Over the last decade, social media marketing has exploded in popularity. The cornerstone of virtually all digital marketing strategies, leveraging the massive reach that social platforms provide can make the difference between delivering an effective, on-brand message, or simply making noise.
With over two billion active users, Facebook stands alone as the largest online community in the world. For this reason, investing in a Facebook marketing strategy is a no-brainer for developed brands and startups alike.
Building a Plan That Converts
If you’re interested in launching a Facebook marketing plan, we’ve got you covered. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll go over the basics of a well-rounded Facebook marketing strategy and how you can make the most of it.
Step 1: Open (or Revamp) Your Facebook Business Page
No Facebook marketing plan can go forward without first setting up a rock-solid Facebook Business page for your company. As a free service, there’s no reason why your company shouldn’t have an active Facebook Business profile complete with shareable links, images, and status posts.
Your Facebook Business page presents a great opportunity to show a little personality, throw in a little humor for good measure, and truly relate to your target audience. Ideally, you’ll want to post every day or two to keep your customers coming back to your page for information, deals, or even just a funny (and appropriate) meme.
If you already have a Facebook Business page, try beautifying it a little. Make sure you have a high-res profile picture, a correctly-sized cover photo, and a short company description written in tight, clean prose. Here’s a quick checklist of the necessities for a Facebook Business page:
- An original username
- 155-character company description
- Set up admin roles
- Add a call to action (CTA) button
- Verify your page with a checkmark
Step 2: Start Building Marketplace Ads
The beauty of the Facebook platform is that just about anyone can use it seamlessly. Without any need for artsy design chops or technological wizardry, you can create basic column ads that appear in the sidebar of targeted Facebook users.
Known as “Marketplace ads,” these mini advertisements are as basic as it gets. They include a small (usually stock) image, one or two lines of copy, and a clickable link to an app, webpage, or Facebook Business page.
Step 3: Home In On A Demographic
Facebook makes it easy to adjust who you want to see your advertisements. This is where the massive potential of Facebook marketing reveals itself: if you sell kids’ hockey sticks, you don’t want your ads popping up on the newsfeeds of childless college students. To prevent this from happening, adjust your Facebook demographic information to select the desired age, gender, location, interests, and education level of those who receive your ads.
Step 4: Start Throwing Contests
“Do you have some extra inventory you need off your hands? Perhaps you’d be willing to offer a special discount or BOGO deal to the winner of a Facebook contest? If so, you’ll be glad to find out that hosting Facebook sweepstakes-style contests is one of the most effective methods of drawing attention to your business.” – Scout Software – Inventory Management Systems
To a throw a successful Facebook contest, you need to use a third-party app to coordinate it, since Facebook doesn’t allow contests to be hosted directly through their platform. This is a small price to pay for the massive benefit that racking up hundreds of comments, likes, or shares, can offer your business.
Step 5: Promote Your Posts
If you find that some of your status updates or images catch on faster than others, you should capitalize on its viral potential. The more likes that a post accrues, especially early on, the more exposure it will get. Therefore, you should always jump on the opportunity to promote a popular post to attract even more eyes to your page.
Even spending as little as ten dollars can result in hundreds or sometimes even thousands of novel impressions from your targeted audience. For such a low cost, it’s often worth every penny to splurge on promoted posts.
Step 6: Keep It Active
The last step is to remember to keep your page active with fresh, stimulating content at least a few times per week. Ideally, you will want to post content that provides real value to your audience. This way, it can be shared around and can spread virally across social networks (not only Facebook, but also Twitter, LinkedIn, and more).
Bear in mind that Facebook marketing in 2019 is a labor of love. Progress is gradual and, unless you’re spending big money on promotional advertising, you won’t see a massive influx in business overnight—or over a week, for that matter. However, will a little patience, persistence, and skill you can leverage the world’s largest social platform to expand your business rapidly.