Potential customers are already looking for businesses like yours on Facebook. A smart Facebook marketing strategy is the only way to connect with them.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook has 1.56 billion daily active users . Let’s put that in perspective. That’s nearly 5X the population of the United States, 20% of the world population … and still climbing.
So imagine the social influence achievable through Facebook in terms of your peer effects, ecommerce business, referrals, customer relationships, reputation, brand awareness, and much more (let alone, in combination with other social media platforms you market through).
It isn’t new, and neither is the idea that every business needs a Facebook presence. However, a lot has changed since Facebook first entered the marketing scene.
Today, the world’s largest social network can do things many of us would never have dreamed of 10 years ago: host 360-degree videos, sell products via a chatbot, or even serve as a top news source for two-thirds of the adult population.
Here are our best Facebook marketing tips for the year ahead.
Guide to set up Facebook for business
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Create a Facebook Business Page for Facebook Marketing
It doesn’t cost anything to set up a Facebook Page. Once you’ve created your Page, you can also use it to post content, link to your website, and communicate with Fans and followers for free.
On the other hand, it makes a Facebook Page an incredibly valuable tool for any marketer working with a limited budget.
You also need to create a Facebook Business Page before you can start using paid marketing strategies on Facebook, including Facebook ads. So, the first step of mastering how to use Facebook for business is preparing your Facebook Page.
Involve different types of Facebook posts to grow your business
Now that you’ve created your Facebook Page, you need to think about what kind of content to post.
Here’s a breakdown of the different post types you can use to engage with your followers. For inspiration, we’ve included some powerful Facebook marketing examples from successful brands.
- Facebook text post (a.k.a. status post)
This is the most basic type of Facebook post. It is literally nothing but next: No photos, no videos—not even a link.
- Facebook photo post
Like a text post, a photo post is designed to build awareness or spark engagement. In general, photo posts see much higher engagement than text posts.
- Facebook video post
A short video post can be compelling if your product has strong visual appeal.
- Facebook Live video post
Facebook Live video is, not surprisingly, video broadcast live on Facebook. Further, it can be a great way to give followers a behind-the-scenes look at your company, your product, or the personalities behind your brand.
- Linked content post (aka link posts)
A linked content post is exactly what it sounds like—a post that links to content outside of Facebook. These getter more engagement than status posts, but less than photo or video posts.
Facebook posts for Marketing
- Facebook poll post
A poll offers fans the chance to vote for one of two options. Once voting is over, the results become public.
- Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories are photo or short video posts that appear in vertical format and disappear after 24 hours. They live at the top of the News Feed. Photos appear for five seconds, and videos can be up to 20 seconds long.
More than half a billion people view Facebook Stories every day. So, when you’re thinking about how to use Facebook for business in 2021, Stories can offer a powerful way to connect with fans.
- Pinned post
A pinned post is simply a regular post that you “pin” to the top of your Facebook Page.
Consequently, it’s always the first thing people see at the top of your Page.
What should you pin? Maybe you have one piece of content that soars above the rest. Something that really captures your brand and shows potential followers exactly why they should Like your Page.
How to Create a Facebook Marketing Strategy
1. Identify your Facebook Audience to grow your business
To determine your Facebook audience, take a step backward and evaluate the buyer personas of your marketing strategy at large.
The good news is that there are a number of ways Facebook can assist in identifying your audience and learning about your buyer personas.
In fact, according to Crystal King, Social Media Professor for HubSpot Academy,
“The cool thing about Facebook is that you can get really detailed. You can know a lot more about your customers than you might have imagined. Facebook’s a platform that has all sorts of really personal information on people.”
Here’s what you need to know to get started with this step of your strategy.
By understanding the challenges and goals of your persona, you can determine which content would be best to post and tweak the positioning accordingly.
To begin building your buyer persona, interview a diverse mix of customers, prospects, and referrals to gauge their background knowledge of your industry, their biggest challenges, their ultimate goals, and what resources they rely on to learn and develop their skills.
Then, take a look at your competitors. Explore their Facebook Pages and evaluate each for a few key factors:
- Visual quality
- Post frequency
- Content mix
- Engagement on posts (likes, comments, and shares)
- Response time and quality from business
2. Set goals for the best Facebook marketing strategy
It can be tempting to focus on vanity metrics, like racking up Likes. But unless those Likes are part of a broader marketing plan, they’re not going to provide a great return.
For your Facebook marketing strategy to be effective, you’ve got to have clear goals tied to real business objectives.
The goals will differ for every business, but they should all focus on actions that have a real impact on your bottom line. For example:
- generating leads
- increasing conversions on your website
- improving customer service.
These broad categories are a good place to start. Next, you need to make your goals much more specific and measurable.
That is to say, everything you do on Facebook—every post, every comment, every ad—should work to support your goals. To keep things on track, it’s a good idea to distill your strategy down into a Facebook mission statement for your brand.
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3. Consider Best Times to Post to Grow your business with Facebook
We get this question a lot: How often should you post to Facebook? And once you determine how often, at what times should you post?
As frustrating as it sounds, the answer to both of these questions is, “it depends.” Your region, goals, industry, and how your target audience interacts with the social media platform must all be accounted for when determining the best times to post.
In short, a good rule of thumb is weekday afternoons, typically between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. If you’re posting on the weekends, shoot for between noon and 1 p.m.
In addition, It’s better to be selective about what you publish than to overwhelm your audience with content. Spend less time crafting a lot of posts and more time creating more engaging Facebook posts.
4. Optimize your Facebook Page for engagement
In order to achieve the Facebook marketing goals you set, you need to make it easy for people to find your Facebook Page. And you need to compel them to Like your Page once they get there.
First, make it easy for people you already interact with on other channels to find your Facebook Page:
- Link to your Page in your email signature, newsletter, and other channels
- Incorporate Facebook Like and share buttons on your website and blog to make it easy for people to find, follow, and share your Page in one click
Of course, if you want people to share your content, you need to make sure the content you post to Facebook is highly shareable. Creating valuable and entertaining content that followers will be happy to share with their connections is the best way to expand your organic reach.
It bears repeating here that Facebook is a social network. If you’re not engaged with your Page, why should your followers be? Followers who find themselves talking into a void will abandon your Page for more responsive brands.
Your mantra is reply, reply, reply. Reply to every message and comment. Answer questions.
Finally, make sure your Page stays up to date. Schedule a regular audit of your Facebook Page to check for and remove any outdated content. Make sure your About section is accurate, up-to-date, and on-brand.
5. Consider using other Facebook tools to grow your Facebook Marketing
Once you’ve started to build up your following, you may want to consider adding some extra tools to your marketing plan.
- Facebook Groups
With 1.4 billion people using Facebook Groups every month, it’s an audience too large to ignore. Think of Groups as the online equivalent of your favorite coffee shop or community center. They are a place for people to share information and ideas.
You can also use Facebook Groups to showcase your expertise and provide added value to your fans. This is a great way to build trust and ongoing loyalty.
- Facebook chatbot (a.k.a. Facebook Messenger bot)
Users exchange 20 billion messages with businesses every month. Facebook’s own research shows users expect a business to respond almost immediately. One surveyed Facebook user said he would only wait 10 minutes for a response before moving on to another brand.
Facebook suggests chatbots on Messenger may be the answer to this need for quick replies. And they cite it as a reason why the number of bots grew 5.6 times in 2018 alone.
Grow your Facebook Marketing
- Facebook Business Manager
Once you understand the basics of your Facebook Page, it’s a good idea to set up Facebook Business Manager. Facebook calls it “a one-stop shop to manage business tools, business assets and employee access to these assets.”
It’s a tool that allows you to manage your organic and paid Facebook posts. Moreover, It allows you to work effectively with team members and outside contractors and agencies.
- Conclusion
We’ve created a detailed guide that walks you through the Facebook marketing.
In short, beyond tracking your success, it’s important to use the information about what’s working and what’s not to make adjustments to your Facebook marketing strategy.
Above all,, through a continuous loop of goal-setting, measuring results, and tweaking your strategy, you can improve your performance over time.
To sum up, there’s a lot to learn when it comes to Facebook marketing, and it might all seem a little overwhelming at first. The good news is you can get started without investing a dime. Then, branch out into more complex strategies and paid campaigns as you gain expertise.
