How often do you use Facebook Live video streaming?
If your answer is never or not very often, you need to change that.
You can use Facebook Live for various marketing campaigns.
It can also help you add subscribers to your email list.
Leveraging your live video streaming skills the right way can help you multitask.
Obviously, you want to promote your brand, products, and services.
And you want to add more people to your email list.
Facebook Live allows you to do all of these things simultaneously.
One of the best parts of this live-streaming platform is the quality.
You won’t have to worry about lag time or stability.
During the 2016 Presidential debates, Facebook Live had the lowest delay time of all viewing platforms.
That was with nearly 300,000 people watching the debates on Facebook at the same time.
Those are impressive numbers.
Concerns about video quality or lag are no excuse for you to be avoiding Facebook Live.
In this post, I’ll explain how you can use this marketing tool to grow your email list.
Give an in-depth explanation of different subjects
Facebook allows you to stream live videos for long periods of time.
However, there is a 4-hour time limit for each live stream.
Do you need to go live for 4 hours?
Not necessarily.
But longer videos generate more views than shorter ones.
In fact, last year, four of the top five most viewed Facebook Live videos were over 3 hours long.
There’s no magic number you need to reach that says you’ve been on long enough.
Generally speaking, long videos give you more time to attract a large audience.
Ask your followers to receive a notification whenever you go live.
Just have them click the “Follow” button in the bottom right corner of your stream:
This will help ensure you get more viewers during the video.
Facebook Live streams get watched 3 times longer than regular videos on Facebook.
What should you do with all this time?
Take advantage of it.
If you’re trying to grow your email list, give your viewers a pitch for why they should subscribe.
What kind of value are you offering your subscribers?
They won’t just join your email list because you tell them to.
If you’re planning to be on Facebook Live for several hours, understand that your audience will change throughout this time frame.
Just because you plugged your email list during the first 10 minutes of the stream doesn’t mean you can’t do it again later.
Look, I’m not saying you should sound like a broken record. You don’t need to bring it up every five minutes.
But make a conscious effort to direct the viewers to sign up for your emails a couple of times through your broadcast.
Promote your products
Let’s piggyback on that last topic.
You’ve got lots of time to spend in front of your audience.
Use that time wisely.
Pitch your brand, products, and services.
Consumers would much rather watch a video about your product than read about it.
Here’s a great opportunity for you to kill two birds with one stone.
The birds are:
- product sales
- email list growth.
Ultimately, you’re trying to add email subscribers so you can increase sales and conversions, right?
It’s not often you have a chance to add subscribers while promoting your product at the same time.
This is how you can do it.
Tell your Facebook Live audience about your product.
Now, tell them you have exclusive discounts and promotions for the members of your email subscription list.
It’s easy to accomplish this with Facebook Live.
As we already established, consumers would rather see your products in a video than read about them.
You’re giving customers exactly what they want.
This is a great way to create effective customer service.
Amazing customer service can help you double your revenue.
Pitch your products, and direct your viewers to sign up for emails so they can receive a discount.
Trust me, it will work.
Establish a personal connection with your viewers
Live video-streaming is the perfect opportunity for you to show off your personality.
Be funny.
Show the audience you’re a real person, not a nameless and faceless brand.
It will help you develop a longer relationship with your customers.
Facebook Live is the perfect platform to enhance the customer experience.
What happens when you establish a personal relationship with your customers?
They are willing to spend more money.
Let’s take a step back to analyze this.
If a customer is willing to spend more money based on a personal connection with your brand, what else would they be willing to do?
Surely, they will join your email subscription list.
Just ask.
It’s free, so they should be on board with this.
Remember to bring up your email subscriptions during your live streams.
If you’ve got a good personality, your viewers will want to hear from you.
This is a perfect chance to promote your blog.
Establishing a personal connection is one of the reasons why every business should have a blog.
During your Facebook Live stream, you can say: “Unfortunately, I can’t be streaming live 24/7.”
If your viewers want more exclusive content, tell them: “Sign up for my email list, and you’ll get notified every time I release a new post.”
This will keep your viewers, readers, and customers interested in your brand.
It’s also a simple way to help you add subscribers to your email list via Facebook Live.
Use interactivity tactics
Get your viewers interacting with you during the live stream.
How? Through:
Facebook Live videos are native, meaning they play within your feed instead of linking to another site.
Native videos on Facebook have a 1055% higher share rate than videos with an outbound link.
What does this mean?
Viewers are already more inclined to share your video and interact with you while you’re streaming. Encourage them to do more.
Let’s say you’re running a contest.
Randomly select a viewer who liked or shared the stream.
You can even run a contest within the comment section of the live video.
Encourage comments by saying you’re going to pick the most creative or funniest comment.
Here’s how you can translate these interactions into growing your email list.
After you select a winner and give away a prize, announce you’ll be running another online giveaway for the subscribers on your email list.
The viewers just saw you’re giving stuff away, so this gives them an added incentive to subscribe to your email list.
Facebook Live is the most popular live streaming application.
Encouraging interactivity here is your best shot at attracting the most viewers.
If you have more viewers, you’ll have a greater chance of adding people to your email subscription list.
Dedicate a specific time each week to go live
Think of Facebook Live like of your own television show.
What’s your favorite program on TV? It doesn’t just come on randomly, right?
The show plays at a specific time each day or each week. That’s how it builds an audience.
You can apply the same concept to your live streaming.
You just learned that a larger audience increases the chances of getting more email subscribers, so make sure you go live on a regular basis.
What’s the best time to go live?
Based on the graph above, the middle of the week is the best time for you to broadcast a live video.
Try to schedule your stream on Wednesdays if it works for your agenda.
The time of day when you go live matters too.
Going live late at night increases the average number of total engagements.
Take both of these graphs into consideration when scheduling your live streams.
Based on the data from this study, late Wednesday night is the best time for you to go live.
You’ll increase your chances of getting a larger audience that’s more actively engaged.
It’s the perfect time to promote your email subscriptions and build your list.
Just make sure your content is fresh.
Media publications use Facebook Live the most.
That’s because they tend to have breaking news stories on hot topics.
Don’t go through the same script every week.
Mix it up to keep the audience entertained and wanting to come back for more.
Use different platforms to drive traffic to your live stream
Promote your live videos.
Facebook has 2 billion active monthly users.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t promote your live stream on other platforms.
Tell your current email subscribers about your live video schedule.
They may forward that email to a friend or tell people directly.
Promote your live videos on:
- Snapchat
- your website
- blogs
Use all your resources to drive traffic to these videos.
It’s worth it because your videos will yield a high return on your investment.
It won’t cost you much money to broadcast a live video.
Sure, it will take some time out of your day, and maybe you’ll give away some products.
But both of these are marginal costs compared to other marketing campaigns you’re running.
This is especially true if you can convert your live video viewers into email subscribers.
The ROI for email marketing is extremely lucrative as well. On average, companies can expect to earn $44 for every $1 spent on email marketing.
This return is up to four times greater than returns on other marketing tactics.
It’s worth your efforts to promote your Facebook Live videos on other channels.
More viewers means more email subscribers and a high return on your investment.
Add captions to your videos
We know that 85% of Facebook Live videos get watched without sound.
Adding captions to your videos can increase the average viewing time by 12%.
This is important to know.
It’s likely that the majority of your viewers will be watching you on mute.
You can’t rely solely on your words.
Have some props and other visuals ready when you’re broadcasting.
Get some professionally made signs and posters with information about your brand.
You can hold these up periodically, depending on what you’re talking about.
I’d also recommend having some signs fixed in the background of your stream if you don’t plan on moving around too much.
Use a third party closed caption service, like Telestream or Ai-Media, to enable live captions.
This way, everything you say will be transcribed on the screen for your viewers to read.
Since the majority of these people won’t be watching with the sound on, it’s a great way to increase viewer retention.
This will make it much easier for you to add subscribers to your email list.
Conclusion
Facebook Live isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, Facebook even paid people to go live in order to promote this platform.
This is great news for you as a marketer.
You can use Facebook Live to build your email list.
Since this platform lets you stream for up to 4 hours at a time, it gives you a chance to go in-depth about certain topics.
Longer streams increase your chances of obtaining more viewers.
Tell your audience to “follow” you, so they receive a notification every time you go live.
Promote your products during a live stream.
Run contests and giveaways.
You can use these promotions as an incentive for the viewers to join your email list.
Show off your personality, and establish a connection with your audience. Customers are likely to spend more money with brands they trust.
The best time to go live is Wednesday nights. That’s when you’ll have the best chance for the most viewers and a high engagement rate with your audience.
Enable live closed captions on your stream since the majority of the people watching will have the sound turned off.
During your next Facebook Live stream, what promotion will you use to entice your audience to join your email list?