when you want to do something, but get a gut feeling that people in your life won’t like it? You end up not bothering because it’s not worth the hassle – even though you long to do it. We’ve all been there…

This can lead you to avoid things in life that would help you feel happy and fulfilled.

A well meaning friend may scoff your plan to quit your job to become a full-time internet marketer. “You’ll go mad at home all day.”

Erm no, YOU’LL go mad at home all day. I’m fine with this.

That’s a big problem pleasing people – they give advice based on what’s good for THEM, not you. We’re all different…

Many people can’t cope with working from home. They miss the traffic jams, the annoying bosses, and having to beg for a day off.

Not me. I love living life on MY terms. But I digress…

When you are a people pleaser, those around you get comfortable with this. They feel safe with your predictable and compliant nature. They’re reassured they can drag you to things THEY want to do – and you’ll always accept.

They like that you lead a life that enhances theirs, and naturally don’t want the party to stop. That’s why they get so upset when you want to do your own thing.

You want to quit your job? But how will you afford to watch me perform in my next play?

You HAVE to do what’s right for you – and that might be completely different to what’s right for anyone else. As long as you are not harming anyone, you owe it to your existence to go for it.

People often like to guide you based on their biased self interest. Look out for it and don’t let it happen. Yes you can listen to friends and families advice, but make up your own mind.

People will be shocked when you live life on your terms. They will complain, and pester you to get back on “the path” – their path.

Keep persisting. It’s your life not theirs. The more you persist, the stronger you become. You will get more used to living life on your terms, and so will they.

Eventually they will leave you alone. They will stop expecting you to be so compliant to their ideas. Given enough time they may compliment you for following your dreams. If they don’t then they don’t care much for you do they?

You must fight for your life – the life you want to lead. Don’t spend it helping someone else chase their dreams. Follow YOUR dreams.

http://www.affiliatehelp.info/2014/03/12/why-you-shouldnt-be-a-people-pleaser/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+affiliatehelp%2FyPyX+%28AffiliateHelp%29

SEO Makeover for 2014: A Practical Guide for Businesses

SEO is about attracting non-paid search traffic to your website. The idea is that a person searches the Web using Bing or Google, etc. and your site comes up in the non-paid search results. To that end, it’s important to make sure your website is easily understood by both people and machines.

• People = your target market, your ideal website visitors.
• Machines = search engines like Google and Bing.

It’s a problem if your website confuses people and they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. Or they can’t smoothly accomplish the tasks they want to complete (or you want them to complete).

But did you know it’s also a problem if your website confounds machines? It’s common for websites to have technical roadblocks that create problems for machines trying to understand or even find pages on your website.

Does your site need a makeover? Find out using…

The Portent 2014 SEO Website Makeover Checklist

Compare your website to this checklist. It’s not in any particular order so you can jump in and start your makeover pretty much anywhere on this list. You’ll be able to figure out if a checklist item is meant to make it easy for machines or for people. If not, just hit me up in the comments section at the end.

• Does your home page instantly and clearly communicate what you offer? Are you sure?
• Does each page have a page-relevant unique title tag?
• Does each page have a page-relevant unique meta description?
• Does each page have a clear and concise headline?
• Do your page URLs convey an indication as to the topic or content of the page?
• Do your pages use interesting unique images and make use of a relevant image ALT attribute?
• Does your page content truly inform or engage?

Don’t just answer “yes!” to the above questions, be objective and honest. The above list could keep you busy for quite a while… but here’s more:

• Are any pages on your website duplicates of any other page on your website (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Are any pages on your website duplicates of any other page on other websites you have (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Do any pages on your website contain text that is duplicated on any other website on the Internet (either by accident or on purpose)?
• Are topically related pages of content logically linked together in a way that’s useful to site visitors?
• Are any of the links on your site leading to “404 page not found” error pages?

Your content should be 100% unique on the Internet. Not 50% or even 99% unique, 100%. Broken links frustrate visitors and provide dead ends for machines so be sure to fix those. Got all that done? Let’s keep going…

• Is your site navigation easy to find, understand, and use?
• If someone landed on any page of the site, would they be able to instantly figure out where they were in the site hierarchy?
• Does your site have clear calls to action?
• Is your site rife with jargon and technical terms you use all the time but your target market does not use or understand?
• Do your site visitors get a clear indication of what will happen if they fill out a form, click a link, or take some recommended action?
• Do you provide a sitemap of pages in case someone wanted to see a complete “menu” of your website?

Here’s more stuff you need to attend to:

• Do your site pages load in a browser in less than 3 seconds?
• Do you have an XML sitemap?
• Are you making proper use of a robots.txt file?
• Are you making appropriate use of structured markup? (See schema.org for more info.)
• Have you set up Google+ authorship and/or publisher cross links?
• Is your site displaying well and is it usable on a smart phone?
• Are you putting content in technology that machines can’t understand like Flash or iFrames?

Got all that done already? Now check the following:

• Does your site code have huge blocks of JavaScript that could be moved to an external file?
• Does your site code have blocks of CSS that could be moved to an external file?
• Are you 100% sure that you have your analytics tracking tags deployed properly on each and every page of your site?
• Are you providing site search functionality to your visitors? Does it provide frustratingly irrelevant results?
• Does http://www. display in front of your domain name and also http://?
• Are all of your site’s links hyperlinking directly to the target URL, or do any of them pass through redirects?

Don’t stop now, you’re on a roll!

• Does Google Webmaster Tools report crawl errors you need to fix?
• Does Google Webmaster Tools report HTML improvements you need to make?
• Are images compressed?
• Are images properly scaled?
• Is your navigation still visible and usable if you turn off JavaScript in your browser?

Wrap up & TL;DR

This is not meant to be an “all-inclusive SEO checklist.” There is no such thing because every site has specific needs, problems, target markets, and technology stacks. When it comes to making your site better for both humans and machines, you want your distance from perfect to be as close to zero as possible.

I guarantee that by using this website makeover checklist you will find at least 3 things you need to fix or otherwise attend to with your team.

http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/seo-makeover-for-2014-a-practical-guide-for-businesses.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+conversationmarketing%2FMRJI+%28The+Portent+Blog%3A+Conversation+Marketing%29

Tools And Ideas To Rock Your Online Marketing Program

TIP! Before you select any affiliate marketing program, you should investigate exactly how each company credits sales that are made outside the confines of the website. If orders made through phone or email are not linked back to your unique affiliate ID, notable amounts of your commission may never make it to you.

An internet marketing program can be a great way to earn an extra income through your website! Before you begin, you need to make sure that you understand some basic information in order to increase your success with web marketing. This article will share techniques and information that other affiliate marketers have found effective.

TIP! Let your website’s visitors know you are doing affiliate marketing. Present it in a way that will be well received: it opens up advantageous buying opportunities for them with products they are already interested in.

One way to get started in the online marketing game is to sell a group of themed products from different vendors. You are more likely to pique the interest of a customer if there is a variety of relevant links for them to choose from.

TIP! When getting involved in affiliate marketing, it’s important to work with an affiliate company that has products you truly believe in and would be happy to promote and sell. Try to have multiple affiliates.

Many affiliate marketers do themselves a disservice by straining too hard to turn into “super” affiliates. In their attempts to maximize their effectiveness, they actually end up driving themselves into the ground by taking on more than they can possibly hope to successfully achieve. Remember, maximum results aren’t attainable all at once. It is important to take time and look for the best method that will apply to you.

TIP! Try advertising through multiple programs in the same niche. If you go through several sites that have affiliate programs in the same field then you give your visitors a wider variety of links to choose from.

Certain text programs exist and allow the affiliate marketer to make additional profits in a newer method. This is a new thing, but a lot of affiliates are employing this technique. It keeps customers informed and will help you sell your products.

TIP! A lot of affiliate marketers push too hard to become “super” affiliates. Do not do too much, you will wear yourself out.

There should always be honesty in web marketing. Tell people who you are affiliated with. You should also tell them about your site and what it is all about. If you are dishonest with your visitors, they may avoid your website and go to the main merchant’s site to buy that product.

TIP! Try dipping into secret links. Be subtle when using affiliate links throughout your text.

An affiliate marketing program will help you achieve great results when promoting your business on the Internet. Generally speaking, you can get a lot more traffic with online marketing programs than other types of advertising because you will have access to lots of great marketing tools. You should pay attention to the parent company’s site, especially the quality of the product and the ease of site navigation.

TIP! You should give careful consideration to the products you intend to advertise before setting up the links to do it. Once you’ve chosen some links, experiment with organizing them in different ways on your site.

Online marketing is a great way to make some money, but you have to know what you are doing if you want to make good money. High rankings with the search engines will benefit your Internet site. Doing so will net you prestigious affiliate links and greater revenue.

Conversion Ratio

TIP! Be sure that you keep your target audience in mind when picking affiliates. This can have an effect on your traffic, as well as showing viewers that you understand what they want and need.

If you want to succeed at an online marketing program, go with a quality company that possesses a strong sales to conversion ratio. A conversion ratio of 1% is a great benchmark to have.

TIP! Make sure you provide reliable content. If the readers really like what you produce, they will uphold you by finding referral links and following them should they want to buy the product still.

These tips have hopefully provided you with timely and helpful web marketing advice. Remember that it is important to stay current with changes in marketing information. Web marketing can be a nice addition to the income you are already making with your site. You can easily accomplish two goals with one action. “

 

http://www.affiliatemarketing-fordummies.com/tools-and-ideas-to-rock-your-online-marketing-program/

Content Marketers Still Have A Long Way to Go

Three weeks ago I was able to attend and speak at Content Marketing World in Cleveland, OH.  The event was a three-day content love-fest and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking about, listening and having great dialogue with others about their content strategies and approached.   While there is no doubt that content marketers are making great strides in terms of content usage, there is still a long way to go if we as marketers are going to make a difference in our organizations and with our B2B buyers.
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute, kicked the conference off by reviewing some of the stats from the Annual Content Benchmark study conducted by CMI and MarketingProfs and it was the results of the survey that confirmed my suspicion -  while many are working at content marketing – 91% use content marketing, few are truly seeing any benefit or value.
As seen above, 91% of organizations that were surveyed are using content marketing in some form or fashion.  However, as was revealed only 50% of those that are using content marketing have a strategy.   I also believe a case could be made about the 50% who have a strategy as that word carries a lot of weight which I believe many organizations do not truly comprehend.

This lack of strategy is one of the key reasons why of those doing content marketing, only 36% will rate their content as effective or very effective.   No surprises here – no strategy equals a lack of effectiveness.
In thinking about the study, talking to people at the conference, comparing my thoughts to some of those from CMI and also taking stock of the many companies I speak with on an ongoing basis, I believe three fundamental problems that are preventing marketing from getting the most value from their content:
1.  Marketers Confuse Doing More with Value
The CMI-Profs Study asked two questions:
Question one:  Challenges that B2B Content Marketers Face – the number one answer?  64% stated their number one challenge was “Producing Enough Content” followed by 52% stating that “Producing the Kind of Content that Engages” was their number one challenge.
In looking at the ranking of the answers, it is clear that marketers place a significantly higher value on quantity rather than quality.  However, buyers see it differently – in the B2B Buyers Survey conducted by DemandGen Report, buyers ranked relevance of information provided as the most important attribute when selecting a vendor.  Clearly marketers are not seeing it from the aspect of their buyers.
In addition to just producing more content, marketers are operating in a very tactical fashion.
Question two: Asked B2B Marketers about the “Average Number of Tactics That Are Used”  - 64% of organizations are using more than 10+ tactics in their marketing mix.  Combine numerous tactics with without a clear strategy and you get misaligned and confused messages going to your buyers.
2.  Marketers Are Not Thinking About Their Buyers When Developing Content
In their “State of B2B Demand Generation Study”, Forrester states that only 14% of organizations align their content to the buyers journey and according to DemandGen Report 62% of buyers state that vendors focus their content too much on product or services.
If we want to develop content that truly engages, marketers have to stop thinking about themselves and think about their buyers – in a strategic fashion.  Keep in mind that strategic demand generation is not just about qualifying; it also is about educating.  Buyers want to know that vendors are experts, they know the issues, they get the problems of their buyers.  The product’s “differentiator” does not matter as much as vendors think it does.
3.   Marketers Lack the Necessary Skills Needed in Todays Marketing 2.0World
I received the following text from a colleague while at Content Marketing World – “I’m getting a little tired of the ‘you can do this’ message at some of these shows.  There is so much focus on the why and always so little on the how.”  This text says it all – most marketers now know what they should be doing, but they don’t know how to do it. Why?  This is hard stuff and most marketers were not trained on how to execute and drive strategic demand generation and create valuable content.  While the buying process has changed dramatically with buyers having more access to information, marketers have been asked to transform on the fly with no  training on how to do so creating a massive chasm between the sophisticated buyer and marketing organizations.
Several studies have indicated that less than $1,000 is spent annually on marketing training and a majority of marketers state that they are self-taught.  Meanwhile, the buying process becomes more complex, buyers are increasingly more demanding and beginning to take notice of the shortfall.
It truly is time for a change – organizations have to begin investing in getting their marketing teams equipped strategically.  This means a shift from tactics to strategy. Reorganizing to align to the buyers purchase process, taking the time to understand what matter to our buyers instead of cranking out more product information.
The gap will grow increasingly wider between vendors and buyers until some serious attention is given to the issues and while it may draw more to conferences in search of answers, the real problems will be solved when marketers commit to the needed change

http://annuitas.com/2013/10/01/content-marketers-still-have-a-long-way-to-go/#!

4 Steps to an Effective Facebook Sales Funnel

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I recorded a Pubcast with Amy Porterfield today, and we had a great discussion about how we use Facebook as a sales funnel.

The funny thing is that we had two largely different approaches. Both that work. But it inspired me to detail my approach.

If you follow me closely, you know that I stress building a quality, engaged audience. This is critical to your Facebook sales funnel.

As I’ve found, Fans are the most likely to buy. Proof of that was found in my recentPower Editor training program launch, where I got a 35X ROI overall on Facebook ads.

In fact, they are also the most likely to provide an email address. Getting the Like is easy. It’s a light action. Anything else requires trust.

So, I see the progression in the following order:

Fans > Email Address > Buy

Here’s how it works…

1. Attract Relevant Fans

It’s the first step for a reason. This is the key to your Facebook sales funnel. Without it, the whole thing falls apart.

I see it time and time again. Brands buy Fans. Or they use ads that target “cheap” countries that bring in spam bots. Or they run contests that attract countless Fans with an irrelevant prize.

In all cases, they are focused far too much on quantity and not enough on quality.

You’re tired of hearing it. It’s an overused phrase. Yet it seems most brands still don’t get it.

Yes, you want more Fans. But they have to be relevant Fans who are most likely to buy from you later.

Yes, you want to limit the cost of adding Fans through ads. But not at the expense of quality.

Your focus should be on spending the least amount of money for the highest quality Fans. Period.

It’s a difficult balance, I know. Your main focuses may be in the US, UK, Canada and Australia (as are mine). You may see that the Cost Per Like for US users is 20% higher. Don’t abandon them.

Always work to bring in new, relevant Fans who are likely to buy from you later. Do that with Facebook ads.

I always keep two types of ads running:

• Page Like Sponsored Story
• Page Like Ad Offering Value for a Like

The second currently offers access to my eBook on Facebook ads (from a Facebook tab) in exchange for a Like. That way, I know that those who like my Page are potential customers at a later date.

I then target the following groups with each of those ad types:

• Users who like similar Pages and with similar interests
• Lookalike Audience based on my core email list (focused on Similarity)
• Lookalike Audience based on my core email list (focused on Reach)
• Similar Pages & Interests + Lookalike Audiences (Similarity)
• Similar Pages & Interests + Lookalike Audiences (Reach)

How do you find the list of similar Pages and interests? Use Graph Search and follow these steps.

Don’t understand Lookalike Audiences? Read this post.

Start these campaigns out extremely broad. You already have your target audience. Focus on all placements. Men and women. All (or most) ages.

Then use the new Facebook ad reports to find out what’s working best and optimize from there.

I may have as many as 10 of these campaigns running at once. Getting relevant Fans in the door is the highest of priorities.

2. Provide Value

Great, you got a bunch of relevant Fans in the door. Now it’s time to sell, right?

Of course not!

I succeeded at getting the Page like, but I don’t yet have full trust. That happens by providing consistent value.

Every day, provide content that helps your target customer. Continually drive them back to your website. Get them used to seeing your face.

That value includes some sort of personal connection. Respond to them. Provide a look behind the curtain regarding who you are. Share more than just a brand.

Without value and without a personal connection, any sales effort will go ignored.

3. Collect Email Addresses

You can collect email addresses earlier, but it’s certainly easier getting them from qualified users.

This is an important step that is often missed. By collecting email addresses, you can reach these potential customers with your promotions in two places: Email and Facebook.

That gives them two opportunities to read your blog post. Recommend it to friends. Or buy from you.

You’d be amazed by what the addition of email can do for your overall campaign. Expect far greater results than if you use only Facebook or only email.

So, how do you collect these email addresses?

Once users are Fans, periodically offer them something of value in exchange for that address. Host a webinar. Offer an ebook. Send a reminder to sign up for your newsletter.

Now, you could theoretically do this up front. I’ve offered free ebooks in Step 1 to incoming Fans. In exchange for the ebook, they have to like the Page. Then provide an email address.

But that’s one more step, and it can be off-putting. Don’t try to rush the user down your sales funnel.

Guide them!

4. Sell

Okay, so now it’s the good stuff. You have a captive audience of people who are interested in the your focused niche. You offer consistent value, and they’re eating it up. You’ve gained their trust to the point that they have provided an email address.

Now it’s time to sell!

When you release a new product, you’ll announce it via email. You’ll announce it with a Facebook post. But also turn it into a Facebook ad, displaying it to Fans only.

Now, there’s definitely a balance here. And I will be the first to admit that I’m still figuring out that balance.

You need to monitor frequency. How many times are your Fans seeing an ad every day?

Obviously, the smaller your audience the tougher this will be to manage. So be careful.

What you don’t want to do is now push away those people you’ve spent so much time nurturing. Granted, some will be put off as a result of any self-promotion. You were never going to get them to buy anyway.

But what you don’t want is to lose those who may have bought but you overdid it with ads. I’m sure I’ve lost people before. And my goal is to find that balance to keep the best of the best Fans who are most likely to buy.

http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/09/04/facebook-sales-funnel/