Facebook marketing is perhaps the number one strategy for a lot of small businesses that interact with the local community. If you can use the platform to pin down your audience and win their attention, you will often go far. But what should you be doing specifically? That’s the topic of this post. We look at all the 5 ways in which you can do better Facebook marketing, from starting a business page to running ads.
By Team Savant
Setting Up Your Brand Page
When it comes to doing business on Facebook, setting up your brand page is essential. You essentially need to treat the site as your digital storefront, making sure that you provide all the information that your audience wants.
The best way to think of a brand page is as your business’s advert. It’s something that is going to get the attention of your audience and really encourage them to get involved with everything that you’re doing. It should be clear, crisp and describe your business in detail while providing contact information.
If you’re not sure what to do, go back and think about all the times you went on a brand’s Facebook page, only to find very limited information about what they do and what they can offer you. It was frustrating, right?
The best way to get around this is to simply think of it as a website and provide all the information you can to your customers. Make sure you include things like pinned posts and highlight your best offers to drive conversions.
Using Targeted Ads
As a business, you also want to leverage Facebook for targeted ads. It has among the best ad targeting abilities in the world, well beyond even platforms like Google.
The social media site has this advantage because of the amount of private data it is able to collect about its users. It literally knows everything about them, and it can use these capabilities to help ad servers better connect with the people who are really going to buy from them.
We suggest playing around with various ad formats until you find one that’s right for you. You’ll want to look into carousel ads, video ads, and leads where you can.
Start with a small budget and then work your way up from there. Initially, you just want to check what works, and then move into more comprehensive approaches once you understand the lay of the land.
Posting Consistently
Another piece of pro advice is to post consistently. You want to ensure that you’re doing what you can to engage your audience and get them interested in what you do.
Remember, the types of relationships that you form on Facebook will be different from those via other mediums. On this social media site, people are more interested in ideas and relationships than being served ads, so you’ll want to create genuine value.
The ultimate goal is to forge a close connection with potential customers. You want them to feel like they know you.
If you can engage people with polls and questions, that’s also a good idea. These are great for sparking conversations and feedback. Plus, they tell you more about what your audience wants, and what they value (which could feed into product development).
Building Facebook Groups
You also want to look into the idea of building Facebook groups for better real-time engagement. These are essential for hosting Q&A sessions or product demos.
Once you have a Facebook group about your business, it makes your audience feel more invested in it. It gives the experience an air of exclusivity, which can be hard to find elsewhere.
If you can run live sessions in your Facebook groups, that’s even better. These introduce your audience to your teams and get them more invested in what you’re doing. You can use these experiences to answer their questions or learn more about the types of things they want.
Just make sure that you announce the sessions a few days in advance so people are ready for them. Don’t just set them up an hour beforehand, since nobody will watch.
It’s worth noting that recent data shows that Facebook Live sessions usually get around 6 times more engagement than conventional videos (which were already popular). Therefore, it’s well worth looking into it and figuring out how to do it well if you can.
Tracking Performance
Finally, it’s a good idea to track your performance on Facebook to see whether you’re achieving the things you want to achieve. The platform makes it easy to view your metrics and keep tabs on your progress over weeks and months for each campaign you run.
Facebook Insights is the main tool you’ll use. This tells you your reach, impressions and engagement, which you can then use to determine the quality of your output. If you want to be a bit more sophisticated, you could also use A/B testing. Running through different headlines or using alternate copy can sometimes make a significant difference in your success levels.
Therefore, look for ways you can adjust your Facebook marketing to make it more compelling. See if you can test options side by side to come up with something that will serve you better.
Adjust your strategy if necessary if you have all of this information to hand. Make changes based on what you think is working, and what’s going to work for your audience.
Constantly analysing your marketing efforts and how they align with your business goals is essential. Occasionally, you’ll want to circle back and check that what you’re doing is really serving you (or whether you should change tack).
By adopting these strategies, you should find that your ability to market your brand on Facebook improves considerably. You may notice that your ability to grow substantially and engage customers is much higher, and that you’re better able to drive sales.
If something doesn’t work the first time around, don’t assume it is a poor strategy. Simply carefully collect data and see what works.