Is Facebook Good Marketing for a Woodshop?
Cabinet shop owners talk about the traffic and sales value of maintaining a presence on Facebook. April 22, 2014
Question (WOODWEB Member) :
Just out of curiosity, how many of you have a Facebook page for your business? Do you get sales from it? What percentage of your marketing is done on Facebook?
Forum Responses
(Business and Management Forum)
From Contributor E:
We have one. Had it for a few months now and seem to get a lot of traffic. It may not last long unless you keep adding and updating.
From Contributor W:
Facebook when used correctly can be a great thing!
From contributor F:
I set mine up a while back and it's good for letting people see your work. Much better than the old portfolio of 8x10 pics. I don't expect or try to get sales through it though. I'm not sure how you would really try to sell through FB?
From Contributor W:
When I did more residential, a client would call and ask about our work. I would ask if they were near a computer and within minutes we would be looking at the same photos and discussing their work.
From contributor D:
Facebook will work really well if you use it often and post good content. If you have a website I would definitely use Facebook to help drive traffic to your site and increase your results on the search engines.
From contributor M:
I have a personal page in which I have collected as many friends as possible. I have a business page that I don’t really care if people like it or not. Every once in a while, about every week or two, I will just post some photos of recent work on the business page. I will then like it on my personal page and sometimes repost the same thing on my personal page. What I am trying to do is make sure all 350 or so friends I have on Facebook know exactly what I do for a living, and keep it fresh in their minds what I do for a living.
This has been extremely helpful in getting word of mouth referrals, even from people I haven’t seen since kindergarten. Think of the power of this for a second. I have just told 350 people what I do for a living, shown them a picture of my work, and they already know me. Based on past relationships with these people, your foot is already in the door as a person they will trust. Now if any of those 350 people like my photo, the word has just spread to all of their friends, and there is still a trust factor because you are a friend of a friend. As I said, this has been very effective for me, it’s free, and takes about five minutes every week or two.
From contributor J:
The number of people who view pictures that I posted in the last month on my Facebook site do indeed turn into sales. I don't spend any money for advertising. I think it does help with getting noticed by the search engines. So it does work, it makes a great gallery, easy to load up pictures. It's free and takes ten minutes to set up a Facebook page.
There does seem to be a lot of negative thoughts about Facebook for a Cabinet Shop. All I can say I believe it's a part of the puzzle, and it can't hurt. If it's your only web page then you may never see one sale from it. It's tied in with Microsoft and Bing so if someone is searching outside of Google who knows it may help in a web search by a customer. One clue that it seems to do something is that almost every business and person alive today has one. It's free and you can tie a link on your web page for your customers to go there. They can see more updated pictures, videos ,etc. and see what you’re up to. Over time every business will have to jump into social media to keep up, etc.
From Contributor R:
I have my business page on Facebook and really benefitted my business in getting exposure to people interested in the product we offer. Posting regularly about the products and different offers and coupons has really upgraded my sell volume. We have received a lot of referrals.
