Facebook has been above all competition for years when it comes to social networks. Even though a few platforms have been catching up and gaining more users and popularity, Facebook still is the leading social networking platform, with over 60% of Internet users being active on it.
Needless to say, having a presence on Facebook is crucial for your business, whether it services its customers exclusively online or mainly from a brick-and-mortar location. In the following article, we will go through the marketing uses of Facebook and how to make the most of it for your business.
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What Is Facebook Marketing?
Advertising on Facebook came naturally as the platform settled as the number one social media platform. If a few years back, marketing actions were quite simplistic on Facebook, nowadays it gives businesses a plenitude of tools and channels to deliver their messages to their target audience.
Marketers and business owners can now use Facebook as a highly effective way of publishing paid ads, as well as a means of reaching organic traffic from a truly vast Facebook audience. We will go through the types of ads and marketing strategies you can use on Facebook later in the article.
Should Your Business Be on Facebook?
If you are a business owner who is still unsure whether Facebook marketing is good for their business or not, statistics regarding its reach and conversion rates should convince you. In short, the answer is: Yes!
Let’s take a look at the main benefits Facebook marketing has for businesses:
● It can reach people across the globe;
● It can be highly targeted geographically, allowing you to use focused marketing campaigns for your local business;
● It offers the data you need to create targeted ads, based on demographics and behaviour trends (preferences, likes, search history, etc.)
● It integrates perfectly with other marketing channels, exponentially increasing its outreach;
● Your target customers are most likely active Facebook users.
As you can see, Facebook can serve any type of business when it comes to marketing tools and strategies. This is the reason why more than 80 million businesses across the globe have a Facebook business page.
A Facebook page is not only a place where you can share your contact information and do a presentation of your business. It should be used to also keep in touch with your audience closely, regularly, and with a focus on a long-term relationship.
Let’s see next how you can create a Facebook page and make the most out of it for your marketing purposes.
Creating and Using a Facebook Business Page
Creating a Facebook page is easy and free. Any business should have one, as it’s a highly affordable way of reaching thousands of people through the platform. For other Facebook marketing applications, Facebook does charge money, but it’s still one of the most cost-effective marketing platforms out there, as long as you persevere in using it.
How to Create a Facebook Business Page
To start, you need to have your own personal profile on Facebook. Thanks to complex privacy settings, you don’t need to worry about your personal information being public. Your business page will not show in any way that your personal profile is linked to it.
When creating your page, you will need to select the most accurate category for your business. This will help Facebook display your page to potential customers. The process is really intuitive, as Facebook will guide your every step. You are also allowed to get back to certain fields later if you aren’t ready to fill them up just yet.
A really nice feature on Facebook is that you can create a custom page for your business to better represent your brand and your message. A custom page stands out amongst standard pages and increases engagement. It does require some HTML knowledge or using third-party apps, but a professional marketer can help you through it.
How to Use a Facebook Business Page for Marketing
Once your page is created and includes all the information needed about your business and brand, it’s time to share content and interact with your audience.
Publishing content on a regular basis is one of the main rules of managing a Facebook business profile. Your content doesn’t have to be centered around your product or services. In fact, keeping your promotional posts to less than a third of your content is beneficial, as long as most of your posts are related to your industry, the interests of your audience, or general information about the type of product/service you are offering.
Keep your posts interesting and original, and don’t shy away from experimenting with video content, stories, slideshows, contests, giveaways, etc. Keep an eye on what your competitors’ pages are sharing and draw some inspiration from them.
The content on your Facebook business page is meant to draw organic traffic, and it gives you a chance to show how great you are at customer care. Next, let’s look into paid advertising on Facebook, and how to make the most out of your social media marketing budget.
Types of Ads on Facebook
A big part of using Facebook as a marketing channel is through paid ads. Once you have established constant organic traffic through your business page activity, it’s a good idea to create some Facebook Ads.
Two of the main benefits of paid advertising on Facebook are: highly targeted ads, and being able to set any budget you want.
Here are the types of ads you can create on Facebook:
Lead ads
Facebook allows you to publish ads that include a call to action buttons (share, like, sign up, learn more, etc.) so that users don’t have to leave the Facebook app to see your promotions.
Video ads
You probably know already that video content is king at this moment. Creating video content can really boost your conversion rates when it comes to Facebook ads. Facebook has enriched the video experience a lot in the past years, allowing advertisers to display video content in the most engaging way.
Carousel ads
For eCommerce businesses, carousel ads are perfect for displaying a selection of up to 10 images, together with their own title, description, and link.
Boosted page posts
If you need to highlight a particularly relevant post on your Facebook business page, you can easily boost it and reach more users this way
Link ads
They are perfect for getting more visits to a landing page on your website, as the whole ad is a big, clickable button.
Canvas ads
As a Facebook advertiser, you need to know by now that a very big part of your audience will use a mobile device to go through Facebook content. Canvas ads are created specifically for this type of browsing, and they are optimised to provide the best possible user experience.
Dynamic ads
You can let Facebook automatically promote certain products in your portfolio, based on the preferences and behaviors of the target audience
Collection ads
Another splendid type of ad for e-commerce businesses, collection ads redirect users who click your ad to an optimised view of entire collections, without leaving the app at all.
Targeting your audiences plays a very big role in the success of your ads campaigns, as your budget can go down the drain if you are reaching the wrong people. Facebook gives you the opportunity to narrow down your audience based on demographics, interests, similar pages they like, searches they perform, etc. This way, when your ads appear in their news feed, they will feel relevant and aligned with the type of Facebook posts they appreciate.
As you can see, there is plenty to discover when it comes to Facebook ads, as the social media giant offers opportunities for any type of business out there.
Facebook Groups – How to Use Them for Social Media Marketing
Groups on Facebook are one of the best ways users can engage and connect through common ideas, knowledge, preferences, and interests. Using Facebook groups for business is a clever way of building strong relationships with your fans and potential customers.
In marketing, being connected to your industry and your peers is part of the game. By being present on Facebook groups or creating your own group, you have a fantastic chance of reaching your fans, providing knowledge about your products and services, offering discounts and special promotions for the group members, and organising ad-hoc FAQs on a regular basis.
Building a community around your brand is what Facebook advertising is best at. Knowing how to use the tools provided by the giant social media network is a strong asset for any business.
Need Help With Your Facebook Ads?
We at Australian Internet Advertising are proud to contribute to our clients’ success stories. And we are pro Facebook advertisers. If you need assistance setting-up your Facebook advertising campaigns, you have come to the right place.
We will provide publishing schedules, user-friendly reports based on Facebook insights, content ideas, and countless other services that will make you successfully use Facebook as your advertising channel.
