When you think of Facebook, you may automatically think of sharing your status with friends and family, liking their photos, and inviting them to social events. And that’s what Facebook was initially intended to be: a social network that brings people together. But Facebook is so much more than that; for businesses, it can represent an untapped home care marketing potential that can reap untold benefits in terms of new clients.
Exposure is the key to any solid marketing strategy, and Facebook is the ultimate way to gain exposure.
With 1.79 billion active users, Facebook is the social media network of choice for users of all ages. It’s only growing by the year.
Consider the fact that in 2005, only five percent of Americans used social media; today, that percentage is more than 70 percent, according to Pew Research Center. It stands to reason that Facebook can help businesses reach more customers, and nowhere is that more evident than in the home care field.
This powerful home care marketing tool can help you attract a wide audience by focusing on community outreach, social signals and lead generation.
61% of the U.S. population between the ages 50 and 64 are Facebook users. That means that one of the key target audiences for marketing home care services, the adult children of prospective home care clients, is available there in one place(!)
That being said, in order to pull off a successful Facebook campaign, you have to approach this as just one component of your overall marketing strategy. Facebook alone won’t get you the results you need.
- You have to pair it with a solid website that provides pertinent information about your business as well as testimonials from satisfied patients, says Chron.com.
- Think of your website as the home base of your business, where all updates can be made to your blog and delivered to your business page on Facebook.
- Your website needs to be well-managed and optimized for page load speed in order to provide a satisfactory user experience and encourage favorable search engine rankings.
- You’ll also need a strong email system, as well as a traditional marketing strategy that encompasses elements like online marketing and SEO.
Facebook Marketing Goals
There are many ways in which Facebook can help you achieve your marketing goals, such as:
- Raise awareness for your home care agency and gain exposure in the local community. Get all the “likes” you can to slowly grow your exposure. Strive for adding hundreds of new targeted likes every quarter.
- Establish your authority in the local market as well as your industry expertise in the home health care realm. Showcase what you can do, what sets you apart and how you can help, by using elements such as timely blogs, white papers, links to videos and articles, research, and more.
- Show off your individual personality. Keep a nice mix of light topics as well as more hard-hitting industry news. You want to be approachable yet professional.
- Develop a local community for your business to gain their trust over time.
- Keep the community engaged through local fundraisers and awareness activities such as Alzheimer’s walks.
- Generate leads through email opt-ins from users who express interest in your services, such as companion services.
- Keep the sales pitches to a minimum. Facebook is not the place for the hard sell. Keep those sales messages to between 10 and 20 percent of posts. Otherwise, you risk turning people off. There are ways to track your sales, though. Be sure to place links in your sales messages and run ads to track conversions.
Do Your Homework
Before you can make Facebook work for you, you have to conduct a bit of research on your own. This includes identifying who your audience is. One easy way to do this is to go to the Likes tab and check out the demographics of your users. You will find that many of your users, for example, are older adults who are likely taking care of their aging parents.
But in other ways, the demographics may surprise you. Next, move on to your competition. What is their approach? What is working for them? It’s important to stay abreast on the latest Facebook marketing tools so you always know the most effective marketing techniques to try.
Flesh out Your Goals
Now that you have the research under your belt, it’s time to design your own experience and set goals that will help you achieve that. Just make sure your goals and your marketing budget are in alignment.
Take some time to set up two things: an editorial calendar for scheduling your posts with quality content on a regular basis, and an activity calendar for budgeting your time. Otherwise, it’s too easy to fall into the Facebook rut where you’re spending too much mindless time watching cute animal videos.
Measure So You Can Manage
Next, it’s time to measure your progress as you go along. This will let you know fairly quickly if your marketing efforts are working or not.
Facebook Insights is a great tool for this. It allows you to track the performance of your page to help support and drive your strategic marketing decisions. Through the use of these clear data sets, you get access to easy-to-navigate graphs that you can customize with features such as advanced filtering, start and end date sliders, benchmarking tools, and Post Clicks stats.
Perhaps the best part of this tool is the ability to take an in-depth look at Engaged Users to determine who’s interacting with the content you’re posting. This will show you what’s important to people in your community so that you can target those areas more efficiently.
Advertising on Facebook
We generally are more in favor of building long term value through investing in long-lasting assets such as websites and proven SEO tactics more spending money on advertising, where you create no long-term assets of any value. However, when it comes to Facebook advertising, we temper that position a bit.
Facebook advertising is worth considering for several reasons:
- It is relatively low-cost per lead compared to many other advertising venues such as Google adwords ads.
- It can be targeted in a very precise fashion, moreso than Google and others.
- It is easy to manage and test different ad tactics and strategies with Facebook ads.
We recommend budgeting for modest amounts of Facebook advertising along with the other non-advertising tactics mentioned above.
Check Your Progress and Adjust Course As Needed
Part of having a successful Facebook marketing strategy is to re-visit your plan throughout the year. Change things that aren’t working; enhance what is. A social media marketing plan is never static — it’s a living, breathing thing that needs to be nurtured.
We realize this can be a daunting prospect to handle all on your own. That’s why you can lean on A Servant’s Heart for all your web design and social media marketing needs. We specialize in helping home care agencies just like you gain exposure on Facebook and other social media platforms to expand your reach and scope. Get in touch today to learn more at (760) 227-2720.
