A Deep Dive Into Facebook Marketing

Your Business and Social Media

If you’re a brand or small business hoping to blow your competition out of the water on social media, mastering all the tricks of Facebook marketing is a necessity. And more than the mastery, you need to be able to wield this tool effectively to be one of your strongest suits for your business. 

Why?

More than 17 million users utilise the platform every single month. That’s a lot of potential audience for your business! And we are very much interested in getting a slice of that pie. 

Because here’s the thing about Facebook-while you might think it’s just a place where your distant cousin can leave random comments on your posts, it serves a bigger purpose as a platform for audiences to connect with businesses both big and small. That’s great news for you if you have a business. 

So big is its influence that two-thirds of Facebook users report visiting a local business Facebook Pageat least once a week. This digital marketplace has high traffic and the businesses are looking for you in the same way that you’re looking for an opportunity! The possibilities are endless.

However,  if you want to tap into this audience, you can’t just rely on sheer luck and the raw numbers alone. All the legwork will still fall squarely on your shoulders. Facebook is just one of the many lucrative platforms that are backed by numbers. A more detailed Facebook marketing strategy is an essential part of your objectives. 

Facebook has been around for more than 15 years and thankfully the rapid transition and interest into a digital arena pushed this social network to innovate, expand, and finetune its features. This has made its reach a lot stronger and bigger than its predecessors. 

A lot has changed since Facebook first entered the marketing scene. Today, the world’s largest social network can do things many of us would never have dreamed a decade ago:

• Host 360-degree videos 
• Sell products via a chatbot in Messenger
• Serve as a top news source for two-thirds of the adult population to get their content on social media.

Ready to master the fine art of Facebook marketing? Let’s start with the basics first. 

What Is Facebook, Anyway?

The most popular social media platform to date with more 17 million active users in Australia as of March 2021, Facebook is a free social networking site that makes it easy for anyone with internet access to connect and share content with family and friends online. It was originally designed for college students in mind. 

Today, Facebook is Australia’s undisputed largest social network. 

This leads us to our next question, what Is Facebook Marketing?

Facebook Marketing

Facebook marketing is a catch-all term for the different ways you can market your business on Facebook. It includes the following features: 

• Facebook Ads
• Business Pages
• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook Groups

Keeping Everyone Connected: How does Facebook sharing work?

Facebook allows you to send messages and post status updates to keep in touch with friends and family. You can also share different types of content, like photos, videos, and links from other social media platforms. 

But sharing something on Facebook is a bit different from other types of online communication. Because unlike email or instant messaging, which are relatively private, the things you share on Facebook are more public, which means they’ll usually be seen by many other people that are part of your contact list when they scroll their feed.

However, Facebook offers privacy tools that help you calibrate who can see the specific things you share.  It’s important to understand that Facebook is designed to be more open and social than traditional communication tools. 

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Why Do Businesses Prefer Facebook?

As we’ve mentioned, Facebook is the leading social media platform with 1 in 2 Australians using Facebook on a daily basis. Numbers alone will let you imagine the immense possibility and positive social influence achievable through Facebook in terms of your peer effects, e-commerce business, referrals, customer relationships, reputation, brand awareness, and much more. And this is just on one social media platform!

It’s not only the sheer number of people but also the amount of our attention we willingly give up for the social media giant. Globally, the average user spends almost an hour per day on Facebook. 

The social media site, which is available in 37 different languages, includes public features such as:

• Marketplace – allows members to post, read and respond to classified ads.
• Groups – allows members who have common interests to find each other and interact.
• Events – allows members to publicize an event, invite guests, and track who plans to attend.
• Pages – allows members to create and promote a public page built around a specific topic.
• Presence technology – allows members to see which contacts are online and chat.

Let’s delve further into Facebook Marketing, shall we?

How Do You Grow Your Business: Getting The Most Out of Your Facebook Marketing:

Over 90 million businesses are already on Facebook. And many more are signing up. Around 1.88 billion users access Facebook at least once per day, and at least 17 percent of users join Facebook to connect with brands and products. 

In other words, businesses are actively looking for customers across this social media platform, so it makes sense to build your own presence on Facebook, as well! 

What’s more, 45% of internet users across the globe turn to social media platforms like Facebook to find out more about products they want to buy. You can help them discover your brand persona by advertising effectively on Facebook to the right audience.

So, how do you use Facebook to benefit your business? 

Fans receive content updates from the Page on their News Feed, while the business can raise brand awareness, deploy and track advertising, collect detailed audience insights, and chat with users who seek customer service.

For your business, Facebook Pages is your friend.  Facebook Pages are the gateway for businesses to market to this holy grail of users. A Facebook Page is a public presence similar to a personal profile but allows fans to “like” the business, brand, celebrity, cause, or organization. 

Dressing Up Your Page

• Profile Picture

  The first step to giving your Facebook Page an identity is adding a profile picture. This will serve as the primary visual asset for your Page, appearing in search results and alongside any of your content that shows up in a user’s News Feed.

  Most publishers suggest creating a photo that’s 180 x 180 pixels. However, if you don’t upload an image that is already square, you’ll be prompted to crop.

  You want to be perceived as authentic and credible and the profile picture is your first impression. Be sure to choose something that visually communicates an immediately recognizable asset of your business, like a logo. When you’re a public figure, it’s best to go with a headshot.

• Facebook Cover

  With a streamlined interface, another area where you can customise your brand asset and identity is the Facebook cover. Finding the right balance between a cover photo that is both visual and simple can be a challenge. Facebook Cover is the biggest area where you can let loose with your creativity. Treat it as prime advertising space with your brand’s graphic language with your product as the focal point. Often, the best cover photos are the ones that use negative space to their advantage. Most of all, remember to use high-resolution photos!

Types of Facebook Posts

When it comes to Facebook marketing, posting content is the core function of the job. Without a consistent flow of relevant content, your Page may just exist as a stagnant source of information for people who are already aware of your brand.

However, when you use Facebook to publish and share quality content, you extend your reach into the great big ocean of Facebook’s users. Users discover your content and may choose to like and follow your Page to continue the relationship. Over time, their trust in your brand increases, hopefully enough to lead to a conversion

• FB Images
• FB Links
• FB Videos
• FB Live
• FB Instant Articles
• FB Virtual Reality

Tips for successful marketing through Facebook

The numbers won’t come knocking at your door as soon as you make a Facebook Page for your business. We have to put in the hard work offline before we can even proceed to the “Publish” Button. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Clear Goals and Marketing Strategy

  We’ve discussed in aprevious article that a great social media strategy that will take your brand the farthest is when you have clear objectives for your business moving forward. Facebook is an essential part of your social media marketing. Regardless of what type of business you’re running, it’s important to develop both organic and paid social media strategies to promote your business on Facebook.

• Well-Defined Audience: Ask The Right Questions

  To engage your audience effectively, you’ve got to understand who you’re talking to first. Before you can be successful with any business endeavour, you need to do a complete target market analysis to determine your ideal customer. Creating a target market profile can often be the most overlooked and difficult aspect of Facebook marketing. Of course, it’s also important to understand the general demographics of Facebook users. Here are a few questions to ask to pinpoint your audience:

• What is your target demographic?

  These are characteristics of your target market profile that consider areas such as age group, gender, and marital status. They are important in understanding your audience.

• Where do they live?

  Determining where your target audience lives will help you with location-based marketing campaigns

• What industry do they work in?

  The industry your target market works in may be more relevant to some business models than others.

• What are their hobbies and interests?

  Your answers should include both their hobbies and how they spend their free time such as playing outdoor sports or spending time at home with their families. It gives more options for your business to understand your audience

• Who is important to them?

  Referrals and peer support are crucial factors in business growth, it’s important to know who your target market is close to. From learning that information, you are now able to strategize ways to reach them as well.

• What is the best way to reach your target market?

  This factors into how your target market profile likes to communicate. Once you determine that, you can take those findings and tailor them to your proposed marketing strategy.

• What challenges do they face?

  By understanding the challenges and pain points that your target market has, it will help shift the conversation from how you could help each other’s business.

• Can your service or product help them with these challenges?

  If you take the time to answer this question truthfully and effectively, it can help shape upcoming marketing strategies.

• What pushes them to make purchasing decisions?

  You may also need to consider what influences them to make the final step in the sales funnel, and what hindrances might be in their way.

• What are their biggest objections to using your service or product?

  This is the most crucial question you need to answer. Without answering this question, you will never get the conversions for your business that you want and expect. 

Once you have defined your target audience, your company will be able to create highly-marketed marketing campaigns. These will help increase brand awareness and encourage brand loyalty. Then, once you’ve got a sense of who actually is using the platform and how that connects to your target customer, you can take a look at Facebook Audience Insights. It’s not enough that you have the numbers and the data from these though, but through context, you can analyse how receptive your audience can be to your brand. 

Effective Facebook Marketing Campaigns

• Create A Brand Voice

  Your Brand Tone and Voice encompasses everything related to your communication assets from the words and language you use, to the personality and images your marketing assets aim to invoke. It plays an important role in making sure your content sounds like your brand makes a lasting impression on potential customers.

  The most enduring companies have a strong recognisable personality and clear sense of purpose. Their message is delivered consistently everywhere they have a presence with an established brand voice.

  Developing brand recognition and rapport with an audience requires consistency and repetition. If your personality or messaging appears to change frequently, it’s harder for audiences to know exactly what you’re all about. As a result, your efforts are likely to fall flat and lose out to a better-branded option whether or not they can match your product quality.

• Keep Your Posts Consistent and Relevant

  This is a key part of your social media marketing strategy. Posting regularly shows that you have dedicated content that builds brand awareness and recognition. Ultimately, the best way to promote your business on Facebook is to provide valuable content for your audience. Content is what attracts people to your social media profile and is the way you’ll build an audience online. You’ll want to include different types of content including images, videos, text, stories, or even polls.

• Promote Your Events

  Another way to promote your business on Facebook is to use the social media platform to promote your events both online and offline. If you’re a local business, this is incredibly important.

  Attracting people to an event can feel like an undertaking, and you need to use all the tools at your disposal to promote it. That’s why you should post your event on Facebook and also plan an ad campaign.

• Encourage Comments and Reply Quickly

  Social media is a great way for your customers to interact with you. However, if they choose to reach out to you on Facebook, you need to be prepared to answer their questions and address their requests as soon as possible. To do this, consider having a few people from your customer service team answer messages or comments from your customers.

• Nurture Your Connections

  This might seem like social media basics but never neglect your followers! It is important to interact with them. The best way to get engagement on social media is to make sure your posts show up for your followers. To do that, you need to create interaction. Make sure you answer questions, respond to comments, and participate in your online community.

• Celebrate Your Brand Organically!

  At the end of the day, people regard Facebook as a fun social space where they chat with their friends and family, check out photos and videos, and relax. You need to join conversations and become part of a community organically, rather than being a business ‘outsider’ who tries to push your agenda too aggressively. 

  Hard-sell tactics such as aggressively advertising slogans, posting repeatedly about a particular product or service multiple times a day, or providing lists of products without any context will result in other users ‘unfollowing’ you. They may even post negative comments about your business. Remember, we want to be seen as helpful and not irritating. 

  They are on Facebook to enjoy themselves, the business aspect is secondary. 

Utilising Facebook Ads

One of the best ways to promote your business with Facebook is to use Facebook ads. The social media giant has created one of the most popular ways to reach your audience with its advanced targeting options. To get started with ads, you can review this lesson from Facebook directly. Make sure that you review the types of Facebook ads and various bidding strategies to help you succeed.

Putting Your Strategies To Work!

In a massive sea of 17 million users, you must stand out if you want to employ successful Facebook marketingstrategies. This is where we come in!

You have to be bold. 

You have to be deliberate. 

Really, to master Facebook marketing, you have to be inbound.

Thankfully, Facebook’s tools cater to the digital marketer who wants to form an authentic relationship with their audience. With Facebook’s impressive collection of analytics tools that can rival Google’s, you can understand your target audience before you post. To answer the question, is Facebook Marketing worth it? Yes. 

With Facebook’s increasing number of multimedia content options, you can stretch the limits of your creativity. 

We are on it. 
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