Various social media platforms have experienced ups and downs over the years, but Facebook has remained a powerhouse. Facebook is by far the most popular social media network, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users.
This means it’s an excellent location for your company to have a presence. However, you must understand how to develop a successful Facebook marketing strategy.
In this article, we’ll discuss various Facebook marketing tactics you should use as part of your overall social media strategy, as well as how to get started.
What exactly is Facebook marketing?
The act of promoting a business and its products/services on Facebook through a business page is known as Facebook marketing. Brands can create a second website of sorts by fully optimising their business page, even making sales directly on Facebook.
While newer platforms such as Instagram and TikTok increase overall viral potential, Facebook remains a good home base for many businesses—plus, its ad platform is one of the most sophisticated in its class. You don’t want to sleep on Facebook with the ability to create various Facebook post types (i.e., photos, carousels, videos, links), create a shop, and advertise products and services directly to your target audience.
Creating a Facebook business page is easy:
Head to Facebook.com and log into your personal account
Click the menu icon in the top navigation bar
Click Page under the Create menu
Input your business name and information
Brand the Page with your logo, a cover photo and other pertinent information
How to Plan a Facebook Marketing Campaign?
Once you’ve created your Facebook business page, you should begin marketing it to increase the number of people who like the page as well as the number of people who see and interact with the content on your page. Consistently creating content that engages your audience is essential, as are the top 6 tactics to incorporate into your strategy.
1. Establish objectives for your Facebook marketing.
Setting the right goals is the first step in any marketing strategy. This roadmap will serve as a vital reference to ensure the success of your Facebook strategy. However, before you set goals, you should conduct some preliminary research to ensure that your plan is feasible on the platform.
According to the 2021 Sprout Social Index, marketers and consumers continue to favour Facebook as their primary social platform for connecting with their target audience.
Currently, 83% of marketers use Facebook, and 60% of consumers want brands to use Facebook more.
If you don’t already have Facebook goals, these survey results are a great place to start. Furthermore, if your company has already established broad objectives, consider how these intersect with your own plans for Facebook marketing.
Here are some common yearly business goals and how an effective Facebook strategy can help you achieve them:
More efficient recruiting: No one said social recruiting was easy, but it’s gaining traction. Social media can be a great way to boost recruiting efforts and reach top talent more quickly. Working your employees’ social networks to increase their social reach increases your chances of hiring higher-quality employees.
Smarter expansion: Reducing churn, limiting spend, and increasing acquisition are all important aspects of running a successful business, and Facebook can help you with all of them. Addressing your Facebook marketing strategy can help you get closer to these goals, whether through ad spend, increased targeting, or more social selling.
Tracking progress: Of course, making sure you’re on track to meet these objectives is critical, and with a tool like Sprout, you can easily keep track of all your Facebook reporting, as shown in the image below.
2. Understand your Facebook audience.
Understanding who is on Facebook and what your current audience breakdown looks like will help you decide which Facebook marketing strategies to use and how to use them.
Sprout Social’s in-depth look at social media demographics is a great place to start to get a sense of who is using the platform and how.
After you’ve done your research, spend some time familiarising yourself with your own Facebook demographics using either Facebook Page Insights or a tool like Sprout.
Post a variety of content to your Facebook feed.
We briefly discussed the various post types available on Facebook. To ensure an engaging feed with exciting content, publish a diverse range of content. This way, your feed will be fun and interesting to follow rather than boring and predictable.
- Allow your followers to send you direct messages via WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
- Tag products in your photos so that followers can buy them right away.
- Add fundraisers to help local charity organisations.
- To engage your audience, create humorous content by attaching GIFs.
- There are many different ways to create a solid mix of content for your Facebook followers—make sure you have a full editorial calendar in place so you can balance the types of content you create.
3. When are your followers most active?
Facebook remains one of the most challenging social networks to use for organic content. Again, algorithms make it difficult for businesses to find the best posting times. Our guide on the best times to post on Facebook, on the other hand, outlines the do’s and don’ts of posting on Facebook:
4. Plan out your Facebook content.
The creation and curation of content are critical components of any social media strategy. You have far more options for the types of posts you can use on Facebook. This includes everything from Stories to Status updates to Group posts.
With the selection of options comes the specific types of content your audience is interested in, which should also be considered when evaluating the Facebook marketing techniques that will work best for you. Our 2018 Index investigated the types of posts that consumers prefer from brands. Thirty percent want links to more information, and 18% want more images. With 17% of those polled, videos came in third place.
5.Engage proactively with your audience
They, like most social media channels, are designed as networks for people to converse, discuss, and share content. As a brand, you must remember the fundamental concept of what constitutes a social media network. That means that conversation and engagement should never be neglected.
Instead, strive to create a community for your target audience. Facebook is an excellent platform for holding industry chats or discussions, whether with a different audience or with your own customers. While Twitter is frequently lauded as the social customer service mecca, don’t overlook Facebook.
You can drive Facebook engagement by simply asking people to engage in the first place. You can’t, however, sit back and wait for your followers to come to you.
6. Use Messenger to build customer relationships.
Facebook Messenger can assist you in developing relationships, increasing sales, and even improving customer service. One of the many types of media you can include in a Facebook post is a button that allows people to message you directly. You can also use the CTA button at the top of your business page to send a message to your audience.
7. Determine your Facebook ads strategy
Whether you’re just starting out on Facebook or you’ve been on it for a while, it’s difficult to escape the need to pay for brand exposure. Our comprehensive guide to creating your Facebook advertising strategy is a great place to start learning more about Facebook ads.
However, growing your audience and brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight. You have to earn it.
But there is one shortcut to get there a bit faster–social media advertising. Specifically on Facebook, there are more than four million advertisers with just an average click-through rate of 9%. Advertising on Facebook is simpler, but not easier. You still have to effectively build your brand and showcase it perfectly with ads.