As a small business owner, you don’t have the resources or budget to devote to digital marketing strategies as extensive as those employed by large corporations. When you don’t have a large marketing budget or an in-house marketing staff, free social media marketing can help your business develops.
Facebook is the most widely used social network, with more than two billion people regularly logging in. There’s a good chance that your target audience is on Facebook, regardless of the kind of your business.
A local business’ Facebook page gets an average of two-thirds of weekly visits from Facebook users. As a result, 90% of marketers use Facebook, and 55% say it’s the most significant social media platform for marketers.
Brand recognition can be boosted, new consumers found, customer loyalty fostered and website traffic increased by using Facebook. Sales can be improved and customer service can be improved by utilising Facebook. To get started, all you need is a free business website.
Is Facebook A Good Fit For Your Small Business?
It doesn’t matter if you run a tea shop, an e-commerce store, a hair salon, or a landscaping business—Facebook can help you succeed. You can succeed on Facebook if your clients are there.
The most popular social media network among your present and potential clients is Facebook, so use it if you only have limited time to devote to social media marketing. Try to follow these steps listed below.
1. Find out what your consumers want
Asking your consumers is the simplest method to discover if Facebook is a good location to contact them.
Send a short survey to your consumers through email, if you have one, inquiring about their use of social media. Find out where they spend the most time on social media and which channels, they like to follow businesses on.
Take a free survey using Typeform or SurveyMonkey. Start by using Typeform’s social media survey template. If you need specific information on your customers, you may customise it.
Image courtesy of Typeform
Isn’t there an email list? It doesn’t matter if you have a physical store or a client appointment; ask customers whenever possible.
2. Take A Look At Facebook’s User Base To See Who Your Target Audience Is
Different social networking networks attract different types of users. Your target audience’s interests, attitudes, opinions, and personality traits may be compared to the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the social media platforms you’re considering (such as gender, age, geography, and income).
Millennials, for example, are huge fans of Facebook. There are over 300,000,000 members on the network, so it’s worth looking at even if you’re not a youngster.
TikTok, on the other hand, has 25 per cent of its users between the ages of 10 and 19, making it a great option if you’re targeting adolescents.
3. Try To See What Your Rivals Are Doing
A huge number of businesses that look like yours have a large following on Facebook, which indicates that your target demographic is likely to be on Facebook. Your rivals’ consumers are, after all, prospective clients for you as well! You only have to begin blogging.
If your rivals aren’t using Facebook, it may not be the best platform for your business to use. There may be undiscovered potential in your industry, and you’ll be the first one to find it if you have many clients who have mentioned they would follow you on Facebook.
How Tiny Companies May Begin Using Facebook Marketing
So, you’re about to publish your first piece of content? Take advantage of these Facebook marketing ideas to make your company a success.
1. Create A Facebook Business Page For Your Company
If you’re a small business using Facebook for promotion, your company page serves as a virtual home page. Potential customers can learn about your company’s mission and goals through your bio.
If you want to be easily recognised, you need to have a company page.
If you want to ensure that your audience recognises your brand, the first thing you should do is to update your profile image. You may use your company’s logo or brand emblem as a profile picture.
Adding a cover photo to your Facebook page is a great way to make an impact on your audience. Evoke an emotional response or prompt a specific action, like taking advantage of your seasonal deal, with the best copywriting. If you have a physical store, take a picture of the staff, or post a picture of your most recent promotion.
Add your phone number and email address. Incorporating your website, e-mail address, and/or contact number for customer support, along with your location, is essential for people to be able to locate and contact your business.
Explain your company’s mission and goals in the “about us” section. It’s critical that your online fans understand what you do! Focus on what sets you apart from the competition.
For example, you may own a clothing company that specialises in high-quality, multipurpose designs. Or perhaps you’re a philanthropist who donates a portion of every transaction to a worthy cause. Inform your followers right here.
There are a variety of pre-built templates available on Facebook to suit a variety of various sorts of businesses. To begin, choose the one that best reflects your business and begin customising your page.
Your call-to-action (CTA) button should be personalised. Why do you want them to visit your website? What’s the best way to get in touch with me? Why don’t you give your shop a call?
CTA buttons at the top of your Facebook page may be customised to lead fans to take action that will help you achieve your objectives.
At 50 fans, you may get a vanity URL for your Facebook page, such as “facebook.com/yourbrand” (as an example). Instead of a big string of letters and figures, this will appear more official and be simpler for your audience to put in.
At this point, you’re ready to start attracting new followers.
2. Be Aware Of Your Content Kinds
- Posts with video get the most views and comments. Also, postings that include photographs get more attention than ones that have links or plain-text content. There is a place for everything on Facebook, and the best way to engage your audience is through a variety of content types.
- The best way to start a conversation is with simple text posts. Plain-text postings are a great way to solicit input from your followers and pose questions to them.
- Posts that include links provide readers with a sneak peek of the whole site, allowing the graphics to stand out more prominently than in a plain-text post. When you want to get people to do anything particular, like shop a sale or promote a blog article, use these.
- People are drawn to Facebook postings that include images when they’re browsing through their feeds. In comparison to videos, they need less time and effort to produce.
- Posting videos to Facebook makes it much simpler to get people’s attention because videos play immediately. Aside from that, it doesn’t have to appear that way either. Viewers enjoy watching videos shot on their phones because they feel like they’re getting a true sense of the moment.
Use video to demonstrate new items in action, behind-the-scenes footage, and Q&As, amongst other things. Engage your audience in real-time by going live.
- Post a Facebook Story instead of relying on the news feed algorithm. Of those who saw a brand or product advertised in a storey on any of the Facebook applications, 62% said they were “more interested” in the brand or product in question.
Casual content is a great fit for stories. Post intriguing links, polls, or engaging questions to keep your audience interested.
3. Don’t Try To Upsell, But Rather Relate To Your Audience
They came to you for your goods & services, but they return because they enjoy your brand and how you interact with them. Your brand’s personality lives on via its social media presence.
In order to make your Facebook page worth following, you may still publish promotional information, but it should be mixed in with a lot of other interesting, non-sales stuff.
Instead of connecting out, post content directly to Facebook. As a general rule, you should publish media on Facebook whenever feasible rather than sending visitors to your blog or website.
Media that is published directly on Facebook is given preference over content that is linked to. Hence, restrict the number of times you publish on other sites. More people will see your material if you publish it directly on Facebook and allow them to join in a debate about it.
Rather than just copying and pasting your material from other social media platforms, tailor it for Facebook. Many of your audience undoubtedly follow you on various social media platforms.
Some of them may have subscribed to your email list or followed you on social media, such as Facebook. You need to give these folks a cause to follow you by providing them with a unique experience.
As an alternative to just re-posting the subject line of an email that advertises the release of a new blog post, consider creating content specifically for each channel you use.
Make your Facebook post more interesting by providing a TL; DR version of your blog piece, or by asking pertinent questions to get people talking.
4. Engage With Your Followers Through Social Media
Developing relationships with your audience is an important part of social media marketing. Participate in discussions with your followers!
Let the discussion go by like and respond to their remarks. People will be more likely to interact with you on Facebook if you do this.
As an option, you may establish a Facebook group. More than 1.4 billion people use Groups on Facebook every month, and with over 10 million groups, they are a great way to establish a community around your company.
If you want to keep your customers engaged, you may use groups as a means to challenge them, provide them early access to new products or services, or serve as a resource for those who want to learn more about your brand’s values.
Customers may expect sneak peeks, product input requests and conversations on issues. Here, like-minded individuals join together to learn from and encourage one another.
5. Consistently Update Your Facebook Status
It will take some time to acquire a following, but don’t let that discourage you! Even if no one responds to your posts at first, if you keep publishing regularly, your followers will begin to connect with you and your Facebook presence will gradually expand.
Starting off, once a week should be plenty. Using the appropriate measurements is critical to achieving success. Make sure your Facebook efforts are paying off as you grow your profile.
When you first start out, you’re going to have a small following of people that enjoy and follow you. That’s fine! Taking off will be a slow process. What matters is that these stats keep getting better over time. Make more of the stuff that your audience is interested in by analysing your stats.
6. Reduce Time On Facebook Marketing By Using A Scheduling Tool For Social Media
Marketing your small company on Facebook is no easy feat. You are in charge of a small staff and dozens of projects. It may be a one-man show at times! Because of this, you must make the process of creating and maintaining your Facebook content schedule as simple as possible for yourself.
Create A Facebook Marketing Plan For 2022 Success
In order to attract new consumers, keep the existing ones interested, and remain on top of the competition, any business must have a well-thought-out Facebook marketing plan.
Here are some additional pointers for developing a successful Facebook marketing campaign in 2022:
- Open Graph on Facebook
- Make changes to your profile
- Try out Facebook Live
- Your posts should be pinned
- Get into the Facebook Reels Test and find out what works best for your target market
- Analyse people’s moods and feelings
- Your Facebook profile should be optimised for search engine optimization
- Instead, then trying to sell anything, work on building relationships
- Utilize Facebook’s Ad Library to your advantage.
- Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are important communication channels to keep in mind.
- Try out Sponsored Stories!
- Be Relevant
- Attempt to reach a limited number of people
- Customize your ad placements
- Increase the level of optimization at the top of the funnel
