Facebook Marketing is booming in a big way.
It is very rare for a Facebook user to go by without scrolling through Facebook feeds every day. According to Digital Marketing Research, 66% of Facebook users log in on their smartphones or desktop daily. With over 1.785 billion active Facebook users, marketers need to get smarter to take advantage of Facebook Marketing Ideas to grow their audience and small or mid-sized business.
Facebook marketing can be tricky for a small-sized business, but nothing is impossible!
Smart and easy Facebook marketing may alone take your business to the next level.
So, before we dive deep into the ocean of success strategies let’s understand two main WH questions related to Facebook Marketing – What and Why
What is Facebook marketing for small businesses?
Facebook is a social media platform that allows small businesses to market their services and products to their users on Facebook. Facebook marketing can be done through organic strategies (Free strategies) and targeted strategies (paid strategies).
Firstly, Facebook’s marketing plan follows organic strategies to develop the user base and brand value of the company without any investment. Once a considerable amount of user base is reached, the second step is to utilize paid Facebook marketing strategies such as targeted ads.
Why use Facebook marketing for small businesses?
Facebook Marketing is an effective tool to improve your customers and businesses exponentially. Facebook marketing provides an opening for companies to interact with users/customers. People can learn more about the products, services, and organizations on social media platforms. Facebook is the biggest social networking platform which provides the opportunity for businesses to build and maintain relations with the users.
So, it is important to “Make connections that matter”
To help you out in the crowded social media market, I’ve put together a comprehensive list of Facebook marketing ideas as given below.
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- Common Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses.
- Free Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses.
- Paid Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses.
Common Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
1. Create and optimize your company page – If you are looking forward to building up a social media presence on Facebook then there’s some groundwork to do. You need to create and optimize your Facebook page to translate your Facebook likes into actual clicks and conversions.
2. Work on Page Details – Particularly in the world of business appearance can speak volumes, that is why it is important to pay attention to the UI (User Interface) of your company page.
3. Add a profile picture with your brand logo – An updated, professional and consistent profile picture that represents your brand name looks more organized. It develops the right impression on your audience.
4. Enable custom URL or “Username” – Username helps people to find and remember your page. When you create a username for your company, it appears in a customized web address for your Facebook page. It helps your page to rank higher and also helps people to find your page easily with that username.
5. Always add a “Description” – Never leave the company about us section blank. Use all the 250 characters to write about your company. Original content helps to build page rank.
6. Add your website – A website is self-explanatory. It helps you to build your company’s reputation.
7. Create a Community business page and Facebook group – The main idea behind creating a Facebook community page and group is to provide like-minded people with a platform for live conversations, discussions, and sharing information based on their interests.
For example, Users interested in Tour and Travel’s topic would be very much interested to join a Tours and Travels Facebook community or a group rather than a community or a group discussing Facebook Marketing Strategies.
Anybody can join, post, invite new members, hold discussions, and share information on the group.
- Running a contest or a giveaway with a tempting offer helps you increase engagement rates and grow audiences in your group.
- Target specific audiences on Facebook – Selecting audiences based on what and where you are selling your products can be an impressive strategy in Facebook marketing for small businesses. If your audience selection is broad it requires a large budget. ALERT! If you go too specific this strategy can backfire on you. Let’s say, for example, if you are promoting a childcare brand, you might first want to check the family status of Facebook audiences. Small businesses on a budget can use smart ideas to cut costs and still reach their target audiences and build the business.
Free Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
Today, the Facebook marketing channel is a platform where you have to pay to play. Small Businesses on a low budget are still using Facebook to market.
Does it work? The answer is YES!
You can still leverage Facebook to promote your business for FREE! FREE! FREE!
Here are some free Facebook marketing ideas that support small business owners to “breathe a sigh of relief”.
1. Provide consistent and quality posts with user intent – According to studies, you should post the finest content to your Facebook page 2-3 times a week.
“Consistency and quality are the mantras for success in social media” Facebook page posting every 30 minutes is a thing of the past. It doesn’t work for Small or average businesses. If are you posting too often you may experience a drop-in engagement rate. Think logically and always post when your audience is online and most interactive. For example, if you are a local business in India, you should focus on the times when people in India are awake.
2. Provide solution-based primary text – Solution-based approach is a strategy for transforming business objectives and goals into a plan. How does a content strategy align with a small business objective?
The answer is simple, understand the search intent of users, if you fail to persuade your audience then you are missing out!
Your audience wants
To learn something new
To find solutions to their problems
To do better work
To reach their goals
Focus on these four pointers to reach your business objectives.
3. Use of the call to action button – The call to action (CTA) button plays important role in boosting your conversion rate. It is a clickable element on a website, email, blog post, or Facebook page that appeals to users and redirects visitors to an offer. You might have seen a lot of different call-to-action buttons about anywhere on a website. Here are some most commonly used CTA buttons:
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- Call Now
- Add to Cart
- Download Now
- Read More
- Sign up
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Take your time to develop your button. Quality CTA buttons help to increase the conversion rate and sales.
4. Post consistent blog posts on Facebook -“Consistency and content are the keys to growth in social media”.
Post content that your followers want to read. Understand how to often post, what to post, when to post & what type of content to post. Creating a posting schedule can help you improve your engagement rate.
5. Use of Hashtags in Facebook – Facebook’s search is not as good as Google’s search, but it still has the potential to find you there. A hashtag (#) helps your followers to find a post relevant to their interest and interact with other users who share the same interest by joining the discussion on Facebook groups or communities.
For example, let’s take #FacebookMarketingPlan. Using that hashtag in your Facebook posts can land new people on your page who are searching for the same hashtag in your Facebook search.
6. Market your services – On social media platforms like Facebook, you might want to post the finest content so that it is good enough to impress your audience and build your service-based Business.
Never miss a chance when you get to market your services. You can also add a service section on your Facebook page.
7. Offer discounts – Offering discounts is one of the easiest marketing tools to grow your business on social media. Offers and discounts are attractive to customers.
It not only helps you to bring new clients but also helps to bring back previous customers. Especially on social media, word-of-mouth traffic can increase your sales and business exponentially.
Paid Facebook Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
Facebook’s paid ads are a useful marketing tool that allows businesses to Facebook’s paid campaigns. Facebook’s active user count in the year 2022 is over 6+ billion, with India having a number (of 251 million) Facebook users. So, using Facebook marketing packages you can reach half of the world’s population.
1. Set priorities and business goals – This is one of the fundamental parts of a Business plan. Check where is your business now … and where you want to take it. A clear vision can help you to prioritize time to focus on your plan promotion budget and achieve your business objective.
2. Create advertising strategies – Advertising is persuasion! Advertisements are used to increase awareness about your newly launched company and persuade target customers to buy your product or services and you’re your business.
3. Decide your Audience – Facebook automatically shows your ads to the audience who are most likely to find your ads relevant. You can further target your audiences with 3 audience selection tools.
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- Core audiences are based on criteria such as age, location, and interests.
- Custom audiences are people who engaged with your business either online or offline.
- Lookalike audiences are people with similar interests.
4. Set Facebook ads budget – Pay to promote only your best content. Spend a low budget on your Facebook ads and prevent the risk of your marketing budget vanishing into thin air without even achieving your conversions.
Don’t let your Superstar content fade away, boosted content will still resonate with a larger audience if it did well earlier.
Caution! “go-easy on your pocket”
5. Market Facebook event – During occasions or even as a regular part of your Facebook marketing strategy, you can host an event to connect with your customers to give them an unforgettable experience. Hosting an event means an investment of time, effort, and money.
Let’s understand how to get started, it is a 6 steps plan:
Step 1. Create an event on your Facebook business page
Step 2. Choose a video or image
Step 3. Name your event
Step 4. Fill in all details (time, location, date, description)
Step 5. Choose the Frequency of the event
Step 6. Promote your event organically
Tips:
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- Add co-hosts to increase distribution and response rate
- Boost that event on Facebook Business Group
- Turn events into an ad that converts
6. A/B testing – The A/B test is a process of comparing two different campaigns to check which one has the better This technique is used to find out which ads design (ad headline, body copy, CTA button ) performs well to attract your target audience to boost conversion rates on a landing page.
7. Track performance metrics – A Small business owner might want to keep an eye on the performance of the business which includes sales, customer satisfaction, warehouse efficiency, and so on.
Data which includes activities, employee behavior, and productivity is used to track processes within the business by the employer to track performance metrics. It provides valuable information to plan strategies, grow business and increase profits.
Performance metrics are divided into four groups:
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- Business Performance – It provides access to how your business is performing in the Sales, marketing department, and profitability.
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- Sales performance – It provides access to measure performance in the sales department. It measures total revenue and customer reach.
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- Project management– It measures the profitability of various projects and provides insight into how to make projects even more efficient.
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- Employee performance- It is obvious that if your employees are performing as per the standards set, then your business will grow; but if their performance is poor, then your business might suffer.
It is important to track your employee’s performance by the quality, efficiency, and productivity of their work.
A Business that performs well, is a business that grows well
Whew!
I know, I know: there’s still so much to learn when it comes to Facebook marketing. But the good news is you have a fair amount of knowledge to get started now.
So, look no further. Start here, start now.