Susan Payton: 2 Easy Ways Your Local Small Business Can Attract Tons of Facebook Followers

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If you run a clothing boutique, craft shop, restaurant, or any other local business, you might be putting too much emphasis on offline marketing, and not enough on online.

But get this: more than half of consumers are searching for local brands just like yours on Google. That’s why you need to step up your online marketing game.

A major component of online marketing is social media. Now, there are tons of players, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and lots more, but I’ve seen that local businesses tend to do best using Facebook to promote their brands.

Maybe you have a Facebook page for your business already, but you aren’t really attracting followers, so you don’t put more effort into marketing there. It’s kind of a Catch 22, because if you stop marketing there, you certainly won’t attract more followers. But if you market in the right way, you’ll see those numbers rise, and those followers convert to in-store customers.

Make It Stupidly Simple to Like Your Brand

I’ll let you in on a secret: people are lazy. If they have to do extra work, they’re simply not going to do something. On the other hand, if you make it easy, well, you get the picture.

To that end, give your customers many ways to Like you on Facebook:

• Place a sign with a QR code at your checkout that they can scan to quickly get to your page and click Like.
• Offer a discount for people who Like your page.
• Collect customers’ email addresses and send a followup email after the sale with the link to your Facebook page.
• Offer great content and promotions so they’ll clamor to Like your page.

Don’t Think Like a Local Business

Somewhere along the way, we started dividing “local businesses” (those who sell out of physical buildings) from “online businesses” (those who only sell from a website). But the truth is: the lines are often now blurred. You can have a brick-and-mortar store and still sell products online. And we’ve already established that people are looking for your company online, so being “local” doesn’t excuse you from strategizing online.

Invest time and resources into creating value-driven content on your Facebook page. Your customers want a reason to click the Like button, and you can provide it if you share interesting and useful content, exclusive promotions, and contests.

Treat your Facebook page like the gem that it is, and make sure your customers feel like they’re missing out if they don’t Like that page.