Small Business Facebook Marketing Guide
Do you want to boost brand awareness, create meaningful customer interactions, and stick within budget? Facebook marketing may be the perfect solution for your small business. Facebook is the most used online social media platform in the world, with around 2.96 billion active users, which equates to 36.8% of all people on earth. This vast audience makes Facebook the perfect digital space for targeting existing and potential consumers for your small business through Facebook marketing. Here are some tips and tricks to get you started.
What Is Facebook Marketing?
Facebook marketing allows businesses or brands to promote themselves on Facebook, which can help to encourage brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and ultimately increase revenue. Some of Facebook's offerings include paid advertising, organic posts, and Facebook analytics. Another key benefit is Facebook marketing can fit within any budget and even be free! Here we will take you through Optimum’s best tips for marketing your small business on Facebook.
How Your Business Can Use Facebook Marketing
Here are some ways that your small business could utilize Facebook marketing:
1. Leverage global coverage
Facebook is an exceptional global platform for marketing your small business, as it is active in 93% of countries. A Statista report found that more than 10 million advertisers actively use Facebook to promote their products and services. This highlights the scale of potential that Facebook could provide for growing your business.
2. Increase organic reach
Facebook marketing can help brands to create meaningful relationships with their consumers by providing valuable and relatable content. An active Facebook presence, with regular posts, stories, and interactions, can allow your audience to connect with your brand and one another. In turn, this can organically create a community of brand advocates.
3. Integrate with other marketing platforms
Using a promotion tab, Facebook allows you to connect several marketing processes-such as search engine marketing and email marketing. One way of doing this is to encourage your audience to sign up to your email database via a 'Sign Up' CTA on a sponsored Facebook post.
4. Run paid ads
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to run highly targeted image, video, and carousel ads at a cost your business can afford. You can filter the reach of these ads by location, demographic data, and interests. Moreover, you can also link these ads to your brand's Instagram page. (Instagram integration is easy as both Facebook and Instagram are owned by Meta, Facebook's parent company.) Ads Manager also shows you the cost-per-click of each ad, allowing real-time insights into performance.
5. Use automated tools
Facebook also has several tools designed to automate marketing processes to help businesses streamline operations and improve efficiency. Examples include scheduling Facebook posts ahead of time and automatically analyzing A/B testing.
6. Increase brand loyalty
Facebook can help facilitate a connection between your small business and the consumer through interactive posts-such as polls-and customer support through Facebook messenger. You can also create Facebook groups, targeting loyal customers and creating a sense of brand community online.
7. Target potential customers
Facebook allows you to promote targeted content in several ways. It collates audience insights in Meta Business Suite to help you understand who your existing and potential customers are. You can also filter Facebook Ads based on demographics, interests, and lookalike audiences. The lookalike filter is a clever way to target new potential customers based on their interest in a brand or service similar to your small business.
8. Increase traffic to your website
Boost website traffic by linking your website URL on your Facebook page or to the CTA on promoted posts and adverts. This is a simple, effective way to direct potential consumers straight to purchasing your business's product.
How to Start Using Facebook Marketing
1. Set up a Facebook Business Page
Like a personal page, a business page allows you to add images, posts, and descriptions. However, it has other features to help promote your small business, such as a call to action button and an appointment booking feature. You can also get this page Facebook-verified for an added sense of authority.
2. Get Facebook Likes
Facebook's algorithm favors highly engaged posts, determined through organic likes and comments. There are third-party programs that allow you to buy likes but since the algorithm is able to detect bots and fake accounts, your money would be better spent elsewhere.
3. Post on Facebook
A key to Facebook marketing is actually having content for your audience to like, share, and comment on. All content, whether images, videos, or copy, should be snappy, relevant, and have a clear call to action.
4. Create a marketing strategy
Developing a well-thought-out strategy is crucial for success. You should identify your target audience and business goals and create an aligned content calendar to fulfill these demands.
5. Track and measure results with Facebook Analytics
Facebook’s Page Insights can help you track and analyze how your small business's page is doing as a whole, as well as specific posts. It measures reach, page views, reactions, and social ROI.
6. Advertise on Facebook
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to control your campaigns and ad spending in one place. There are three sections:
- A Campaign is the overall asset group (e.g., holiday ads).
- An Ad Set is a campaign subgroup where you can target specific audiences.
- The ad set is where you can change the ad’s content, such as an image, video, or carousel.
You can then set a daily budget for the campaign and publish it. Facebook Ad Manager also collects valuable information, such as cost-per-click data.
Quick Tips for Facebook Marketing
Post original and fresh content
You want your small business to create a meaningful and lasting impression on your audience. Whether that is through behind-the-scenes, deals, or product announcements, quality content is better than spamming your page with so-so posts.
Use visual content
3M found that visual content is processed 60,000 times faster than written content. Therefore, to increase engagement on Facebook, ensure you use high-quality imagery in your posts. Facebook also ranks videos highly in its newsfeed, so consider including video content in your marketing strategy.
Use a CTA for your posts
Always include a short, snappy, and specific call-to-action that leads to your small business’s webpage.
Use Ad Targeting tools
Customizing your audience is an effective way of making your budget go further. By targeting specific individuals, with interests similar to your small business's offerings, you are more likely to get successful conversions.
Use Posts Feed Optimization
Facebook records each time a user reacts to your content. You can use this data as guidance to improve performance in future posts and thus increase consumer engagement.
Engage proactively with your audience
Communication with your audience needs to be frequent, relevant, and easily digestible. You can schedule your posts regularly and actively reply to comments and messages.
Post at the best time on Facebook
A 2022 Buffer study found that 1 pm to 3 pm midweek is the best time to post on Facebook. However, we recommend researching peak times for your target audience and posting within this time bracket to maximize reach potential.
Schedule your Facebook content
This is a simple way to organize and deliver your content at peak times or around annual milestones ahead of time.
Consider starting a Facebook group
It can help to foster a community feel online and create a space for your small business’s consumers to interact with your brand and each other.
If you found this article on how to market small businesses on Facebook useful, visit our Concentrador de recursos para negocios pequeños to read timely tips, helpful resources, and get expert advice to grow your small business.