Using Facebook for marketing is very simple. But yet, many businesses are yet to take full advantage of the strategy.
If you’re one of the people standing on the fence, you’ve stood up enough!
You can now start to benefit from digital marketing if you know how to use Facebook for marketing your business on the internet.
It’s my wish to show you the best Facebook marketing strategies to promote your brand and increase your sales online.
This will show you how to find customers and do your business, sell your products or services on Facebook conveniently.
Facebook marketing is one of the most widely used digital marketing strategies all over the world.
In fact, Facebook marketing in 2020 has gone beyond posting a product on your timeline and expecting someone to buy without doing the needful.
There are better ways to market your business on Facebook.
With some features recently added to Facebook, you can use the platform as a store, but an e-Commerce store per se!
So, if you know how to use Facebook for marketing, customers can walk up straight to your account and make an order.
You don’t necessarily need to attend to any query regarding an order before a transaction can be made.
The process has been automated with the use of Facebook.
And that is AMAZING!
So, if you decide to make Facebook your Business Card or Business centre, you’re on track.
That will promote you far beyond where a thousand real business cards can reach.
This guide will show you how that’s possible.
So, you can RELAX!
Using Facebook for marketing, however, is an effective way of marketing any kind of business you do.
Whether the business is big or small, new or old, local or international, it can perform as much as any other successful business on the social network.
No doubt everybody wants to be on Facebook but don’t know what to do to make their presence represent a milestone of success in their businesses.
How is it possible to gain customers from Facebook if you don’t know how to use Facebook effectively for marketing your business?
So, that calls for the need to share this guide with you.
First of all, let’s discuss in brief what Facebook marketing is.
What is Facebook marketing?
Facebook marketing is the systematic way of communicating business information to attract customers and maintain customer relationships.
This involves the use of Facebook marketing tools such as user profiles, groups, marketplace, and pages for organizations, companies or individuals aiming at a specific target audience.
These tools can be used to build a big fan, audience or customer base, depending on the kind of product or service you offer.
Facebook has really served a wide range of industries, not excluding fashion, health and wellness, education, communication, auto, sports, entertainment, politics, religion and a very large number of individuals all over the world.
The chart below shows how industries using Facebook for marketing perform.
As of December 31, 2018, Facebook served 2.27 billion potential users where more than 1.5 billion users visited Facebook on a daily basis.
And you’re one of them.
The beauty of being on Facebook has come to the level where you need to know how to leverage the social media platform for marketing your business.
And that is what you’ll learn in this post.
In a nutshell, using Facebook for marketing your business online is all about creating new and harnessing old relationships with your customers.
Since you can hardly have a customer who isn’t on Facebook nowadays, you have the tendency of grabbing more customers at your fingertip.
Why is Facebook good for marketing?
There are many good things you probably don’t know about using Facebook for marketing.
And if you want to know about them, here are they:
Facebook marketing is free to use
If Facebook had a premium version, small businesses wouldn’t be able to compete on it.
Since the premium version would contain some powerful features that small businesses couldn’t afford, you and I were probably going to be resisted from marketing our dream businesses on Facebook.
That would make only big businesses the potential beneficiaries of Facebook marketing.
So, let’s say a BIG THANK YOU to Mark Zuckerberg and his teams.
They’re AWESOME for making Facebook FREE to use for marketing our businesses.
For this reason, it won’t be nice if you don’t know how to use Facebook for marketing your business.
Sharing information
What excuse do you have as an entrepreneur when you help others share vital information about their businesses while yours is crippling?
Facebook marketing strategies begin by sharing relevant information about your prospects and how you can help them.
According to ShaneBarker, there are about 21 Facebook marketing tools you can lay your hands on to promote your business and get your audience engaged easily. ShaneBarker
These include AdEspresso, Agorapulse, Buffer, Driftrock, ManyChat, Facebook Ad Manager, Fanpage Karma, Heyo, Hootsuit, Likealyzer, Meet Edgar and so on.
Just find what is suitable for your type of business, product or service and begin to show your audience how much you care.
You can take advantage of the social media tools to promote your brand image, or to even sell your products or services if you use the right one.
The scope is if users know nothing about you, gaining their attention would be difficult.
This doesn’t mean you should come to Facebook and start talking about YOU or flaunting your ACHIEVEMENTS.
That would be a GREAT MISTAKE if those things you post have no POSITIVE IMPACT on your PROSPECTS.
Your customers come first and you should let them know that.
So, talking about YOU all the times would only make them view your posts and pass by.
The best way to convert your audience is by sharing information about the benefits they can get from you.
When you share information like this, your conversion rate (CR) increases.
The bottom line is Facebook marketing strategies for small business include sharing great MARKETING STORIES.
Facebook marketing is flexible
Even when you feel like asking Facebook to help you promote your business, you aren’t going to be compelled to pay a certain amount.
Facebook allows you to prepare a budget for your campaign. And you can spend as low as $1 to promote your business on a daily basis.
Your business can use the same strategies which big businesses like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Oreo, Skittles, Red Bull, Disney, Converse, Pringles, ZARA, and iPod, use in marketing their businesses on Facebook.
According to JeffBullas,
The companies mentioned above are the world’s ten most popular companies that use Facebook for business marketing. JeffBullas
Assuming they offer $2000 on a marketing campaign and you offer $20 to Facebook, both your ads will work the same way.
The difference is just the coverage.
If they reach 500,000 and convert 50,000 customers with their $2000, you’ll only celebrate your own result based on the value of your $20.
Thus, big businesses can afford to spend more than you. And for that reason, they make a bigger ROI.
But that doesn’t make Facebook paid ads impossible for you.
In every match, there is always a difference between a new and an old player.
How to use Facebook for marketing
If you ever wonder how to get customers on Facebook and make them buy your products, consider the following Facebook marketing strategies:
- Set your marketing goals
- Know your audience
- Market with a Facebook page
- Promote your business page
- Market with Facebook ads
- Market with Facebook groups
- Use Marketplace
- Use Facebook Jobs
Now, let’s discuss the strategies one after the other.
#1. Set your marketing goals
Facebook is no longer what it used to be.
Now, you can use the social app to achieve your business goals in real-time.
One of the options we had a few years ago to quench boredom was to take a selfie and post the picture on Facebook. When your friends saw the picture, they liked it and re-shared it with other friends.
We got some lovely comments and that kept us regularly coming to Facebook to check on our friends.
This behavior is what companies adopt now to promote their brands, target their customers, overhaul their relationships and increase their local sales on Facebook.
Your marketing goals are therefore the directions, which your business follows to achieve its objectives.
Using Facebook for business marketing, however, is to offer relevant answers to problems faced by your target audience.
Thus, with Facebook, you can realize the following goals:
- Promote your brand
- Engage your customers
- Boost your sales
- Generate leads to your website
- Re-targeting old customers
You can take advantage of Facebook to achieve your business marketing goals. It will help you determine how your business performs and find solutions where necessary.
Sometimes ago, I created a page, which I called The Heroes.
The objective of that page was to promote my brand and send leads to my website. So, I decided to use the page to inspire my audience.
And to achieve this, I share inspirational content on the page.
If the audience sees something different from this, the engagement will gradually drop and at the end the goal will fail.
So, when you know your objectives and create content that meets the objectives, you should expect a big SUCCESS.
#2. Know your audience
To know your audience, you first need to know who needs your products or services or whom your business will serve the most on Facebook.
For that purpose, Facebook provides a tool called Facebook audience insights tool.
You can also use the tool to understand your customer behavior and their interests.
Facebook audience insights shows marketers factors to consider for better targeting.
The tool uses user demographics, engagement types, locations, and previous activities on Facebook to help you determine who are in dire need of your business.
If you sell wedding wears, it’s most certain your audiences are singles, especially people planning to get married.
So, you can use the tool to target singles and offer what suits their interests.
If other factors like age, education, profession, or location matter to your marketing campaign, you can set the parameter in the insights tool.
That will make the campaign reach the people that fall within the parameter and get the best result of your campaign.
If you’re not targeting the right people, there will be no sales.
Assuming you want to sell a wedding wear and you mistakenly target married people, the campaign won’t generate sales.
This is like playing an audio CD and expecting some visuals on the television screen.
That’s not possible!
For further study, read How to use Facebook Audience Insights to determine who are likely going to be your potential customers on Facebook.
#3. Market with a Facebook page
Facebook marketing can take place on Facebook business pages. You can create yours on your profile and use it to generate leads and re-engage existing customers.
Using your Facebook business page to connect relevant people to your business is part of the strategies used in Facebook business marketing.
There are no two businesses that are the same.
If you want to express your core values, culture, position in your industry, or to even motivate customer behavior by giving out incentives or coupons, your page can give you all that.
The Facebook business page is flexible enough to help your business achieve its goals irrespective of your industry.
Benefits of Facebook business page
- Attracts Likes: People who encounter your brand when your ad is active might like your page. And when that happens, they will see whatever post you publish subsequently.
- Gain Exposure: Your page gains exposure whether those who encounter your promotion like your page or not. That’s why the rate of exposure is usually times two of engagement.
- Boost conversion: Your page has the potential to convert visitors to potential customers. Since your Facebook ads target people who need your business, the success of using Facebook for business marketing is guaranteed.
Facebook page types
You have the option to create your page based on your industry.
That is, creating your page in the category that is most relevant to your business is as good as opening a store at the location where your potential customers live.
So, be careful you don’t choose the wrong category for your page.
The following categories are currently available on Facebook:
- Local business or place
- Company, organization, or institution
- Brand or product
- Artist, band, or public figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or community
Under each page type, choose a page name, category, design, theme, and setting that is most relevant to your business.
You can test each option one after the other and stick to the one that best presents your business before you begin to promote it.
If you have an existing page, read how to create a Facebook business page the right way to optimize the page for efficient results.
Having an optimized page will help you to increase your leads and conversion rates.
#4. Promote your page
Sometimes ago, I created different Facebook pages and tested each to know the best approach to promote a page.
I found out that the following strategies work very fine:
Invite friends to like your page
At the moment your page is ready, Facebook will suggest that you invite all your friends all at once to your page.
That’s a good one!
You’ll see the list right in front of you on the page.
All you have to do is to click Invite Friends.
On the next (pop up) page, select all friends and send invites to all of them.
This will make your Facebook friends know about the page. Anyone interested in it will like and follow you.
Subsequently, only those who like and follow your page will be carried along with the business each time you post something on the page.
This approach is poor because 1/4 of your friends won’t honor the invitation if your page isn’t relevant to them.
During my research, I invited some of my Facebook friends to visit a page. But unfortunately, the turnout was very low.
As a result of this, I followed up with them by sending a direct message of appeal, which also didn’t work.
Unfortunately, when I pressed further, some began to ask me if it was compulsory they like the page!
As I made no further efforts, the page didn’t grow more than 172 followers between 2016 and 2019 that it existed.
That shows the downside of sending a random invitation to people to like your Facebook business page.
For that reason, I discourage marketers to rely on sending invites.
Sharing helpful content
Sharing helpful content with audience is an important aspect of using Facebook for business marketing.
Since your mission is to promote your brand, then you have to share content that can engage the audience.
This includes sharing illustrative images, videos, quotes, and web links on your page to engage your audience.
You’ll spoil the show if you bring your personal issue to your page except it’s business oriented.
If you and your family have used a product that can help your audience, there is no problem presenting your family in this way.
The presentation could be in a video, picture, or text format, which will make your audience have more affinity with your brand.
However, helpful content is what attracts likes, re-share, and comments.
And the more that happens, the more your page grows.
Sharing your page link
Sharing your page link on other social media channels or websites can help you generate more leads to your business page.
If you have a website, try to add a Facebook Follow button to it. The button will enable your web visitors to follow you to your Facebook page.
I belong to some groups on Twitter where members are encouraged to share the links of their Facebook business pages.
Some of the groups are:
- @TheBlogLists
- @BloggingBabesRT
- @BloggersHut
- @TRJForBloggers
- @BloggersTribe
Members follow one another right from Twitter to Facebook and also lead their followers who might be interested in other brands to their pages.
Offline promotion
You can equally promote your page via your offline media such as marketing souvenirs or at relevant events such as business forums.
If you’re using vests, caps, flyers, slides, and business cards to promote your brand, ensure your page is cited on all the materials.
This can lead more people to your page.
#5. Market with Facebook ads
You can promote your business using Facebook ads.
This powerful tool can help your business reach your target customers at all costs. It’s 100% profitable and faster than other aforementioned methods.
Luckily, there are different types of Facebook ads, but how do you know the one to use?
According to Noah Kagan, you can easily mess things up here.
Oftentimes, even “expert” advertisers mess up the simple fundamentals. Then, their mistakes drive up the cost they spend on ads, lower profitability, and cause headaches. Noah Kogan
That makes it very important to know the Do’s and Don’t’s of Facebook ads.
The bad news is Facebook ads aren’t free.
Facebook believes you use money to get money.
If you have opened a business page, ideally you should spend money to promote the page to boost your ROI.
There’s no miracle in using Facebook for marketing.
To gain millions of Likes and Followers on your page is possible without running an ad.
Yes!
But the fastest way to achieve that great result is to target your customers with the ads.
Don’t be discouraged to use this approach because it requires money. The result is worth more than the cost.
When I created The Heroes and budgeted just $3 on promotion, I generated more than a hundred followers per day.
Because Facebook ads target potential customers, they help marketers find people that have the potential to purchase their products.
By so doing, you won’t be asking somebody that needs a cap to buy a cat.
If you create a business page and make no effort to promote it, people will hardly know about your page and brand.
#6. Market with Facebook groups
Facebook groups can also be used for business marketing or to maintain close contact with fans or customers.
If you have a business page, you can still opt for a group to get the most out of Facebook.
Despite the fact that both your business page and group work differently, you can link your group to your page for optimum performance.
Facebook groups work like a forum.
Members can interact with each other and also share personal opinions or information about their business in a group.
But on the other hand, your followers can’t post their opinions on your page. They can only like, comment, and share your posts.
So, if you want people to share their opinions, then you have to create a group for that purpose.
That doesn’t make you responsible for what your group members publish on your group.
Meanwhile, you have to screen what members publish and give approval before their posts can go live on the group.
That gives you the power to control how your group is being used by your members.
By the time your group is big, you might assign a few other members as moderators to ensure the group isn’t compromised.
You can use your group to promote your brand, service, or product.
And to achieve this, you need to plan it very well.
Make your group objectives clear to the general public so that the group can attract just only your target audience.
If you stick to issues that are relevant to your audience and offer products or services that can solve those problems, your group will work perfectly to generate more sales.
Conclusion
Facebook has all user information and monitors their activities, engagements, and lifestyles to ensure your marketing is successful.
Facebook is aware of what users likes, the kind of posts, pictures, videos, stories, pages, and groups that interest them.
It tracks all this information each time users log in and helps them discover relevant information.
That makes it possible for people who need your business to find it organically. For that reason, you need to optimize your presence on Facebook for better exposure.
Meanwhile, learning how to use Facebook for marketing can give you clues about which Facebook marketing strategies you can use to market your business.
Taking advantage of how Facebook tracks users’ information to promote your own business is one of the reasons why you need to adopt Facebook marketing.
Once the people that need your business encounter your brand on Facebook, they would be eager to patronize you.
And the more you engage them, the better for your business.
#Facebook for Marketing
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