Nearly 2 billion people actively use Facebook every month despite the scandals going back to 2016. It is still the biggest social media platform by far. Small business owners who use Facebook business pages are able to promote their businesses in powerful ways, it's an absolute staple for businesses and community organizations.
“Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.”
- Mark Zuckerberg
So many businesses get caught up chasing metrics like followers and likes when they should be formulating specific goals to address the biggest needs. Here are some common goals for businesses and how an effective Facebook strategy can help:
Increase Quality Sales – Improving the quality of sales starts with better targeting. A well-planned strategy will help you identify and reach your target audience more efficiently. Work on what you know and use Facebook as a source to improve your reach.
Brand Enhancement – Facebook can be used to nurture customers, improve awareness and provide more resources to your audience. Make Facebook the go-to place for relevant and valuable information.
Industry Updates – Are your competitors always one step ahead? Track, listen and report on all social conversations revolving around you, competitors, or the industry. Listening increases your communication effectiveness.
Efficient Recruiting – Social recruiting is not easy, but it’s growing rapidly in popularity. Social is a great source for increasing recruiting efforts or reaching top talent faster. This gives you an in-depth look at how potential talent acts in everyday life, how they portray themselves and you can gauge if there’s an ideal/natural fit for your business.
Smart Growth – Limiting spend and increasing acquisition are parts of building a successful business. Facebook can really help out in these areas whether it’s through ad spend, increased targeting, or social selling.
Choose & Automate Your Facebook Content
We all know by now CONTENT IS KING! It’s all about the quality of content and what your audience comes to expect from your brand. We’ve all been spammed out by businesses, we can all agree that’s one of the most annoying things a brand can do – it’s also backed by statistics that it just is effective. Your content should be compelling, entertaining or helpful – highlight values, identify with your audience, and create a space that’s unique!
Types of Facebook Content
Status – The simplest form that is the most effective when used correctly. The new features really help that important message stand out, like larger text for shorter messages or adding a colored background.
Images – Post with images drive more engagement. Put the effort in high-quality photos to stand out. Use images to highlight your brand's creative side.
Videos – Video is in high demand; however, only a small number of videos are watched with sound. Videos these days should always have captions, provide value and catch attention.
Links – Perfect for sharing industry news or sharing your own blog content. Share your most engaging content or the most relevant for your audience.
Facebook/Instagram Live – In the moment content is growing in popularity. Brands can now give live sneak peeks into the industry, product launches, and behind the scenes footage.
Why automate Facebook posts?
Stay consistent – Sometimes posting falls to the bottom of the to-do list, running a business is difficult. Automation is the ticket to consistency without spending time logged into Facebook.
Reach multiple time zones – If you’re an E-commerce business, course creator, or blogger, then there’s a good chance you have audiences across the United States and the potential to reach across the world. If you only posted in the Eastern Time Zone, you could be missing your ideal customer who lives in Australia. Luckily, you can automate posts so that they reach your entire audience, even if the audience is awake while you are asleep!
More time to engage with your audience – Social media is all about being social. It’s a balance of sharing content and engaging with content. However, it’s tough for any small business owner to find time to create excellent content and engage with followers. Automating Facebook posts and scheduling social media content frees up your time so you can focus on engaging with your growing community.
You can automate Facebook posts on a third-party social media scheduling tool like Buffer. Social media scheduling will save you hours of time and keep your social media working for you while you work on other parts of your business.
Facebook Ad Strategy
Organic Facebook reach has dropped dramatically over the past few years and for good reason. Growing your audience and brand loyalty takes time to earn before it was easier to reach people that didn’t fit your target audience. Facebook took a page out of Google's book and created an algorithm (that’s always changing) to determine the authorities in their industry. Social media ads can grow your audience a lot faster, remember the term compound interest.
Brand Awareness
Facebook campaigns should focus on two things – Cost-Effective and Relevance.
Obviously staying within the budget is ideal, avoid overexposure or useless clicks. Ad spends can increase rapidly when your targeting isn’t formulated correctly. Build custom audiences and address customers that fit your content.
Brand Awareness impressions are the name of the game and are by far a cheaper option to get your brand out there effectively.
Creative Content
QUALITY ALWAYS WINS! Ad content should include:
Identity – Does it relate to your brand and effectively showcase your product/service?
Reward – What do your viewers get? A deal, promotion, offer code, or eBook?
Tone – Does content maintain tone across entire Facebook page or business?
Action – Content must drive action. A clear and precise call to action is best.
Do not let your content grow stale with your audience. Make sure you’re staying up to date and repurposing some of your best content every week or two. Old content can ruin your retargeting efforts, be careful and be attentive when remarketing.
Metrics For Insight
How do you actually know your social media marketing is working? How do you know what you need to change or improve? The best way to identify this is to use metrics. You still need to know what to measure, here are a few metrics what will improve your marketing efforts.
Click-through Rate – If more traffic is the goal this is essential. Track CTR and see where you can improve.
Impressions – Trouble with visibility? Revisit your best images or content and determine what will drive more views.
Cost to acquire – If the goal is to limit spend and budget effectively, track CPA and set weekly or monthly goals.
Targeting
Facebook has TONS of consumer data, so much so they were selling this information because it was that valuable but we won't get into that. Getting married soon? Taking medication for migraines? Love new workouts? Facebook knows! The point is you can utilize this data to bolster your business.
This gives advertisers the power to reach out beyond their own CRM databases and tap into insights obtained from shopper loyalty programs of all kinds and matched to individual user profiles. Facebook advertisers can use this data to target audience segments by thousands of different purchasing behaviors.
The powerful thing about Facebook Business Manager is your ability to layer targeting options, gradually making your audience more specific. You can use combinations of behaviors, demographics, and geolocation data to reduce your audience to as little as one person. The ability to match ad creative and offers to smaller audiences created using combinations of data is a serious advantage.
Create personas for your ideal customers – who are they? Where do they live? What do they do for work and what do they do after work? What traits and characteristics might they have, and how do those align with the many targeting parameters listed above?
Identifying just who it is you want to reach will guide you to the most effective Facebook ad targeting tools and options to get in front of them.
The options are truly limitless, schedule a FREE Social Media Consultation today!
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