Facebook is getting really good at making money. They do a great job up-selling their ads with Facebook pages. I want to reveal their strategy in hopes you can do the same to your business.

Step 1: Create a Facebook Page without even knowing it

They promote the ability to create a Facebook page in lots of interesting ways. My favorite one is on user profiles. Facebook asks you to enter in where you work and automatically creates it into a Facebook Business Page that other users can “Like”. This will prompt the business owner to have lots of “Likes” before their page is even started.

Step 2: Invite all your friends so you can actually name it.

They prompt you to invite all your friends. They actually don’t let you name your page until you have received at least 25 likes. This gets you to start obsessing over the # of likes you have.

Step 3: Sell ads to get more “Likes”

When you are on your own Facebook Page they show you what your advertisement could look like with a call-to-action button that says “Get More Likes”

Step 4: Keep the “Like” obsession going with analytics

They email you weekly insights on how many fans you have and get you really worried if the numbers are going up or down. At the bottom of the email they have a convenient link to promote your Facebook page with ads.

In summary what Facebook has done is pretty brilliant. They have other users collecting “Likes” for your business before it even launches. They then get you obsessed with the number of likes you have. Then they up-sell you ads to get more likes.

This is an old strategy that works

This strategy has been around for years. My first recollection of this is Yellow Pages. They list your business in their directory for free. You either learn about their service from a client that told you they found you through Yellow Pages or you were also an end consumer yourself. Once things get rolling they ask you to “upgrade” your profile by bolding your name or placing an advertisement in their book.

Yelp follows this model as well. They list every business possible  for free and up sell ads.

Google probably takes the cake on this. They crawl the entire web. Give you Google Analytics so you know that customers are coming from Google. They then upsell you ads so you can get more people to your website through them.

In conclusion, if you run a business that has massive amounts of use, consider doing some soft upsells like Facebook.