Facebook is a great platform to create and spread awareness about your small business. However, getting started with social media can feel overwhelming for small businesses. Below is a list of marketing tips to help you get the most out of Facebook. This is so that you can start promoting your products and services to a wider audience.
1. Create a Facebook Business Page to Promote Your Business for Free
The first step to marketing your business on Facebook is creating a business Facebook page. A business having a page is a free way to promote the business and connect with those potential and current customers. Furthermore, it is important to keep it real, relevant, and relaxed despite wanting a huge fan base. The pressure of making it can make keeping your content relevant, light and natural difficult.
When designing your Facebook business page, pay special attention to your profile picture and cover photo. It is important to make sure they reinforce your brand. These are the most important pictures of your business because it’s what shows up in the news feed and is what is associated with your brand.
Ensure that it’s a good representation of your business. Your Facebook cover photo should make a statement for your brand. It should be interesting enough for the audience to stay on your page and memorable enough that they will want to come back.
2. Make It a Habit to Respond to Comments
A lot of companies don’t understand why it is important to respond to comments, shares, and mentions on their social media pages. You cannot only use social media to publish content, it should also be used as a source of feedback. It’s difficult enough to get your followers to engage with a share or a comment.
Ensure to respond to customer comments and reviews. Get to know your followers and also find ways to reward your followers who comment or engage with your business page. Additionally, you can come up with creative strategies to keep your fans engaged whether it’s with applications or images to promote more reviews.
Since it is a social media platform, most Facebook users only devote a short span of attention before they scroll down to other content. Marketers will have to be creative if they want to keep their target market interested. Debbie goes in-depth about the different methods you can use to engage your customers.
Whether it’s with apps or images, you can—and should—try different methods to reach your audience. It may be a combination of methods that work best. Be sure to try at least a couple from this list.
3. Embrace New Content Formats for More Organic Reach
Finding that links posted on your Facebook page go unnoticed without promotion? Facebook wants to keep users on its platform and know the value of their ad network, so you can understand why it limit organic reach. However, they want to push the latest content types, such as Live Video or Stories.
If you’re willing to take a risk on one of these post formats, you’re likely to see up to tenfold the organic reach.
4. Make Sure You Have Invited the Right Audience to Your Page
One of the mistakes small business owners make frequently with Facebook marketing is inviting the wrong people to follow their Facebook page. Most people invite every member of their family and also friends to like and follow their Facebook page.
The problem usually is, that most of their family members are not their target audience. Facebook pays attention to the people who are following your business page and they will show your page to other people with the same qualities.
Ensure that the majority of your followers are potential clients or customers. By compiling data on your existing customers and digging deeper with social media analytics, you can develop a clear picture of who is purchasing from you and who’s already interacting with you online. With this information, you can revisit your social media plan to include ways to reach more people just like them.
In addition, you can engage with other pages in your niche. This can be as simple as leaving thoughtful comments where there is a possibility they can be seen by your target market.
5. Master the Technical Aspect of Facebook Advertising
Facebook Advertising is powerful, to begin with, but with a light understanding of how its pixels work and some code manipulation, you can make it even more powerful. The problem is, that most marketers do not indulge in the code side of things but they should. It is not that complicated.
You can add a Facebook Follow button on your Website. If your Facebook business page carries your website URL, you should also have links from your website to your social media.
Buttons are an eye-catching way to invite your website visitors to follow you on Facebook for more opportunities to engage and build loyalty. Sometimes, it’s as simple as sharing with your friends and family or putting your Facebook information on your business card. Promote yourself shamelessly. Also, you should know which Facebook Ads work the best for your business.
6. Avoid Group Spamming
This is a common mistake made by beginners and agencies. Facebook groups play a significant purpose in AUTHENTIC communication. If you want to promote your business within these groups, ensure you take an authentic approach. Do not over-promote your business within Facebook groups since this leaves a bad taste in your customers’ mouths.
7. Make Good Use of “Audience Insights”
The secret to effectively using the Facebook Business is to take advantage of tools that automate or simplify much of the work. There are loads of tools to help boost your productivity that can assist you to make your ad campaigns more effective. One of these tools includes Audience Insights.
With Audience Insights, you can upload custom audiences or look at users connected to your page to gather deeper information about what your current audience may be interested in. You can match it with your email list of past purchasers and find out what users who like your product enjoy. You can also search by interest to come up with new and creative targeting opportunities.
By jumping into the demographics of your current audience, you can figure out how to target like-minded users who will be interested in your product or service. You need to constantly research and refine your audience so that you don’t miss the mark when it comes to creativity and messaging. Knowing who you are speaking to is as important as how you speak to them.
To do this, go over to your Facebook analytics (called Insights), which are available at the top of your business page if you have business manager access. Then explore your “posts” tab.
Additionally, post at optimal times. (Alex Konwinski, Digital Marketing Professional, Pure Visibility). Insights can tell you what days and times of the week most of your audience is online so that you can schedule or boost posts accordingly.
8. Use a Lookalike Audience
Upload your contact lists when you set up Facebook ad audiences, even if you’re not currently using them for email distribution. A lookalike audience leverages Facebook’s incredibly thorough data information on users to show your ads to people who have things in common with your current customers and fans. While you should also put together your audiences by hand, this is a quick and easy way to start getting your ads in front of the right people
9. Stay Away from Popular Facebook Marketing Myths
Facebook marketing, can sometimes be misleading mostly if you are new. Many strategies can seem very effective if not monitored or measured properly. For example, duplicating your post is just inexplicable for people who click on your page and scroll down through your posts. Find different ways to say the same thing instead.
You can use a different photo or attach a link to the event about it. Try to combine the repetition with other unrelated posts. Another one is using hashtags on Facebook. You cannot add hashtags as if you are in your Instagram profile because it will simply be a waste of time.
10. Prioritize Ads Over Boosts
The number one paid marketing mistake I see realtors (and everyone else) making on Facebook is using boosts over ads. It is fine to use boosts and they can get a few extra likes or comments, but with Facebook ads, you can do so much more! Ads will only go to people who fit into the specifics you target.
Similarly, you can install the Facebook Pixel on your website which lets you aim at either people who have visited your website in the past or a lookalike audience. While you can’t see who those people are, you know they’re already looking at the same product or a related product.
