Believe it or not, the Facebook app has now acquired nearly 3 billion users around the world. It's no surprise that Facebook is popular considering it has been one of the largest social media platforms for years now, but even that number is one hard to wrap one's mind around. Being one of the biggest platforms in the world, Facebook has become one of the most important platforms for small businesses.
Even if your e-commerce business isn't a giant international behemoth, Facebook has millions of users that could match your audience. Run a local brick-and-mortar shop? You can guarantee that almost everyone in your town (and the ones surrounding it) has a Facebook account.
So, how do you tap into the potential of the platform and reap the marketing benefits for your business? Read on to learn 7 of the best Facebook marketing tips for small businesses.
1. Optimize Your Facebook Profile
Once you create a special Facebook business account, your Facebook profile is the first thing to optimize. It's crucial that every detail here is filled out and accurate. Imagine if someone trying to buy a product couldn't find your website or address because you didn't have it filled out? Or worse yet, you had a typo?
Having your profile filled out will also make your business appear more professional, trustworthy, and convince more people to try your business out.
This is because filling out your profile is more than entering your company name, about, hours, address, and website – though, those are extremely important. You can also ask people to leave reviews of your service, or utilize the Facebook marketplace to list products right on your page.
Make sure you also choose high-quality and relevant photos for your profile picture and cover image. Logos often make the best profile picture.
2. Get to Know Your Target Audience
Once your account is complete, you'll want to start optimizing your Facebook marketing strategy by getting to know your target audience. Your target audience consists of the people you want to reach, and generally, who are most likely to be interested in your product.
Understanding your target audience is important because it will help you reach them with your marketing efforts, enhance your marketing to be more persuasive, and improve your business over time.
Audiences can be defined by demographic and psychographic characteristics. Demographics are information like age, gender, location, marital status, level of education, income, and so on. Psychographics deal more with hobbies and lifestyle interests. Research is the best way to learn about your audience, but if you don't have the budget for it, you can look to your competitors for reference.
3. Utilize Content Calendars
Not enough businesses take advantage of content calendars. Content calendars are the key to a continuing and successful Facebook marketing campaign. What are they?
A content calendar is a calendar that plans out what you're going to post and when you will post it several weeks or months ahead of time. You can brainstorm different social post ideas based on holidays, special events, other content you create like blogs, and any other informative or entertaining content your audience would be interested in.
By planning in advance, you're more likely to keep to a strict posting schedule and always have the materials that you need in time for the post. There are content calendar templates available to help you get started.
4. Think Like a Community
Fostering a brand community is the best way to make current and potential customers feel like they are a part of your brand. It fosters brand loyalty because visitors feel like they are a united group with similar interests or goals.
Consider a person who buys a product and that's their sole experience. Now consider someone who buys a product, follows the company on social media, and continually interacts with all these other people who also have an interest in the product. It's a way better experience.
Part of creating a community means being there for your customers, responding quickly to questions and comments on social, and making posts where you ask your customers for their input. You want to interact with them and encourage them to interact with each other instead of being above it.
A great way to create a community is to create a relevant Facebook group.
5. Utilize Facebook Ads the Right Way
Facebook advertising is a magnificent tool if you go about it the right way. With Facebook ads, you can create your own ads and pay Facebook to show them to any of its 3 billion users. The trick is to create and manage your budget, utilize Facebook's advanced settings, and monitor and adjust as needed.
When creating ads on Facebook, it's critical to use the right audience settings. Facebook gives you the ability to set your ideal audience demographics and interests so that they only show your ads to the right people.
Be sure to check out and take advantage of Facebook's geotargeting, retargeting, and audience insights features.
6. Maintain Detailed Reports
Another of the best tips for small businesses is to use Facebook campaign reporting. You don't want the money you're putting into ads to go to waste, so specially curated reports can help show you what's working and what isn't. This lets you keep doing more of what is and stop doing what isn't for a better return on investment.
You can also use reporting for post metrics that you don't pay for. Seeing which posts get the most impressions and engagement can help you optimize your social calendars.
7. Set Relevant Goals
Whether you're advertising on Facebook, focused on posting regularly, or both, you want to make sure your investments are contributing to the growth of your business. For this reason, always ask yourself if your goals are relevant to your business.
A lot of impressions might be great, but if no one is clicking, that's a problem. Perhaps you get a lot of website visitors from Facebook, but they never convert because they aren't the right audience. Make sure your successes are benefiting the bottom line.
Utilize These Facebook Marketing Tips
Facebook is a fantastic platform for businesses of all sizes, but small businesses especially. The opportunity is great, and it's relatively easy to take advantage of. Just make sure that you follow the 7 Facebook marketing tips in this article.
If you want help making Facebook work for your business, check out our Facebook ad services today.