It is quite a common question posed by our customers. “How can we get people to like our Facebook page”. In fact, in the past two weeks alone we have had the questions from the guys at Simply Teeth, as well as Challenger Group. So, we thought it was about time we published a blog post on the topic!

First Off
Do not, ever, under any circumstances, BUY Facebook followers. It looks terrible, spammy and unprofessional, and will have zero impact in terms of generating sales and leads. Think about your end-goal…. you want Facebook followers, so that you can promote your products and services to them directly in the future. The only reason you want someone to LIKE your Facebook page, is if you believe you are going to be able to sell to them in the future.

Your Customers
Leading on from that first point, the obvious and potentially the easiest people to promote to, are the people who have already used your services/products in the past. Hopefully you already have a relationship with these people, be-it via email, telephone or snail-mail. They already know your brand, so encouraging these people to LIKE your Facebook page is going to be much easier.

Your customers are also going to be your most valuable Facebook asset. You know that they are open to using your services, and as such should be treated as gold-dust, and the holy-grail of Facebook followers.

How To Get Them To LIKE It
There are some obvious, and some not-so-obvious ways you can go about getting your customers to LIKE your Facebook page;

Ask Them
It might sound obvious, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Add something to your telephone greeting, get your reception staff to mention it to customers, just generally get into the habit of mentioning it to people.

Email
Don’t email people asking them to LIKE your page…. that could get a little tiresome. However, you should add something to your email footers which says “Follow Us On Facebook”, which links directly to your Facebook page. Make sure all your staff have this same footer. You could also add this to any other forms of communication you use, such as invoices, or leaflets. even a big sign in reception, where people are likely to use their smartphone.

Incentives
Make your Facebook page the one-stop-shop for the latest information. For example, do you have last minute appointments and availability…. could you put these on Facebook? Perhaps information about funding opportunities for your clients, special offers, holiday business hour information… any information which is useful to your customers. Most importantly, when someone asks you or your staff for the above, remind them to ‘LIKE your Facebook page’, or even tell them ‘It’s on our Facebook page’.

Competitions
Competitions are not always great for B2B Facebook pages, but for consumer related pages they offer a great way to gain new followers. A simple competition to win one of your products “LIKE our Page to enter” can give people a great incentive. Of course, you do need to promote the competition, and this can be done using Facebook’s BOOST feature which is quite competitively priced, and allows you to target a particular demographic, or physical location.

Friends & Family
Many business owners (and staff) have their customers, and potential customers as personal friends on Facebook. If this is the case, then make use of Facebook’s in-build INVITE feature, to invite your friends, to LIKE your page. This is one of the most effective ways to grow your intial Facebook LIKEs, so that your page doesnt look like a lonely place.

Keep It Personal
People love photographs. They convert better, they perform better, and they are much more likely to capture people’s attention than a static text post. Can you take photographs of your clients, or your client’s work, and publish it on your Facebook page? If you can, this is a great way to not only GROW your LIKES, but to gain SHARES, which in turn will increase your following, as well as help you organically in the search engine rankings.

In Summary
Don’t be spammy, and don’t bombard people with requests. Keep your page informative, with up-to-date information, and give people a genuine reason to visit it, and LIKE it. And don’t forget…. LIKE our Facebook page 🙂