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Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, the chances are that you invest a lot of money in marketing. And you probably have marketing expenses all over the place. It’s also quite likely that at least a chunk of your expenses goes into Facebook marketing, and if it’s not the case, we’ve got loads of arguments that we’re sure will change your mindset on this.
Facebook is — first and foremost – a social media platform that’s used by a lot of people. To get into specifics, a lot here is 2.9 billion registered users. 2.9 billion! That’s almost 40 percent of the world’s population. If the sheer number of users is not enough to persuade you to do marketing on Facebook, here’s another one of the many facts that you might find interesting.
According to Facebook, 2/3 of its users worldwide said that they visited the page of a local business at least once a week. Basically, most users learn about local businesses through Facebook. This alone should be enough for you to start investing heavily in Facebook marketing. If you’re already using Facebook for marketing, you might want to make sure that you’re doing it right.
This guide here is to help you either start a Facebook marketing campaign or improve your existing one. To help you out, we will discuss the following:
- How to Set Up a Business Page
- Types of Facebook Posts
- How to Create a Facebook Marketing Strategy
So, let’s get going!
How to Set Up a Business Page
First things first, you’d need to have an official Facebook page for your business. This shouldn’t come off as a surprise because you can’t be posting from your personal Facebook page. The great news is: having a business page is a must in your Facebook marketing strategy, but opening up a new one is free of charge.
There are a few things that are paid such as Facebook ads, but that’s completely optional. However, opening up a Facebook page can alone help you boost your business tremendously.
Another great news: it’s easy to open a Facebook business page and to save you all the trouble that might come with trying things on your own, we’ve compiled a step-by-step list of how to start business pages. So, follow along.
Step 1: Go to Facebook Page Create
You will open up your business page from your personal page but you shouldn’t worry as your personal information won’t be visible.
Step 2: Choose your big category
When you follow the link, you’ll be asked to pick your page’s big category. You’ll be presented with two options:
- Business or brand
- Community or public figure
Since your aim is to use Facebook for marketing your business, you’ll choose the first one – that is, business or brand.
Step 3: In the “Create a Page” section, fill in the page information details
Once you’ve picked your big category, Facebook will ask you to fill in three key pieces of information.
- Page name – required
Choose your page name wisely, as the latter will be a key part of your overall Facebook marketing strategy. There is nothing counterintuitive to this: your page’s name has to be memorable as well as impactful because your aim is to get as many people as possible to remember you.
Apart from it being an essential part of your Facebook marketing strategy, your page name needs to be carefully chosen for another, much subtler reason. The thing is: Facebook makes changing the name of the page quite complicated. Yes, it’s possible to do it later but to save you time and energy, you’d be better off choosing the page name carefully in the beginning.
- Category – required
This one has nothing to do with the big category you chose at first. This one is concerned primarily with your business category. So, if you’re running a restaurant, go ahead and type “restaurant” in the required category field.
Please note that Facebook allows you to select multiple categories here. For instance, if apart from being a restaurant your business is also a bar, go ahead and add “bar” in the category field. Picking multiple categories might prove to be an effective Facebook marketing strategy, so why not give it a shot?
Oops, one thing we forgot to mention: make sure to pick the most relevant categories, as you’re allowed to pick only three.
- Description – optional
You’re not required to fill this one out, but we highly recommend you to go ahead and do it. Simply describe your business in no more than 255 characters – it will pay off in your general Facebook marketing strategy. Why? Simple: a short and sweet description (yes, don’t make it too long!) will give your potential customers a sneak peek into your businesses. So why not use the space that Facebook provides you free of charge to get more customers?
Step 4: Click “Create Page”.
Once you’ve filled in the three aforementioned fields – that is, page name, category, and description (we certainly hope you’ve followed our advice and have done it), proceed with the page creation.
You’re not yet ready to start using Facebook for marketing, but you are one step closer.
And one last thing: don’t worry too much about missing or incorrect info – you can edit things later on; just keep in mind that it’s a bit of a hassle when it comes to the page name.
Step 5: Add great photos.
There are two things you will be able to do here, and they are very similar to your personal Facebook undertakings – you’re able to add a cover photo and a profile pic.
- Profile picture
It’s important to include your company’s logo here, as it’s going to drive your Facebook marketing campaign. And if you are a small business that can’t afford to hire a designer, you can always use a variety of online tools that will help you create your company’s logo.
- Cover photo
You can be much more flexible here. Business pages change cover photos quite often, depending on how their Facebook marketing strategy changes. Your cover can be changed if there is some special offer for, say, Christmas. But once Christmas is over, you need to change it to something else.
This is pretty much it in terms of photos. You can check out all the technical requirements (resolutions, etc.) on Facebook’s official website.
Step 6: Click Create Page Username
This one is 50 characters max and will appear in your custom Facebook URL (some call it a vanity URL). This can be a pretty good thing to include when marketing on Facebook, as your users can visit your page easily if the page username is memorable enough.
For instance, if your vanity link is @artbarandrestaurant, your customers can always find you at fb.com/artbarandrestaurant. And this is a pretty cool Facebook marketing strategy.
Step 7: Click Add a Button
This one allows you to choose the right call-to-action button. You can choose from the list Facebook provides – this ranges from “contact us” to “send email”.
Types of Facebook Posts
You’ve created your business page. Now what?
You might be impatiently waiting to learn the basics of how to use Facebook for marketing. However, it’s a bit too early to kick off this discussion, as first, you need to know what types of Facebook posts exist.
- Posts that contain text only
This is arguably the most basic type of Facebook post. Here the business page posts a little bit of text and nothing else. Basic does mean boring at times, and given that people are more used to photo and video content, pure text posts might seem obsolete. Not so true!
Look: text posts are great if you are trying to ask your audience a question or when you’re trying to collect some feedback. And doing these two must be central to any business’s Facebook marketing strategy.
- Posts that contain links only
Paste a link and Facebook will create a beautiful preview for you that you can, in your turn, share with your audience. Oftentimes, you want to use this type of posts if you are sharing links from your website. For instance, you might want to share the brand-new article your content team has come up with.
- Posts that contain images
This one is pretty popular. As people love visual content, photo posts must be all over the place when you use Facebook for marketing.
What kind of photo posts you can make is pretty self-explanatory. You can post your products with corresponding price tags. You can inform your customers of discounts and other promotional offers. There are plenty of options!
- Posts that contain videos
Interestingly, video posts have higher engagement than photo posts. So, use them to your advantage! Anything can be posted here, from video ads to various how-to tutorials. It’s your pick!
- Lives
This was a rare animal, but quite recently, Live became a beloved option for a lot of businesses. And it’s not surprising, as audiences find live videos extremely authentic as nothing is pre-recorded. Hence, it’s a great way to establish or strengthen bonds with your audiences. Live is one of the trendiest ways for businesses to use Facebook for marketing!
- Stories
Facebook was a bit late (compared to Instagram, for instance) to introduce Stories, but currently, more than 500 million people view stories every day.
Stories are temporary vertical videos or photos that disappear 24 hours after they’ve been posted. Photos stay for five seconds, while videos for 20.
The reason why you absolutely have to use stories as a major bit of your Facebook marketing strategy is that stories are not affected by Facebook’s algorithms. Here’s what we mean: any post you make – be it a link, a photo, or a video – will appear at the top of the user’s feed, if Facebook’s algorithm chooses to place it there. However, nobody really knows how Facebook’s algorithm works, making it naturally very difficult to rank high in many people’s feeds. Stories, on the contrary, appear at the top of the news feed. So, if the user follows you, then chances are they will see your story.
Facebook Marketing Strategy
So far, you’ve learned how to create a Facebook business page and what kind of posts are popular. Now, it’s time to get to the meat of it all and answer the question of how to use Facebook for marketing, or, in other words, how to develop a winning Facebook marketing strategy.
- Understand your audience
First of all, you need to understand who your businesses’ buyer personas are. This is something you’ve got to figure out on your own. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your target audiences. You could for instance describe one buyer persona as John, who is a YouTuber with a small channel that has 5k subscribers. Then you would give more details as to what he needs for his business and therefore, how you can help him.
Once you know your buyer personas it will be easier for you to choose what kind of posts to make on your Facebook business page. And it’s really important. Think about it: if your product is targeted at Gen Z, the way you’ll communicate through your post will be different compared to when you’re selling to Millennials.
Hopefully, it’s all clear, but we do want to leave you with a pro tip and some food for thought.
Facebook has a great tool called Audience Insights. It allows you to look into your audience and the demographics that follow you. So, for instance, you might realize that the people that follow you are actually Millennials and not Gen Z as you expected. What are your actions? Actually, there are many things you can do, starting from retargeting and ending with rebranding your product. The decision is all yours.
- Set your KPIs
What goals are you trying to achieve? What are your aims? Theoretically and practically, the best practice is to ensure that everything you do serves your business’s ultimate mission, stated in the mission statement.
Why is it important to always try and achieve – through Facebook marketing or any other undertaking – those two to three sentences written in the mission statement? The answer is pretty intuitive: if you do things haphazardly, you might end up forgetting which problems you’re trying to solve with your product. You definitely heard of some businesses which fell prey to the number of likes and followers, forgetting about their mission halfway through. So, it’s important to stay true to what your product is at its core.
- Plan the content
Literally, have a calendar and write down which posts you’ll have when. A lot of people like to talk about the so-called 80-20 rule of content posting. The idea is pretty simple: 80 percent of the content is to educate or entertain your audience, and only the other 20 percent is to promote your brand or to sell your products.
People are constantly bombarded with ads, so naturally, they will get super annoyed if your entire Facebook marketing strategy is trying to sell your product. Nobody likes that anymore.
Also, be mindful of the timing of your posts. Some insights from Facebook seem to corroborate the idea that the best time to post is at 12 pm PST on weekdays. So, why not post during this time slot?
- Facebook Ads
Another great way to boost up your Facebook marketing campaign is to run Facebook ads. You might think that only those businesses that have a lot of cash can afford it, but the truth is: Facebook allows you to set up an ad campaign even if your budget is very, very low. So, why not do it?
Putting it all Together
So, how do you feel about Facebook marketing now? We hope we’ve made things clear for you. Let’s recap all that we’ve discussed.
- Facebook marketing is really important as Facebook has billions of active users
- The first thing you’ve got to do is put a lot of effort to ensure that your Facebook business page looks sharp
- You need to understand what kind of posts you’ll be able to make
- Then you can start devising your Facebook marketing strategy
Now go ahead, open up your business page and tell the world of Facebook about your business!
