How to Become the Coca-Cola of Your Industry Practically Overnight Soon, everything they taught you about Facebook advertising and lead generation will not work. This is why.
By Scott Oldford Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In the next 24 months, direct lead generation will be inaccessible for most businesses. Soon, everything they taught you about Facebook advertising and lead generation will not work. The reason: The "big guys" have arrived and brought their huge budgets.
Related: Want the Sale? Ask for It in Your Facebook Ads.
Now, if you're like me and the majority of business owners I know, you cannot compete with the Coca-Cola's of the world. As such, what works for you today in online marketing will not work for you tomorrow. You need to evolve or die.
The good news is, evolving isn't so hard.
In fact, there's a brand awareness strategy that almost any business can use. This strategy helped me generate over $500,000 with a brand new business in 2015 (with an email list of less than 4,000 people), spending just over $5,000 in advertising.
I've helped many clients do the same, but it wasn't until recently that I connected the dots. But, now I have, I realize the "big guys" like McDonald's, Pepsi and Coca-Cola have done this for years.
So, what is this simple brand awareness strategy? I have two words for you.
Omnipresent and relevant
From now on, getting new leads and putting them into your fancy funnel will cost you more money and offer fewer results. The "big fish" are making it impossible for the majority of us to survive, so instead of competing with them, why not become a big fish in your very own pond?
Related: 4 Hidden Places You are Losing Leads on Your Facebook Page
This is the future of marketing, and it centers around two words:
- Relevance
- Omnipresence
If you want to build trust with your audience, you need to distribute the right content to them at the right time (relevance) and appear everywhere (omnipresence). This is what I've done over the last few years, and this is why each day people ask me: "Scott, I see your stuff everywhere. How do you do it?"
Simple -- be relevant and omnipresent.
Achieve this and you become the go-to authority figure in your audience's eyes. They see you everywhere, so they presume you are the real deal (so long as you provide relevance).
How to be omnipresent (without spending a lot of money)
With this brand awareness strategy, you can become a big fish in a small pond practically overnight. You will build intimate connections with your audience, which is something a static funnel and ad campaign will not achieve. It's not to say creating a funnel is wrong, but you need more than this.
Related: 5 Benefits of Creating a Facebook Group for Your Business
You need to appear everywhere in your audience's life, and you need to provide relevant content at the right time. I will show you how by using Facebook Ads in a way that practically nobody else is (but soon, will be the only way you can).
You can adapt this brand awareness strategy for outside of Facebook, but for now let's center it around Zuck's empire:
Step 1: Create (and share) relevant content.
The standard way to create and nurture leads involves:
- Create content (for example, an article).
- Create an ad to share this content.
- Place new lead into your marketing funnel.
- Sell a product or service via this funnel.
This is fine. It will result in sales, and you will convert some of these leads into customers. But, the vast majority will say no, and this is when most marketers give up. Sure, you may send the odd email, but this isn't enough.
This is the point you need to become hyper relevant in your targets' eyes, and appear everywhere. This is where this brand awareness strategy comes in.
Related: What to Do If Your Facebook Ad Account Is Disabled
In general, there are four types of content you can share with your audience at this stage:
- An article
- A video
- A long form post / image
- An authority piece (a case study, testimonial or a featured piece in a large publication)
The aim of this content is not to create leads. The point is to show up in your audience's newsfeed time and time again, so you become a constant presence in their life.
Initially, they may not consume any of it. But, after seeing your face again and again, you become an authority in their eyes. You become omnipresent. You become relevant (so long as you do the next step).
Step 2: Share your content to the "right" people at the "right" time.
This is where the magic happens, because the last thing you want to do is share all the content you create with everyone. For starters, this destroys your budget. Worse than this, you become a frequent pain in your audience's life instead of a relevant authority figure.
Not everyone in your audience is at the same stage. Some people know you well, whereas others are just getting to know you. Some people engage with you, whereas others don't. As such, you need to segment your audience into three buckets:
- Hot
- Warm
- Nurture
Your hot audience is full of people who engage with your content often. They're primed to take action, so don't waste your money or their time on some PR piece . Instead, give them training videos and in-depth content.
Your warm audience knows you, but don't engage too often. As such, you need to share relevant content that takes them to the next step, so they can learn you're the real deal.
Those in your nurture audience don't know you, so don't waste your budget by sharing long "how-to" videos with them. This is when those PR pieces come into play, and other long-form posts.
Although you need to create a lot of relevant content for this brand awareness strategy to work, you don't share it all with everyone.
Related: 4 Unknown Facebook Features Your Business is Missing
Step 3: Set this up without spending a lot of money.
Even if you share relevant content with the right people at the right time, you will waste money (and annoy your audience) if you don't do this final step. This is last part is your unfair advantage, and it involves the Brand Awareness feature inside Facebook.
This is your rocket fuel.
Because the problem with most ad campaigns is, the same person sees the same ad again and again. When building leads and sales, this is fine. But, not for this brand awareness strategy, because you will become frequent instead of relevant.
But, with the Brand Awareness feature you can make sure each person sees each ad once. This means instead of someone seeing the same video 12 times, he consumes 12 different types of content that each provide a different purpose.
In other words, you are relevant and omnipresent. You take over the newsfeed without driving anyone insane with the same old stuff.
With this approach, you reduce the amount of money you spend while remaining a constant presence in your audience's lives. So, if you want to be notorious in your niche, this is the brand awareness strategy to use. If you wish to become famous in your industry, this is what to do.
If you want to become a big fish in your very own pond, this is for you.
Related Video: Not Getting Results With Your Facebook Ads? Here is Everything You Are Doing Wrong.