If you are a business with an online presence, then knowing at least some basics about social media marketing is a must. While some niche parts of the pop culture might label Facebook as being “outdated,” the reality is that the social media giant is still leading the market, with about 2.4 billion people using it monthly.
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It’s 2020 and needless to say that your marketing plan should definitely include a Facebook marketing strategy or some improvements that will take your existing plan to match the latest requirements and make the best out of the social media platform we all love.
Here is how we would do it for a client who is new to Facebook marketing tools.
Starting Facebook Marketing
1. Defining the Target Audience
This might sound like a generalisation that any marketer repeats obsessively, but no marketing plan should start before you know who you are selling your products or services to. You might already have a definition of your target audience in the offline, but defining your audience for your Facebook plan will not be exactly the same, as people don’t behave the same way online as they do offline.
The tool that will prove to be the most valuable when defining your target audience is Facebook Audience Insights. You can use it once you have set up a Facebook business page, which can be done very simply. From this point on, the FAI dashboard is quite easy to use, and you will soon look at the data about the people connected to your page and potential customers from the rest of the Facebook users.
Defining your target audience means collecting relevant data for your business:
- Demographics such as age, location, education level, profession, etc.
- The challenges and needs they have;
- Their Facebook use behaviours: how often do they open it, what Facebook tools they use, what kind of content they prefer, etc.
Creating your Facebook marketing plan will be easier once you have your target customer in mind.
2. Setting Clear Goals your Facebook Marketing Plan
If you want to focus your creative and lucrative energy successfully, then you should create a plan of clear, measurable goals. Do you want to generate more leads? Drive sales to your website? Or do you want to deliver better customer services? Having a general direction in mind will not only help you set smaller, doable goals, but also give you an idea of what your brand voice will be.
3. Planning a Content Mix
If on your personal Facebook page you tend to post whatever thing you spontaneously came across, your business one should have well-thought content that you previously planned. Regarding the nature of your content, continuously and aggressively promoting your brand will not bring proportionally better results, on the contrary.
Keep the content relevant to your target audience and make a priority of informing and entertaining them instead of trying to persuade them to buy from you. For this, a good content mix is 80% information and entertainment and 20% brand promotion.
4. Optimising Your Facebook Page for Your Target Audience
With so many Facebook users logging in on a daily basis, you have a lot of opportunities to attract new customers. But getting to them is the real challenge. They are there, asking the same questions as your existing clients, meeting the same criteria, but they don’t know about you and you didn’t get to them so far.
The bread and butter of Facebook are reactions, comments and shares. Create your Facebook posts with this thought in mind, and make them mind-challenging, fun, interesting, new and provoking.
Besides the posts that will appear on your followers’ news feed, the elements on your Facebook page will also influence their behaviour. Choose your cover and profile photos carefully, include all the necessary information to the “about” tab and add a call to action button. Adding a Facebook widget to your web page, “Like” and “Share” buttons to your blog posts and other elements that link Facebook to your website are also helpful in bringing visitors.
Engagement also comes from interacting with your audience directly, and this must be one of the best things about using Facebook for your business. Make sure to reply to every message you receive, to react and reply to comments and be aware of the preferences of your audience.
5. Explore Other Facebook Tools You Can Include
The Facebook business platform is the main way of building a strong brand presence on the social media platform. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying out other tools from the Facebook suite.
- Facebook Messenger Bot
You might’ve come across this feature when visiting Facebook pages. A Facebook Messenger chat box will pop up, allowing you to interact with a representative of the brand and ask whatever questions you may have. For businesses that seem to get a lot of the same questions from their audience, a chatbot is the solution, and Facebook can help you set one. The Messenger bot will help the customer instantly, which gives you an advantage over other competitors.
- Facebook Groups
Forums have long been a favourite place for internet users to chat with their peers on a variety of subjects. Facebook groups give you the same experience, gathering together people with similar interests, problems and ideas. Being present on Facebook groups as a business can be a huge advantage, and you can even create a group of your own, whether it’s for your existing clients, or for anybody interested in your domain.
The possibilities are endless, and putting some effort into finding or creating the right groups and building a community around your brand can be a hugely successful long-term investment.
6. Creating Facebook Ads
Getting back to digital marketing classics: how to create Facebook ads that bring you more revenue. Having your own business page will offer you some insight into just how many people you reach with your content. Don’t be disappointed if the numbers are not as great as you expected: organic reach is not easy to obtain on a platform like Facebook, which prioritises content from users’ friends and acquaintances.
Creating an ad campaign is an efficient way of reaching more people that fit the characteristics of your target audience. Facebook gives you plenty of options when it comes to how your ads are going to look like, from text and image ads to video ads. It allows you to create a specific ads offer, promote it within a given budget and closely monitor it.
7. Measuring Your Performance
Monitoring your ad campaigns and measuring their performance is, of course, the natural continuation of the process. Be sure to keep an eye on every indicator that is impacted by your campaign, run A/B tests and split tests before launching a big ad campaign, and seek advice if you want a more detailed analysis of your marketing plan.
Over To You
If you want to find out more about how we at AIAg can use Facebook Advertising to increase your business revenues, don’t hesitate to contact us. You will find a team of savvy marketers eager to help you with any digital marketing needs or challenges. Get in touch with us now.
