It’s the quintessential business headache - a new place that does what you do opens up nearby and lassoos all your customers!
If this happens, your first thought is probably going to be how you reel back your customers, and make some new ones in the process. Fortunately, social media has made it easier than ever for your business to speak directly to a local audience that you know your rivals are also vying for.
Targeting competitors’ customers is a perfectly normal part of today’s marketing, and Facebook provides the ideal vehicle to do so. Here’s how:
If you and your competitor sell similar things to the same area, chances are that your typical customers will largely be the same.
With this in mind, your first plan of action should be to draw up a few of what marketers call ‘personas’. A persona is a general profile of your ideal customer, constructed using information you know about your existing customers.
A basic persona will take in and consolidate details of your customers’ ages, backgrounds, job, hobbies, how they find new information about what they want to buy, and other relevant characteristics.
When you craft your marketing, imagine you are marketing to this person specifically (for instance, they might have their ear to the ground when it comes to local events, so speak to that) - the results will almost definitely resonate with your competitors’ customers too!
If you want to know more about making personas, marketing automation platform Hubspot has a useful explainer here.
If a certain competitor is ruling the roost in terms of footfall, it’s entirely possible they’ve honed their success by building up a strong following on social media.
Check out what they’re doing on Facebook, and take note. What do they post? Is it images, blogs, promotions, memes? What type of content gets the most comments and likes from their audience? Also look at stuff like which days and hours do well (or badly), and the frequency of their posts.
If you spot a pattern of success in their posting strategy, emulate it in your own. And if you spot a pattern of poorly-performing content, avoid doing that, and try something different!
The visibility of posts that you’ve shared but haven’t paid to promote (what we call ‘organic’ reach) struggles to compete with posts promoted through Facebook’s booming ad platform.
To really get through to the local market you need, get yourself signed up to Facebook’s Ads Manager service.
Ads Manager lets you create custom ads that your customers will see in their newsfeeds. To appeal to stray customers, craft your ads with attention to the observations you made in step 2.
Read this article to find out more about creating the perfect Facebook ad.
You can’t just target a competitor’s customer base at a stroke, but Facebook does let you direct your ads at people depending on their personal interests and pages they’ve liked.
While you are creating an ad, you’ll come across a section called ‘Detailed targeting’ which lets you choose prominent pages whose fans you’d like to reach. Think of well-known market leaders in your sector and enter a few in here.
Not only will Facebook then identify an audience of people who like these brands’ pages, it’ll also include people who’ve liked similar pages within that business category. Chances are that your competitors’ fans will have expressed their interest in a few such pages.
Once you have done this, simply add location targeting to keep it local and hey presto - you’ll be all set to reach a local audience made up of people interested in what you (and your competitors) sell!
It’s not just about nabbing customers from your competitor, it’s about keeping them too. Great customer service is essential to turn new customers into regulars.
If you market yourself on Facebook, people will use it to reach out to you. The most common way they’ll do this is through the Messenger service, so be prepared to monitor your page’s inbox vigilantly, and respond to any messages swiftly and informatively. Make sure you have notification alerts set up on your phone to tell you whenever someone drops you a message!
If you reply quickly enough to every message, you’ll be able to claim Facebook’s coveted ‘very responsive to messages’ badge, which will appear prominently on your page and build customers’ trust in your business!
Social media offers the most dynamic and precise way of targeting competitors’ customers and winning them over to your business.
If you’d like some help with this, our dedicated Facebook Advertising experts can set you up with a carefully tailored campaign that’ll drive more people to your business than ever.
If you enjoyed this, why not read these other helpful articles on social media marketing?
