[Mike Halliday]

The problem is customers are fickle and easily taken in by cheap prices.

 who doesn’t like a cheap price, i’ve Just been on holiday and got taken in by a hotel offering great location but a much cheaper price than the other hotels in the area, when I arrived I realised why

And I have had customers lured away by what seems like a great offer only for them to realise they made a mistake but it’s too late I have lost them for that year they might come back next year but i’m Still out of pocket.

Having a big data base of customer does give you a buffer zone but it’s not a guaranteed thing

[Simon Gerrard]

We get a good few jobs from Facebook. We don’t advertise or boost posts and  we most certainly aren’t cheap. The conversion rate is nowhere near the same as people contacting us through referrals and our website, but it is what it is. Are there lots of price shoppers, of course, but there are also people who are put off by low prices and are looking for a professional company to do a quality job and they are happy to pay for it and they exist on Facebook  you just have to point your business at them and ignore the price shoppers.

Simon

[RPCCS]

I mentioned this thread to my supplier, who is also on here, he said for me not to focus on what other people and fb are offering, decide on a price that I want and stick to it. Flyer drop decent estates upmarket desirable areas.   I have given a flyer to all my customers and had 1 job from it. Need to get advertising.

[John Kelly]

Yep leaflets need to go to those same houses every month. Only way they work, drip drip drip.

[Simon Gerrard]

I think the idea that Facebook is only populated by price shoppers has changed, in fact it never really seemed relevant as our experience of it is that it has to some price shoppers, but mostly people looking for and willing to pay for the kind of high quality service that we offer and in that respect Facebook is no different to the people that come to us through our website. So, perhaps the truism here is that you get the type of customer your marketing is pointed at, regardless of the medium you use to achieve that.

[Mike Halliday]

Your right Simon you do get the customers you market too,  i’ve Did a Facebook paid campaign last week to see if Facebook would produce the type of customer I want. Facebook constantly tells me “Boost this post for 20$” so I though I would give it go to see if I was wrong about Facebook users.... so spent 100$ on a week campaign

it was a disaster. it produced 4 enquiries which were from  people who in a million years would not pay my prices. Even though I targeted it at people over 40yrs old living in rural areas ( not inner cities )

Facebook might be great for finding customers but not the customers I want

[Cleanevangelist]

mike

the goal on facebook is not the same as other media, you need to get them onto messenger and then you build a list which facebook lets you do. 

respects

in harper

[Mike Halliday]

My main problem with Facebook is the constant advertising of very low prices and how it will subliminally educate people that the cost of carpet cleaning is  3 rooms for £50, i’m Seeing this price all the time in my newsfeed.

it’s like me constantly seeing a billboard at the end of my street advertising van tyres at £45 each. if I didn’t know any Better when I come to need new tyres on my van I will have the idea that they cost £45 each.

It’s easy to say ignore what other people charge and do your own thing but it going to get harder as time goes by, at the moment my target market is the older generation who are not big Facebook users but as these people become more scares ( die off) they will be replaced by customers who live in the facebook  world.

[Robin Ray]

Isn’t Facebook just another media type, like flyers, tv, radio, magazines etc...? The bare basics of marketing is the message to market match. So in theory presenting the correct message to the correct audience on Facebook should bring results. The practice of this for me so far is that the audience I would like to communicate to on Facebook doesn’t seem to respond. They do seem to respond via other meadia types though. Perhaps they don’t view Facebook as a good place to do business where as the lower end of the market do?

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Years ago I advertised in our local daily newspaper it brought in some varied enquiries to say the least one job I did win I asked the customer why they chose me and why they got me from the ‘lineage’ from the newspaper, the answer was that the lady of the house said she wanted her carpets cleaned and asked her husband to ‘just get a cleaner from The Star newspaper’ they thought it would be a cheaper clean than the big yellow book where companies were very expensive the fact that I advertised in both they’d never thought about. So it’s down to perception really,

[MarkSutcliffe]

five seater microfibre couch messaged me last night (funny name for a customer i know). Quoted £90, £20 per seat with a little discount to make it sound cheaper.

She's had 4 other quotes, between 40-60.

Leave them to it, Take me 2 hours to clean it, after overheads leaves me on £30 to clean it, and taking onboard all the risks etc...

[Cleanevangelist]

Mike here is an example

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-write-facebook-lead-ads-that-convert/270945/

We need to keep learning the news of doing business. the old, name, rank, number does not work any more. these big companies will take your money because they see it that if we dont understand how it works that our fault.

Just stop and think how facebook works the user is their product. that user is giving something that it thinks has no value away for free to facebook then turns that into money. that is the new way of doing business. harvesting data and then using it. the best example for use is emails and access to the user thought these platforms like messenger.

we dont post an advert and get the call any more. its get  their info then you follow up with a campaign.  like you would if you had their home address but in this new world their mobile phone.

we need to look and learn from people that are around us that use these platforms and how they use them. Plus these platform tell us how they want us to use them as businesses like the big change from pages to groups. or google changing adwords to google ads and all the changes that have come with it. as i said if you dont learn how to use them then your going to lose money. plus that the big thing here is that it costs you money to learn what works and what does not. you cant just say it does not work or that price marketing rules. just like copying something you only see the face and dont understand the backend. if you doing lead gen then your not going to see whats going once a prospect shows interest.

start reading and learning guys

respects

Ian

PS dont use these price guys as an example use people with ads that work and that are repeating those ads. look outside cleaning for great examples. hat your looking for is relationship building not sales

[MarkSutcliffe]

popup galore that site

[Simon Gerrard]

As the most sceptical of sceptics, we set out to give Facebook a try, primarily as a means to be able to communicate with a lot of our clients in one click and that aspect of it works very well indeed.
Having heard all the stories, ‘Oh Facebook is only populated by price shoppers,’ we were even more sceptical at the prospect of generating any sales through it, but low and behold we do and - at our price!
We’ve run a few competitions and that has boosted the number of likes and through that increased the number of potential customers, all without having spent an money at all.

The myth is that because Facebook is populated by price-shoppers you can’t do good business. But how can that be true? Facebook members come from every possible walk of life, its like a compendium of humanity, so to say that they only have one shopping mindset - the cheapest simply isn’t true.
I am astonished at having made so little effort, spent zero cash, that Facebook provides a steady trickle of jobs, yes we get what everyone calls, ‘price-shoppers,’ but who doesn’t through whatever medium?
The one aspect that is lost in the negative notions of Facebook as a price shoppers paradise and is therefore to be avoided is that there is a bigger dynamic at work. Yes, of course it is all about sales, but sales come to you through lots of different routes and long term exposure to your company is really what it is all about and whether we like it or not Facebook is where our customers are at, yes even the older generations and yes, even people that are as turned off by a cheap and cheerful carpet cleaning price as they are anywhere else.
If you look at the Facebook as a medium that has to produce immediate sales for it to be worthwhile then your likely to be disappointed, but if you’re a bit savvy with it and are prepared to play a slightly longer game, you can boost your business profile, get in front of the right type of client that may not need your services today but when they do......
The mistake is in thinking that you have to price match the cheap guys in order to get a share of the pie, but you don’t you just go fishing in a different pond.

[Cleanevangelist]

here is a great example on how to use social media

https://twitter.com/rugdoctoruk/status/1050770569426132992

the cleaver part is now you have a list of prospects from the losers. they have all said why they need carpet cleaning. so the cost of the prize is paid for. with some follow up something like a voucher to them.

people cant moan when they get marketing stuff when they give away their details for free like this. as i said that how facebook earns its money.