Effective Facebook Marketing

Facebook is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. You’ve no doubt heard this already. It is, after all, the world’s largest social network, and one which enables heretofore unheard-of avenues of communication. Never before have businesses been able to reach their customer base so easily, and on so intimate a level. Of course, that in and of itself means you cannot go in without a clear marketing plan, one which needs to be flexible enough to evolve with your changing business needs. Whether you’re a big corporation or a small local business, Facebook is a powerful marketing tool – it’s a great space to keep customers informed, develop brand identity, and broaden your reach. Whether you’re new to Facebook for business or want to add something new to your current Facebook marketing plan, you’ve come to the right place. But I digress. Here are some great tips for effective Facebook marketing.

Business Page For Effective Facebook Marketing

If you have the time and skills to maintain it effectively, a Facebook page can be a great free marketing tool for businesses. These pages let businesses identify themselves – not just through listing product offerings and services, but also by sharing links, images, and posts on a customizable page to give a better sense of a business’s mission, personality and character. Your Facebook business page is a great spot to develop your brand identity and show you are more than a business. You’re human. Facebook is where you can get down to Earth – and don’t be afraid to be silly.

Ultimately, for effective facebook marketing on your business page, you should consider what your key audience would want to see. Share social media images, links, videos, anything, as long as it is at least loosely connected to the nature of your business and it seems like something your target audience would enjoy.

In addition to hilarious photos of dogs walking in glasses, a store specializing in eye wear might also post an article about the importance of protecting your eyes from UV rays, what kind of glasses are best for tough little kids, and what great event is happening in your community next weekend, etc. A nice mix of humor, educational resources, and posts about your store updates is ideal.

Facebook Advertising: Classic Ads

Facebook offers its own form of advertising with Facebook ads, which appear in the side columns of the Facebook site and are a huge part of effective Facebook marketing. These classic ads are referred to more specifically as “Marketplace Ads”. They include a headline with copy, an image, and a click-through link to either a Facebook page, a Facebook app, or an outside website. Implementing Facebook advertising into your Facebook marketing strategy is one possible technique for increasing likes or driving website clicks. Best of all, it’s an opportunity for you to specifically target people who are not already followers or “likers” of your page and share your information with them as well – possibly getting them to become “likers” of your page as well. Facebook ads DO cost money to run, but are very affordable. You decided on a total budget, choose your audience and decide how long you’d like the ad to run.

Facebook advertising features include:

Demographic targeting by Facebook user data on age, location, education, and interests.
The ability to set ad budgets.
Ad testing, in which multiple ad versions can be run simultaneously in order to compare ad designs and setup.
Built-in ad performance measurement tools.

Using Facebook advertising to increase your “Likes” can be very beneficial – once a user likes your page, they essentially become followers of your business page, and your posts will appear on their Facebook news feed. This results in more users interacting with you and your brand, forming relationships that may end up translating to conversions in the future. Using Facebook advertising to drive traffic to your website is also a terrific plan for effective Facebook marketing.

Facebook Boosted Posts

Facebook Boosted Posts let Facebook page owners pay a flat rate in order to have their individual Facebook posts reach a certain number of users, increasing a specific post’s reach and impressions. Some businesses have asked – why should I have to pay to ensure that my post is seen by users who are my followers? If a user has liked my page, they should always see my posts on their news feed, shouldn’t they? The answer to this question is no, because it assumes that users spend every waking moment of their life on Facebook’s news feed.

If your ‘liker’ happens to be looking at their news feed when you post your story, they are likely to see it, but even then there is no guarantee if their news feed is swamped by other posts. That’s where Promoted Posts comes in – it ups your chances of being seen on a user’s news feed. Facebook Promoted Posts are shown to existing fans, with an added option to reach friends of fans.

Boosted Posts are easy to set up – just click the button beneath any of your page posts. While the flat rate simplifies the process, Boosted Posts don’t have all of the same targeting options offered as other Facebook ads. Also you need to be very careful to not boost a post that includes a photo with words on it. As popular as Memes are, Facebook penalizes posts (even super clever ones), that have too many words embedded on them. Try to keep your text content in the body of the post and off your photos!