social media has quickly become a must have for many businesses across the world. Small business owners who use social networking sites effectively are able to promote their businesses in powerful ways. One of the best ways to use social media for business is with a Facebook business page. Below we will explain why you must set up a facebook page for your business and how to effectively market your business on Facebook.
Facebook Marketing: Why Facebook?
Facebook is the world’s most popular website behind google with over a billion visits a month. 1 in every 13 people on Earth is on Facebook.
From a business point of view, Facebook has had a huge impact on the way people interact brands, so if done properly facebook marketing can bring remarkable results for your business. Not only will you reach a wider audience but you will be able to target users so you’re no longer aiming blindly with your online advertising.
You can choose for your products to be marketed to specific subgroups of people, for example people aged between 16 and 21, users within a twenty-mile radius of a particular place. The possibilities are endless.
48% of 18 to 34 year olds check Facebook right when they wake up!
Facebook Marketing: Become Discoverable
Put your business on the map. Search engines love Facebook Business Pages. Because a business page is a public URL and not a private one, your site will have a much easier time making it to the top of a Google search than your website. That’s unless you’ve invested a lot of £ into SEO (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Facebook Marketing: Free Advertising
Your Facebook business page is like the huge billboard in Times Square except for the fact that it’s free. Your customers are there, their friends are there. And you can say a heck of a lot more on a FB page than you can on a billboard.
Facebook Marketing: Techniques
Here we’ll take a look at some of the effective techniques used by some of the top brands and marketers.
Status updates with text and visual content
Facebook Marketing: eBay
eBay uses multiple Facebook tactics in the update below. Hashtags, tagging, an eye-catching photo and a DIY gift idea right before Valentine’s Day all add up to engagement and click-throughs—and attention for their Style blog.
Using these marketing tactics can add up to big engagement.
Facebook Marketing: JD Sports
JD Sports uses Facebook to Not only help spread the word, but to also entice in-person shoppers, who may have happened upon the event, to stay in-the-know by becoming Facebook fans, too.
Using these marketing tactics can quickly add likes to your page.
Facebook Marketing: MuscleFood
Muscle Food uses Facebook to give their fans what they want: a heads-up on sales or discounts. In this instance they are promoting a 24 hour special and only people who like their page will see it i.e. "if you know, you know!" not only does this create a sense of urgency for existing customers but it also entices shoppers, who may have stumbled upon the event, to stay in-the-know by becoming Facebook fans, too!
Perfect way to promote a product/service and add likes to your page.
Facebook Marketing: Facebook Likes
Facebook likes are important, if your looking to increase your brand awareness and drive more traffic to your site. If a potential customer can see you have only 10 likes it is likely that they will not like your page. This is the hard part. Building legitimate likes takes time.
Nowadays you can purchase likes to make your business look Trustworthy. However there are certain drawbacks from this and it could damage your reputation. If most of your page likes aren't real, a low percentage of fans engage with your content, which in turn will mess up your Edge Rank (will talk about this more later on). Gaining more real likes is what you should be aiming for, though it's not always easy, in the long run it will benefit your business massively.
Did you know: Paying for Facebook ads in order to generate likes only provides you with only some if any legitimate likes and that the percentage of engagement of those likes is almost non-existent.
Some good tips to stay on top
Be authentic: Share what you're genuinely excited about and your customers will be excited too.
Be responsive: When people comment on your posts, show that your business is listening and that you care. If you need more time to answer a question, let them know you’re looking into it. Customer service is key!
Be consistent: The more regularly you post, the more opportunity you have for connecting with people and building trust.
Do what works: Replicate your success on posts that get more engagement and impressions.
Make successful posts into successful promotions: When you notice that a post is getting a lot of engagement, promote it to reach even more people. When people like, comment on or share your posts, their friends are also eligible to see those posts in News Feed.