Facebook Live has been around for a while now, and a number of businesses are using it effectively as a promotional tool. But a lot of businesses are failing to use this powerful medium as a way to get the word out about what they have to offer.
A lot of business owners either do not recognize the potential that Facebook Live offers them, or they have no idea how they can use it effectively to enhance their brand awareness and drive more leads and sales for their business.
So in this article, we will reveal why you should be using Facebook Live as a way to promote your business and show you 12 ways you can use it for optimal results. You will never be short of promotional ideas with Facebook Live after reading this short report.
So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Why You Should Use Facebook Live To Promote Your Business
If you are not aware of the power of live video, then you need to read this section very carefully. There are a number of benefits for your business here, and we will highlight the main ones below.
It’s great for Building Trust
When you create a Facebook Live event, your audience can see who you are. By using the right approach, your event will seem like it is a one to one session for all of your viewers. People want to see who you are and know what you stand for. This is essential for building trust.
You may have heard of the KLT principle before. This stands for Know, Like and Trust. When you achieve this with your audience, they will be a lot more likely to make a purchase. Facebook Live provides you with the opportunity to develop your KLT factor.
Engage with your Audience
Not only does Facebook have the largest amount of potential customers for you through their billions of users, they also provide you the opportunity to engage with your target audience. The most effective way to do this is through the use of Facebook Live events.
Facebook users are three times more likely to watch a live event than they are to watch a pre-recorded video. Millions watch pre-recorded videos on Facebook each day, so imagine how many people you can get to watch your live event!
Facebook now prioritizes live events in their algorithm, so you have a lot more chance of your event being visible in the news feeds of your audience. Live events have higher priority than pre-recorded videos.
With your Facebook Live event, you can respond to comments from your viewers as they arrive. You are saying to your audience that you are there for them right now in real-time. You can create a very good experience for your viewers, and they will feel truly engaged with you.
Drive more traffic to your funnel
You can use your Facebook Live events to drive traffic to your sales funnels. If you don’t have a sales funnel, then you need to set this up prior to your live event. A sales funnel starts with lead generation. You get people into the funnel by offering them an incentive, such as something valuable for free.
You need to tell your viewers about the valuable gift that you have for them during your live event. Mention your funnel link and explain how much benefit they will get by obtaining the free incentive. Facebook Live is a great tool for driving targeted leads to your funnels.
Build your email list
While we encourage you to try and obtain sales for your product or service during your Facebook Live event, not everyone is going to be ready to make a purchase at that time. So you need to ensure that you get as many people to join your email list as you can during and after your event.
Signing up for your email list must be the first step of your sales funnel. Once you have these people on your list, you can send further emails to them encouraging them to go deeper into your sales funnel.
OK so now you know why you should use Facebook Live events to promote your business, let’s look at the 12 effective promotional tactics using Facebook Live that you can use to drive leads and sales and give your brand a boost.
Host A How-To Live Event
People will always be interested in learning new things that matter to them, and a “how to” video using Facebook Live is a great way to deliver this. What you need to do here is to explain something that is closely related to your products or services and then show the manual or long way around to solving the problem.
You can then pitch your product or service as the quickest and easiest way to solve the problem. So if you are teaching people how to get more visitors to their website for example, you can show them a number of ways to do this which involve a lot of time and effort. Then pitch your product as a way of saving a lot of time and money as it automates the process.
When you really know your audience, you will be able to easily come up with topics for how to videos that you can create as live events on Facebook. These events are very popular, and you can use them to increase awareness of your brand and your products and services.
Launch Announcements
If you have a new product or service launching soon, then holding a Facebook Live event to tell your audience about it is a good way to increase exposure. A live video is always going to be more effective than a pre-recorded video, and much better than just making an ordinary post with a product image.
When you showcase a new product or service with a live event, you can go into great detail about the benefits to the audience. You can answer questions that people have about your new launch, which you cannot do with normal videos and posts.
You can really build anticipation for a new product or service with a Facebook Live event. Then you can hold a follow-up event when your new product or service has launched. Be sure to invite the viewers from the first event, and you will have an audience that is revved up and ready to buy.
Share Special Exclusive Offers
A great way to increase your sales is through making special offers. There are a number of ways that you can put these offers together and no matter how you create the special offer, a Facebook Live event is the best way to spread the word about it.
With a live event, you can really spend time persuading your audience why they need to take advantage of the special offer. Some viewers will have questions about the offer, which you can answer in real-time during the event. So use Facebook Live to promote your special offers and make more sales.
Limited Discounts
What better way to attract people to your Facebook Live event than telling them that you will announce a special discount code for one of your products or services during the event. Obviously you can’t host a whole event around a discount, you need to provide some value and then lead into the discount and then the offer.
Let it be known that only people that view the live event (or the recording) will be able to get the discount code. You will not be making it available anywhere else. If there is a lot of demand for your product or service, then this is an effective way to gain more customers.
Give Something Valuable Away For Free
A lot of businesses use Facebook Live events to host giveaways. If you are going to do this, then you need to ensure that what you are going to give away has value for your audience. This could be a special guide showing them how to solve a problem, for example. The guide could be a series of private videos or a written document.
You want to make sure that you have a sales funnel setup so that you will capture the email addresses of all the viewers that claim their gift. By adding these people to your email list, you can showcase your products and services to them and notify them of any special offers and future Facebook Live events.
Host A Contest That Drives Engagement
In order for a contest to work, the winners need to receive something that is valuable. Perhaps you could give away one of your products for free or provide access to a service you provide for a period of time (a few months or even a year).
You can really drive engagement for your Facebook Live event by requesting that the viewers that want to enter your contest must leave a comment. After the event you will look at all the comments and choose the winners either randomly or based on the best comments.
Ask your viewers to share your event as well. Tell them that if they share your event with their followers, they will definitely win a prize. You can see who shared your event afterwards and then reward them. People always like contests on Facebook, so use the power of Facebook Live to take advantage of this.
By giving away your products or services as prizes, you will have the opportunity to increase the exposure of them on your live event. It is a good way to generate leads and sales for your business.
"Ask Me Anything" Live
Holding an “ask me anything” Facebook Live event is a really effective way to promote your business. It is best to do this when you have established a number of followers on Facebook, as we do not recommend it to businesses that are just getting started.
Although your viewers can literally ask you anything, we recommend that you have an agenda for the event, otherwise it could get completely out of hand. You want to steer the questions that people ask you towards your business and the products and services that you offer.
People may ask you how you got started and what triggered you to start your business. These are great questions that you can answer in a way that will help to develop trust. These ask me anything events will help position you as an expert in your niche and the “go to” person for help and advice.
Host A Behind The Scenes Event
Here you will show what goes on in your business behind the scenes. This can include a tour of your business premises and interviews with staff members that work for you. People are really interested in this kind of event, and you should be able to get a lot of viewers.
Opening up your business and letting people in is a great way to develop your KLT. If people feel that they know, like and trust you then it will be a lot easier for you to generate more leads and make more sales. Not many businesses are prepared to do this, so give yourself an advantage over your competitors.
Interview An Expert
Most niches have experts in them that already have a large following on social media or a large list of email subscribers. Identify who these people are and approach them for an interview using Facebook Live.
Agree the questions that you will ask the expert prior to the event, and make sure that you provide the opportunity for the audience to ask their questions too. Interaction with these events is very important.
You can agree a deal with the expert that you will promote one of your products or services and share the spoils with them. If you approach these interview events in the right way, they can be a win-win for you, the expert and your audience.
The expert will have access to a lot of people that you don’t. You will have some followers that will benefit the expert as well. The audience wins because they know (or have heard of) the expert, and get the opportunity to hear what they have to say and to ask their own questions.
Not all the experts that you approach are going to agree to an interview, so keep going until you find one that will. Most of the experts will jump at the chance for more exposure, so it should not be too difficult for you to find willing participants for your live event.
If there are a number of experts that are willing to appear on Facebook Live events with you, then hold a separate event for each of them. We do not recommend that you try to hold a live event with several experts as they are likely to be competitors and this will not be very effective.
Showcase Your Customer Service Live
There are a few ways that you can approach this. What you want to demonstrate here is that you and the other members of your business are committed to providing the highest levels of customer service. This will really resonate with your audience, and they are more likely to become customers after a successful customer service live event.
You could hold a questions and answers event where you answer all the questions from your audience. Explain how you approach customer service and support and provide examples of how this works.
If you have a customer service team, then you could have live footage of them in action dealing with customer service inquiries. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that you provide your audience with the opportunity to interact with you by asking questions in the comments.
By demonstrating that you truly put your customers first will position you head and shoulders above your competition. There are so many examples of bad customer service on the Internet today that it will be very appealing for your audience to “test you out”. Once you prove that you can pass the test, then you will drive more leads and sales for your business.
Host A Facebook Live Webinar
There are many studies that show how effective webinars are for selling high ticket products and services. You can use Facebook Live as the platform for your webinar. The best webinars will provide value at the beginning and then have a pitch for an offer related to the content you have provided.
You need to make the subject of your webinar the answering of a burning question (or questions) that your audience has about your niche. So do your homework here and find out what is really bothering your audience.
Once you have identified the questions to which people want answers, you can create a webinar around them. Your aim should always be to show your expertise by answering the questions in full so that people could leave your webinar at that point and take action.
But you don’t want them to leave, and you are going to show them a much easier way to solve their problems, which is your product or service offer. You can demonstrate how your product or service not only solves the problems, but does so in a way that it will save them time and / or money.
You will need to plan your Facebook Live webinar event properly to get the best results. This starts with the subject of your webinar. It needs to be appealing enough to attract a lot of viewers to your event.
Webinars work, and now more and more businesses are using them to generate new leads and sales. There are a number of webinar platforms that you could use, by why spend money when you can do it all just as well using Facebook Live?
Niche Update Event
If you are operating in a niche where there are a number of changes likely, then you can use Facebook Live to announce these changes to your audience. A good example of a niche where there are always a lot of changes is computers. New hardware and software hits the market all the time.
Another niche where there are always changes is digital marketing. There is always someone that discovers a new method to drive traffic or an algorithm change for the search engines which will affect how well certain web pages will rank.
So you need to identify the changes in your niche that will have the most impact for your audience and create a live event around this. There may be some breaking news in your niche that you can be the first to report live on Facebook.
For really significant changes, you can explain how your new product or service will take advantage of them. Maybe you have had to tweak existing products or services to ensure that they will benefit the customers due to a significant change.
Being on top of changes in your niche is a great way to improve the perception of your audience that you are an expert. People like to deal with experts, and when you are one of the first to announce a change, and a solution to it, then you will gain a lot more respect and trust.
You can set up Google Alerts for your niche so that you are notified of any major changes or announcements fast. Investigate the announcement or change and work out what it means for your audience. Then host a Facebook Live event to explain everything and what the change will mean to them. Let them know that you can help them with this change.
Encourage your audience to interact with you by asking questions. If you are well versed in the change, then you can demonstrate your expertise with your answers. People will then trust you as the person that they need to seek out when any other changes happen in the niche.
