With over 2.7 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. So Facebook marketing should be a top priority for your business.
Take a look at these statistics:
- An average Facebook user spends 38 minutes a day on the platform.
- 74% of its users use the platform daily.
- 90m small businesses have a presence on Facebook.
- On average, Facebook users click on 11 ads a month.
- There are more than 1.5b searches a day on Facebook.
The point is that consumers are searching for businesses on Facebook. A well-defined Facebook marketing strategy can help you to reach this audience.
Why Use Facebook Marketing?
- Highly targeted – Facebook ads allow you to choose the people you want to target based on interests, age, behaviour, gender and location. If you have a good idea about your target audience, Facebook is an excellent platform to engage them.
- Economical – Facebook is one of the most cost-effective advertising channels. You could literally spend $10 and reach 2,000 people.
- Quick results – Facebook marketing delivers immediate results. You can begin by reaching thousands of people right away.
- Increase brand awareness – Facebook marketing is a wonderful way to reach out to people and show them what you have to offer. The more familiar your audience is with your brand, the more likely are they to choose you when they are ready to make a purchase.
- Measurable results – With Facebook marketing, you can measure the results effortlessly. You can see the number of impressions, clicks as well as conversions your ads received. To track conversions, you will have to install conversion pixels on your website.
- Build your list – You can use Facebook marketing to boost your email marketing strategy. You can use the “lead ad” forms feature to capture email addresses with Facebook ads. You can even direct traffic to a third-party form on your site to build the list.
- Wide range of ad formats – With 10 ad formats, Facebook offers the most diverse range of options. Each ad format allows you to combine text and visuals to describe and showcase your brand.
Creating a Facebook Marketing Strategy
Identify Your Target Audience
When you want to effectively engage your audience, it’s important to know who your target customer is. Ask these questions to begin with:
- How old are my target customers?
- Where do they live?
- What are their pain points?
- When and how do they use Facebook?
Once you have answered these questions, head to Facebook Audience Insights to narrow your audience further. You can use Audience Insights to find information on aspects like gender, age, education, location, relationship status, language, past purchase activity and Facebook usage.
Set Your Goal
The next big step is to define your goals. Without a definitive goal, you are simply aiming in the dark. Use can map your progress against this roadmap to measure the success of your Facebook marketing strategy.
For your marketing strategy to be effective, you must have a clearly defined goal that aligns with your business objectives.
The goals differ from business to business. But aim for actions that can have a direct impact on your bottom line. Here are some examples:
- Increase the quality of sales
- Generate leads
- Improve customer service
- Increase website conversions
Once you have a broad goal in mind, it’s time to reach a specific, measurable goal.
Plan Your Content Strategy
Now it’s time to decide how you will achieve your goal.
A critical step in this process is to determine the content mix. We suggest you begin with the 80-20 rule. That is:
- Use 80% of the posts to educate, inform and entertain
- Use 20% of the posts to advertise your brand/products/services.
Bear in mind that the Facebook algorithm may penalise brands that are extremely sales-oriented. The platform wants you to offer content that its users will want to Like and Share.
Optimise Your Facebook Page for Engagement
For you to achieve your Facebook marketing goals, you must ensure your brand is easy to find on Facebook. And once your audience is on your page, it should be compelling enough for them to Like it.
You can choose from premade templates to optimise your page to suit your business best. Each template features unique tabs and buttons optimised for that business type.
If you provide a professional service, a call to action is an important element. Choose one that can help achieve your goals.
If you are a brick and mortar or local business, adding your address can ensure search engines can index your page and show it in local search results.
Identify Your Facebook Ads Strategy
Whether you’ve just started your presence on Facebook or you have been managing your page for a while, you can’t escape the need to advertise for brand exposure.
Aim to increase brand awareness. To this end, your ads should always be:
- Cost-effective – Keep within the monthly/weekly budget you’ve allocated for Facebook ads. This way, you can steer clear of over-exposure and wasteful clicks. Ad spend can go up in no time when your targeting is ineffective or incorrect.
- Relevance – We can’t emphasise enough the importance of keeping your Facebook ads relevant. Be sure to customise your audience to reach customers who’d best fit your content.
Keep your ads fresh. It’s important to ensure your content doesn’t get stale with your audience. To that end, be sure to repurpose and update your ads once every week or fortnight.
Track and Analyse the Results
The final step of your Facebook marketing strategy is to keep a track of the metrics and assess the results. You can rely on a range of tools including Facebook Insights and SproutSocial to track the results.
Final Thoughts
These steps will help you kick-start your Facebook marketing plan today. Should you need professional help with Facebook marketing, get in touch with our specialists today. With years of experience in Facebook marketing, we can help you achieve your marketing goals with a customised marketing strategy.
