While some marketers and businesses are simply reacting to social media, there are smarter marketers who are actually proactively using social media channels to drive their business. Of the many channels available, Facebook has proven to be a splendid platform for businesses of all sizes to market their brand and offerings as well as reach out to fans globally and generate new leads. However, it takes more than setting up a Facebook page for your company to carry out a successful marketing campaign on the said channel.
Here are ten ways that can help you perfect Facebook marketing.
1) Use Facebook Ads
It is true that any business or company can host their brand on Facebook. However, the real challenge lies in being able to effectively advertise on Facebook. Building, designing and carrying out a Facebook Ads campaign is a great way to reach out to your audience and promote brand awareness. Since Facebook revamped its ad structure recently, now is an even better time to test Facebook Ads. The targeting capabilities of this tool are immensely robust as they tend to blend into the users’ newsfeed without compromising their experience.
Here are a few tips on Facebook advertising that might help you create an impressive and compelling ad campaign:
- Activate the ‘Audience Insights’ Feature: Activating Audience Insights on Facebook can do incredible things to your ad campaign. It allows businesses to get comprehensive insights on their customers and targeted audience before running an ad campaign and potentially risking wasting their advertisement budget. Therefore, instead of taking a shot in the dark, you can select metrics, such as demographics, page likes, location, activity, and purchases. Make sure to select those which effectively help you target your audience and gain valuable data without having to incur additional costs.
- Create Separate Ads for Different Audience: Another thing you should consider when planning to launch your Facebook Ads campaign is to create more than one ad so that you can cater to your audience based on the unique characteristics they share.
- Do Not Forget to Use the ‘Custom Audience’ and ‘Lookalike Audience’ Features: The Custom Audience feature on Facebook allows you to connect with people with whom you already share a strong relationship with. This can be done by adding your clients’ email addresses or even importing contacts from Google+, saving you the time and money that you would have otherwise spent trying to build up a customer base on Facebook from scratch. The Lookalike Audience feature further lets you widen your customer base while keeping it relatable by allowing you to target people who share similar characteristics with another well-known audience segment.
Following these three tips will save a lot of your time and money while allowing you to focus your attention on making a quality advert. However, keep your eyes and ears open for any new developments in the Facebook Ads too because the social network keeps on updating its features.
2) Get in Your Fans’ Newsfeed
Over the past couple of years, Facebook usage has skyrocketed. One of the causes of this trend is the mainstream usage of smartphones and tablets through which a majority of Facebook users – 60% to be specific – are accessing the site. What does this have to do with getting into fans’ newsfeed, you ask? Because Facebook mobile does nor show the right hand column, your ads placed there would be utterly useless. As such, your only option is to get your ads in your fans’ newsfeed.
To get your Facebook Ads – Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads, Page Like Ads – into fans’ newsfeeds, you need to install tools like Power Editor which allow you to choose where you want your ads to go on – your fans’ desktop newsfeeds, mobile newsfeeds or even both. The latter is the ideal solution if you need maximum exposure.
Now, Facebook users –even though they are already fans of your page – may not always get to see your page’s updates. This is because of Facebook algorithm changes which prioritize the user’s newsfeed based on their interactions on Facebook. Unfortunately, there is no other way around this issue other than to you get your fans and audience to engage with you. However, it is hard to engage with fans when your posts are not appearing on their news feed in the first place. To help you out of this predicament, simply follow the steps below:
- First things first, post updates regularly. Our advice? Post at least once every day.
- Ask for your audience’s input – their opinions, preferences, etc. Your fans will definitely respond to such updates.
- Cross promote your Facebook page across other social networks. Post a question on Facebook and ask your fans to use your desired Twitter hashtag to participate. This sure will drum up engagement.
3) Share Great and Exclusive Content
Pardon the cliché, but content is king! Recycled or stale content is a big NO NO! As Facebook algorithms have become smarter , they have mastered the art of weeding out content that they deem low quality. Hence, you should opt for quality content that is both great and exclusive if you wish to widen your fan base.
Keep in mind that your product is unique. Irrespective of your competitors, your product has its own USP which no one else can claim. Therefore, you should make the most of it by highlighting these special features in a blog post and share its link on your Facebook page. You could also post interesting images of your products where you highlight its uniqueness and what it has to offer. To make your Facebook fans feel special, post exclusive content for them which is not available elsewhere on other social channels. All in all, you need to craft your own original, high-quality content.
4) Cross Promote your Facebook Page Across Other Social Networks
Your Facebook marketing strategy will not be the raging success you expect it to be if it does not collaborate with the rest of the social networks included in your overall marketing strategy. As your competitors and other brands from different industries are also using this network, your posts could easily get buried and barely show on users’ newsfeeds. Cross promoting your fan page activity across other social channels ensures that your content does not go unnoticed. You can do so by crafting content that is not Facebook-specific and can easily be shared on other channels. No need to fret; creating an all-rounder content is not as difficult as it may sound. A striking image/post with a dose of humor added with something users find informative will be a winner all the way.
5) Tag Other Fan Pages
For your marketing campaign to be successful on Facebook, you need to have a large fan following. If you just set up your company page or have just a handful of followers, you should tag other fan pages with MANY more follower in your posts. As long as they are relevant entities, there is no harm done. In fact, expect better results as you reach new fans. For instance, you could tag a famous football player during a Super Bowl game and somehow link your post back to your brand.
6) Focus on Visuals
Fans have only a few seconds to spare as they skim through their timeline. Therefore, you need to make the most out of those precious seconds by captivating their attention before they move on to the next post. Adding visual elements is the best way to capture people’s attention and get some sort of a reaction out of them. If this intrigues you, here are a few ways you can use visuals to charm your audience:
- Cover Photos: As the ultimate free advertising feature on Facebook, Cover Photos can do wonders for your Facebook marketing. It can feature anything, whether it is a new deal, product, or user generated content.
- Featured Photos: A relatively new feature on Facebook, Featured Photos enables you to share five of your best and absolute favorite photos with fans. Just make sure that these photos paint the personality of your brand.
- Videos: As one of the largest video hosting website, Facebook is quickly becoming THE platform for video marketing. Because they tend to play automatically (with the audio off, mind you) it is a great way to pique the curiosity of your audience.
7) Time Your Facebook Posts Strategically
Timing is everything; the adage fits Facebook marketing so well. There are no specific timings, though, as it varies from audience to audience. What you need to do is study your targeted audience and determine their personas (e.g. outgoing teenagers or bachelors) to determine their availability and post accordingly for maximum exposure. For instance, you will be wasting your time and marketing funds by posting late night updates to the moms with little kids.
Now you must be wondering about how to discover the right time for your posts. Well, the easiest way around this is to test, test, and test some more. Deliberately post on different times and pay attention to the engagement rates. This will help you adjust your future posts. Once you have worked out the best time to post your content, you simply need to schedule your posts through Facebook’s settings. Also, familiarize yourselves with tools like Hootsuite which allow you to schedule all your social media posts.
8) Encourage and Promote User Generated Content
People simply love to talk about themselves and share their opinions. You can tap into this preference by encouraging users to participate in generating content. Not only will it boost engagement, but sharing content created by fans gives them a feeling of belonging, builds a sense of community among them, and makes them feel relevant and valued. One way to promote user generated content is to ask your followers to come up with an exciting caption for a picture. Use your own creativity and come up with more ideas to get your users involved.
9) Give Good Customer Service
For any business to grow and succeed, it should be able to provide excellent customer service. This is what you should adhere to on Facebook as well. Now this does not mean that you have to make Facebook your central source for support. However, because countless people in today’s age use Facebook, it is only logical that you take advantage of this social network and go beyond marketing to respond to customer queries, interact with users, and answer their questions.
Not only is this good for your marketing campaign, but it also makes fans feel special. Remember: when responding to or interacting with users, tag their names in the comment stream to personalize your approach and also let them know that you have answered. Typically, people on social media expect you to reply within a few hours, so make sure that you designate someone for the sole purpose of monitoring your social media pages.
10) Measure Your Facebook Marketing
Once you have your Facebook marketing campaign all set and ready to run, your next task is to find the right tools that can effectively measure its success. You can assess where your campaign was a success and where it went wrong so that you can adjust your strategies and come up with an even better one next time. Here is what you need to make sense and keep track of when measuring Facebook marketing:
- Unique users, fans, etc.
- Conversions
- Clicks
- Activity
- Retention
- Loyalty
In order to create a killer Facebook marketing campaign, all you need is to understand the platform and make the most of the splendid features it has to offer. Using the above ten tips, you should be able to perfect your Facebook marketing in time. However, you can always consult with a professional (yes, us!) if you find any trouble in designing your Facebook marketing campaign.
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