HOW TO USE FACEBOOK FOR MARKETING
Facebook is among the oldest, if not the oldest, kids on the block (social media). For a long time, it was just a platform for people to socialize and have fun until businesses realized the potential it holds. Years later, it is the biggest social media platform leading with over 2.9 monthly active users, which is mind-blowing.
Maybe you got a business running or you have plans to set up one, how do you go about it to reap the benefits from Facebook marketing? It is simple, really simple to have a business page on Facebook.
The majority of us have a personal Facebook account and profile. Probably took you less than five minutes to set it up and now you’re ready to share. Creating a business page is as easy as creating a personal account, with a little bit of difference of course and the best part is it is all free. If you’re working on a tight budget, you can do a lot of marketing here for free, once you’re ready to bump your marketing, you can do ads, more on that later.
Why use Facebook for marketing?
We are in the digital era, we get our information online, shop online, market online and do pretty much everything online. Social media is very big in online business and you need it. Just by opening apps, switching tabs, and clicking buttons, everything can be sorted without leaving the comfort of our houses.
If you’re in business and have no online presence, you’re missing out BIG. Brick and mortar might be doing you good, but having an online presence, you could be doing great, even for businesses that just serve the locals.
Apart from the large number of monthly users that Facebook has, it also has over 200 million businesses. That’s right, if you’re not there, you’re competitor certainly is.
Facebook also has a very big advantage since it belongs to Meta platforms. The integration that is there with Instagram and other social platforms is very advantageous. You can run an ad on Instagram from Facebook.
Marketing means research and planning are done. How do you do the research and planning for Facebook marketing? Let’s dig in.
Types of Facebook Posts
Facebook is a very versatile platform. It can upload different types and formats of content with ease. Facebook content types are; Facebook status (text), photos, videos, live streams, 360o videos, and link posts.
The majority of you are familiar with these, but do you know how the type of posts affects your engagements?
Before we can expound, the type of post you upload is heavily influenced by the kind of message you want to send to your users. You should also identify which types of posts your users engage with more to capitalize on that. Using Facebook for marketing is not very different from general marketing, you have to try different strategies to see which one works better for you. Here are some statistics and facts to help you in the decision-making process.
According to datareportal, the average engagement rate on Facebook is 3.39%. Contrary to the prior days, competition is very high on these social platforms right now. The only way to get a head is to create authentic, quality content that your target audience would want to engage with. The Facebook algorithm plays a big part in what to display to the users. The algorithm changes now and then but the bottom line is that the more your content gets engagement, the more the algorithm will display it to more audiences.
Facebook photo posts have an engagement of 4.42%. Facebook videos have an engagement rate of 6.09% which is better than the average. Facebook status posts get an engagement rate of 1.44%. Link posts have an engagement rate of 2.72%.
Do not be solemnly guided by numbers, marketing is a tailor-made affair, what works for one is not guaranteed to work for you. Use different types of content mix and identify those that work in your favor.
Facebook marketing strategy
You are done setting up your business page and can’t wait to start marketing your business, but hold up, not that fast and it is also not that easy. Marketing without a plan will lead to frustration and you will end up saying there’s no benefit in using Facebook for marketing.
These are the steps in Facebook marketing:
- Define your audience
- Set goals
- Decide on content formats to use
- Optimize your page
- Monitor your page
1. Define your audience
The first step to successful marketing is to identify who is your potential audience. Come up with a persona that represents who your audience is. Some of the key point to identify is their; age, location, interest, time to use Facebook, and needs. The great news is that Facebook has insights to derive all this information.
A customer could want something but need something else. The needs beat the wants.
Once you have identified who your audience is, you can go to the next step.
2. Set goals
Goals are dependent on what you want to achieve, and what success means and looks like to you. A social media goal should be influenced by your business goal for unidirectional progress, at the end of the day Facebook marketing should be aiding in the success of the business.
Some metrics used to measure success could be;
- Lead generation
- Sales and conversions
- Engagement
- Brand recognition
- Customer service
- Driving traffic to your website
There are many more depending on what you want to achieve.
Once you identify what you want to achieve, come up with a framework on how you plan to get there. There should be key indicators along the path to show if there is any progress made.
3. Decide on content formats to use and scheduling
We have discussed the content formats above. Now it’s time to decide what to use.
I will confidently say, there is no single solution that fits all. This is a trial and error process to see what works and what doesn’t. Keep in mind that your posts should have a balance of being informative and entertaining.
The hardest part is generating the content itself. Since you know your audience, you know what they are interested in. You could do some social listening to help you develop content. Social listening uses tools to identify what is being talked about on social media about your niche, what is in demand, and what is being talked about. Model your content around those hot topics that are relevant to you.
Once you are done with your content, it is time to schedule them. You need to know when the majority of your audience is active. Aside from that, the content should be relevant to the time you plan to post. There are several scheduling tools to use. Facebook has its scheduling tool that can schedule content for both Facebook and Instagram, other tools are paid that give more insights into these posts.
To schedule Facebook content follow these steps;
Open your business page.
Look at the left panel and you will see the planner.
Once the window, which looks like a calendar is open,
Click on the day you want to schedule your posts and set the time.
Fill the boxes with the content.
Click on schedule once done. On the calendar-looking window, you can see the post there scheduled.
4. Optimize your page
When in the process of setting up your page, use a catchy picture for your profile and cover photo. The about us section should detail what you do in easy and short terms.
While posting your content, use keywords. These are words or phrases that your target audience uses to search for your content. Facebook is a search engine, just like Google, and can do a good search to find relevant information.
Hashtags will also come a long way in helping with the visibility of your content during a search. The maximum number of hashtags you can use is 30 but 10 is a sweet spot. You don’t have to add every single hashtag you find, always use relevant hashtags.
Engaging with your audience will give you a good boost. When other users come looking around your page, they can tell that you respond and this goes a long way to building brand trust between you and your customers.
Messenger is a very crucial component in Facebook marketing, this is a quick way to respond to Fanyone who makes an effort to directly talk to your business. Messenger has more than 1.3 billion active users a month. The joy of having Facebook Messenger is you could have a chatbot doing the majority of work for you. A chatbot can respond to relevant questions and even direct a user to a website or relevant page. But always remember, personal interaction with your users will feel more authentic and build more trust. Whenever possible, respond very fast. Facebook has a feature that shows on your page how fast you respond.
Facebook groups are another way to get seen, this works well for service businesses. You can have a group of people interacting around topics relevant to you.
5. Monitor your page
After all this effort, it will be good to know how you are performing. Marketing has to give feedback on the progress made. Monitoring your Facebook page is very easy by using Facebook’s inbuilt insights tool.
From the tool, you will be able to derive this information;
- Audience – age, location, gender, number of followers, new followers
- Content – Facebook page reach, engagement per post
- Competitors – likes, and number of posts
The steps are as follows;
Go to your business page. On the left-side menu, there is Insights
A window will open with the overview results. On the left side of the window, you can navigate to the different options
Results
Audience
Benchmarking to see your competitors
Content
Compile these results using Excel or Google Sheets and you can derive further data.