Social Selling and Facebook – Part 2 of How to Sell Cars via Facebook – Real Social Selling
(This series is an edited excerpt from Assumptive Selling: The Complete Guide to Selling More Vehicles for More Money to Today’s Connected Customers, which is available on Amazon for $49.99. To begin with the first article in this series, visit How to Sell Cars via Facebook – Real Social Selling.)
Social Selling and Facebook – Part 2 of How to Sell Cars via Facebook – Real Social Selling
Why Facebook?
There are literally scores of active social networks that someone could argue are important for you to consider if you’re going to try your hand at social selling. However, as of this writing, I recommend you initially focus solely on Facebook. I recommend this for many reasons, but not the least of which is that it’s the most popular. Moreover, your posts can go viral more readily there than on any other large social network.
Twitter, for example, just doesn’t deliver the same multiple-day lift that a great Facebook post can earn. When you Tweet something that’s pure genius – even if you’re properly using hashtags – your post can fall on deaf ears. That is, your post is missed by nearly all your followers and it gets buried in their stream. It’s gone.
Plus, Facebook rewards great posters. This basically means that if your last few posts were well-received (lots of likes, shares, and comments), your next post stands a better chance of being at the top of your friends’ and followers’ respective news feeds.
Finally, there are just too many social networks and places to share user-generated content to try to be everywhere all the time – it’s just not possible. Even though sharing content on nearly every social site is free, the time required to manage multiple profiles and posts ensures you receive a negative Return on Investment (ROI) on your efforts. Of course, if you’re already a member of and active on any other networks, be sure your profile clearly states:
- I sell cars;
- I’m honored to be selling cars; and
- I’m your friend in the car business.
ROI of Social Selling
Your investment with social selling is going to be measured in terms of time and effort. Your goal is to minimize both while you maximize the sales that great social selling can drive. The reason you want to minimize your time spent on social selling is because your time is not limitless. There are a finite number of work hours in the month, and if you dedicate nearly all of them to social selling, then you have little time for your other moneymakers.
You’ll want to measure your return on this time and effort investment in several ways. First, you’ll want to ensure you gain the necessary engagement to make this effort worthwhile. Engagement, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. That is, it’s up to you to determine if your efforts produce the engagement you’re looking for.
For example, if you post something to Facebook that produces no likes, no shares, and no comments, then you have no engagement; no interaction. Posts like these can hurt you (because Facebook’s algorithms begin to see your posts as irrelevant to your friends and followers) and these should either be avoided in the future or should be tailored to your audience in a way that generates engagement the next time. Without engagement, your posts cannot go viral.
Beyond the engagement, of course, your goal – and your ultimate ROI measurement – should be on the results these posts produce. That is, are you generating referrals, leads, calls, store visits, and especially sales from your activity on Facebook?
The most important rule on any sales efforts you make is to measure something… anything. Measuring allows you to improve your efforts. Without some form of measurement, you’re just throwing a bunch of crap against the wall and hoping that some of it sticks. Hope, as has been said again and again, is not a strategy – especially not in sales.
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Up Next: Part 3, The Second Rule of Social Selling
