What other social media platform allows your business to reach over 1.23 billion people; to accurately target the demographic you are interested in reaching and to have a direct line of communication with your customers? Facebook, the social media platform that started from a dorm room and became a bigger-than-life phenomenon; Mark Zuckerberg’s creation allows business owners to find, define and even understand the demographics for their services and products. Once having figured out who your target market is and who your potential Facebook customers are, you are ready to offer the right audience with the product or service they may be interested in purchasing.
This is the main reason why small and medium enterprises and even large companies should not disregard advertising their products and services on Facebook. It’s one of the best ways for a business to make online sales, establishing a brand and a customer base and even create a platform where customers are able to discuss about the products and services. Best case scenario, if you have an amazing product, the community will do most of the work for you, given that they’ll almost surely spread the word about your company and the remarkable product they just purchased.
While they might be skeptical or not aware of this, most companies can find potential customers on Facebook. Thus, companies, in my opinion, absolutely must have a Facebook page so that they are able to interact with their customers. Bear in mind that this is one of the best advertising channels, that allows you to engage and communicate in real time with your customers.
You should consider your company’s Facebook page as the best place to try new approaches to engage your community, by testing several formats, content types, numbers of hashtags, caption length, etc. Tracking the results you register is one of the things that you should focus on. This social media platform provides great insights so as to analyze the main metrics such as post effectiveness and demographic information.
The good news is that you don’t need to be an expert on social media to be able to optimize your business’ Facebook page.
When setting up a Facebook business strategy, you need to set some important goals and create a proper strategy. Are you more interested in online sales by making ads and sending traffic to your website, where they can purchase the product your company creates or do you prefer to send all the traffic you generate to a Facebook fan page where users can “like” what you do? In my opinion, both of them can be of great benefit for your business, so why not set up a combination of the two? All you need to do is ensure that you’ve set some clear goals for being on Facebook before you start working on the page.
Online sales are a great way of advertising your business on this social media platform. You will need to have some traditional external-website ads in place. When users click on the ads they will be redirected to your company’s web page where they can sign up and purchase your products and services. Countless companies have managed to register a lot of success by using this approach on Facebook as far as business advertising is concerned. And once you do it, the results will be seen right away. Also, make sure to compare the amount of money you spend on Facebook ads with the revenue received from it. This way you can see whether some adjustments are in order for your campaign or if you need to adopt a different approach.
Still, when you adopt the aforementioned strategy, you are missing out on the social aspects Facebook is made up of. Remember that “likes” are actually the nervous system of the entire network. Without them, maybe Facebook wouldn’t have been so popular.
Some companies may even register better results – even when advertising a service or a product – by sending Facebook users first to a fan page where they are required to like the page to be able to see the offer. Following that, they can turn their attention to the webpage and purchase one of your products and services.
Thus, by doing your advertising in the three steps presented above, you are able to combine the brand awareness process with sales.
However, a large number of companies use Facebook only to get a huge fan base, thus omitting the online sales aspect. Usually, businesses such as restaurants, clothing stores or any other physical shops do this in order to raise brand awareness.
If that is the case, ads that send users directly to your website might not be the best option. Rather, they should focus on having people like their Facebook fan page, where they can interact with potential customers, offer promotions, run contests or even arrange polls regarding product/service features. This is one of the best ways to approach your fans and customers.
In this case, the main goal should be to have as many active fans as possible, fans that will spread the word around to their acquaintances or friends about your business, which can also be extremely profitable for your company.
Some small companies prefer to avoid Facebook because they believe that only large companies are actually able to benefit from Facebook marketing. Contrary to popular belief, online-business marketing on this social media platform benefits small retailers the most.
Remember that in most cases, small and medium enterprises are the ones that provide unique services and products to a smaller customer pool. And with the help of Facebook you are offered the best opportunity to reach a targeted audience with a personal approach.
Small enterprise business owners shouldn’t worry too much because they do not need to run an IT company in order to succeed in small-business marketing on Facebook. One of the great benefits of Internet marketing for small companies is that it allows them to compete with large companies and corporations.
Also, if your company provides a niche service or product, you may even gain a competitive advantage given the fact that large corporations do not have the time to shift their undivided attention to a single niche.
On your company’s page you will need to share quality content. This isn’t really a news flash. As in the case of any business profile on any social media platform, Facebook pages will need to provide engaging and high-quality content. This means using breathtaking and relevant images, full web links and even videos. Make sure to ask yourself whether the post would move somebody or determine him or her to share it. This is one instance where you have to trust your gut instinct. Users are constantly looking for unique and quality content. By no means should you start promoting your brand or your product directly. For example, you could create a calendar with important date dates so that you are able to take advantage of both special holidays and national events so that you can connect what you are posting with these themes.
Also, post like a professional. In my book, the winning content strategy is a combination of what you post and how you do it. Make use of captions that provide users with insight regarding your brand’s personality, voice and tone. Make it witty, unpredictable or in some cases controversial. Keep in mind that you also have to make it worth commenting on.
Make use of hashtags with style. As far as hashtags are concerned, don’t worry about search engine optimization or making the post relevant by using boring words as tags. Instead, make use of witty, funny and unique tags people will feel compelled to comment or share. Also, you need to delete spam immediately. You need to ensure that the quality of your community is always protected. And the only way to do this is by monitoring the spam, especially on your Facebook wall or on the comments section.
Knowing when and how to post content is equally important. Your online audience must feel that the page is managed by professionals. Thus, you need to remain consistent. You could start with only one post per day and gradually increase the user base. Your most loyal and die-hard fans will stay on. And while you might not believe it, they truly add value to your brand. Also, when you’re catering after the old users, don’t ignore your new followers. And if you can’t always be near a computer to post, make use of the scheduling post feature. And by using the Facebook mobile manager you are able to comment and monitor any time you are away from your computer.
Another crucial aspect that helps your company become relevant is to engage with fans. After gathering a number of Facebook fans, you need to maintain and increase their attention levels. You need to know your users, the people to whom you are talking. Pay attention to aspects such as gender, age, location in order to maximize the reach of each post. Facebook grants you the opportunity to target posts depending on the abovementioned factors. The fans that engage the most need to be rewarded either by commenting back or liking their comments. People always like to be acknowledged and appreciated. Also, as an extra boost you could tag their names when you respond to their comments. Don’t ignore the private messages you receive. Of course, you could be getting tons and tons of messages that are flooding your inbox. You need to pay special attention to these. It may just so happen that you will end up finding some great content ideas.
In life as in business, we learn some of the most important lessons by doing. This is why you have to constantly test and measure the results you register. You need to accept the fact that managing a successful Facebook page is a repetitive process. Always be prepared to get creative and try new tactics.
Got any more advice on how companies should use their Facebook page so as to see a return on their investment? Let us know in the comment section below.
