By Elise Dobson
Introduction
Many of Facebook’s 2.9 billion monthly users use the social media platform to interact with brands and discover new products. Shopify’s 2023 Ecommerce Trends Report also indicates that 70% of global social media shoppers make purchases on Facebook either sometimes or all the time.
This gives Facebook the potential to generate thousands of sales for your small business.
Therefore, it is essential for you to develop a presence on Facebook that encourages visitors, both new and returning, to convert. In this guide, learn how to use Facebook to build brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, and generate sales.
How to Create a Facebook Marketing Strategy
Facebook offers a variety of features to help small businesses build their online presence. Before diving into specific Facebook marketing tactics, set up your Facebook marketing strategy for success using this essential checklist.
Creating a Facebook Business Page
This is the business equivalent of a personal Facebook page. Add your brand name, upload a profile picture and cover photo, and optimize your bio before you work on building an audience, whether you have one Facebook page or multiple Facebook pages.
Opening a Facebook Shop
Do you sell products online? Sync your inventory from your e-commerce website with your Facebook shop. This will allow potential followers to purchase products without leaving the app.
Creating an Ads Manager Account
Even if you don’t plan to advertise right now, an Ads Manager account gives you access to additional features for marketing your business, including the ability to boost successful posts.
Installing the Facebook Pixel
“The Facebook Pixel is where you want to measure, optimize, and grow your audience for your ad campaigns,” says Liam Queirk, Director of SEO and E-commerce Strategy at Enofaber.
Start Selling Your Products on Facebook
Shopify comes with powerful tools to help you list, promote, and sell products on Facebook and Instagram. Create product collections, showcase your brand and products, and make sales on Facebook and Instagram from one place.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Social media followers are the people you’ve chosen to see your content in their news feed. By building your audience, you will have a group of people ready to engage with future content.
Be mindful of the people you attract. While a Facebook audience of 10,000 people may seem like an achievement, it is not if the people following your page have no interest in the products you sell. This is why social media conversion rates tend to be low.
Before you start a new Facebook marketing strategy, you should have a strong understanding of your target market – the people most likely to buy your products. List the traits they share and use them as the basis for the content you share across the platform. This includes:
- Demographics (age, gender, location)
- Interests
- Purchase intent
- Pain points or challenges
- Goals and motivations
Use a mix of customer surveys, Google analytics, and competitor analysis to find this data.
Diversifying Your Content Formats
It is estimated that there are 1,500 posts on Facebook eligible to appear in a user’s feed each day. Stand out from the competition by diversifying your content strategy by mixing and matching the following formats:
- Video. Post videos directly in your feed, via live broadcasts, or as Facebook Stories. High-quality organic video content is favored by the Facebook algorithm as it increases the amount of time people spend on the app.
- Images. Images stand out in a text-heavy news feed. Share behind-the-scenes photos, how customers use your products, or product shots.
- Posts
- to that, partnering with other brands can also amplify your reach. Collaborating on joint campaigns or promotions can introduce your brand to new audiences and build credibility.
In conclusion, the key to successful social media marketing on Facebook lies in understanding your audience, creating engaging content, and leveraging the power of connections and collaborations.
to collaborate with influencers, I think about collaborating with other brands to expand your reach to similar audiences to yours.
According to Alex Danko, Director of Blockchain and Systems Thinking at Shopify, “The biggest opportunity that flies under the radar is collaboration. It’s the best way to increase the number of buyers who know you and care about you in a way that transforms you from competitors to collaborators, and potentially even allies and friends.”
For example, the baking tools store Great Jones collaborated with the fashion brand Lisa Says Gah to create a limited-edition bakeware line. Both brands are selling the collaboration on their e-commerce stores.
Encouraging Reviews
93% of people look for reviews before buying something online. Testimonials from happy customers, especially those that belong to the target market, are an effective way to turn Facebook into a revenue generator for your small business.
Find your Facebook reviews by going to facebook.com/username/reviews. Direct current customers to the link through purchase confirmation messages. Incentivize them to leave a review and become repeat customers by offering a 10% discount to use on their next purchase in exchange for a testimonial.
For example, Oodie has over 3,500 reviews on its Facebook page – and the majority of them are positive. This is strong evidence for new followers who are hesitant to follow your page (or buy your products) that it would be a good decision.
Joining Facebook Groups
There is an online community for every hobby you can think of. More than 1.8 billion users on Facebook are active in groups at least once a month, from local community forums to groups for pets of specific breeds.
Identify the Facebook groups that your target audience participates in by surveying current customers. You can also search Facebook for your industry and filter the results by group.
Once you find them, start engaging with the content in the group to build awareness on Facebook. Be cautious, however, as some Facebook group admins impose strict community rules. Double-check that you are allowed to share promotional content to avoid being banned.
To mitigate this (and promote as much as they can), some brands have successfully established their own Facebook group. For example, Tribe Beauty Box sells subscription boxes of beauty products through its e-commerce store. Founder Bili Balogun says she created a Facebook group that quickly gained its first 200 members.
Bili says, “I already had an email list, through my website, so I invited people to join the group by emailing my email list, saying, ‘Hey, we have this amazing group. Please join for exclusive behind-the-scenes content.’”
Tracking Facebook Statistics
The secret to Facebook marketing success is experimentation. What works for one small business may not work for another. It’s more of an art than a science.
You understand whether your strategy is working by monitoring your Facebook audience statistics. Pay attention to important metrics such as:
- Follower demographics. Assess whether your Facebook followers are likely to convert into potential customers by comparing them to your target market. You will see the top countries, age ranges, and gender distribution that make up your Facebook audience.
- Number of unfollows. Your work doesn’t end just because someone follows your Facebook page. Evaluate how good you are at retaining them by monitoring your unfollow rate.
- Where the follows happen. Find out where people are following your page – whether it’s through search or the page itself – and prioritize showing up there more frequently. This is especially important if you have limited time to focus on Facebook marketing.
- Actions
On the page. How many people are clicking on the call to action (CTA) in your Facebook bio? Check if your organic content drives people to visit your website, get directions, or contact your small business. - Success by post type. Earlier, we mentioned that diversifying your content strategy is a good way to start marketing your business on Facebook. Find the formats that engage your audience the most through this report.
Targeting Your Website Visitors
If you have any budget to work with, you can start advertising on Facebook for as little as $5 a day. A paid Facebook marketing strategy can help increase the visibility of your business Facebook page and drive traffic to your website. It may be necessary to run Facebook ads regularly to reach your target audience.
William Diaz, founder of Vertical Media, says, “Facebook’s reach hasn’t necessarily declined. It has simply shifted from organic media to paid media,” “To reach their full potential on the platform, brands will need to run Ads Manager.”
If you’re new to Facebook ads, start by targeting people who have previously engaged with your brand. There’s not much work needed to educate your ad audience, as they already know about your business and product.
Create a custom audience on Facebook for people who:
- Visited your website
- Interacted with your mobile app
- Engaged with a video you posted on Facebook
- Have already purchased a product from you
Make sure to set up the Facebook pixel across these platforms. The pixel will gather information about the people interacting with your app or website and then match it to a Facebook user profile.
Even if your business is relatively small, you’re likely to have a substantial group of people who belong to these custom audiences. The vast majority (97%) of people visit a website and leave without purchasing anything. Showing their products in their Facebook news feed serves as a reminder to buy the products they showed interest in.
Running Influencer-Endorsed Ads
We have already touched on the power influencers have when marketing businesses on Facebook. Include those influencer endorsements in your Facebook ad campaigns, like this example from Fussy, to build trust and credibility.
William Diaz, founder of Vertical Media, takes this step a level further: “Ads through influencer pages have been a game-changer for our clients. There’s no need to negotiate with top influencers in your industry for a quick Instagram or Facebook post.
“Look for a micro-influencer in your industry with less than 100,000 followers, then buy content from them promoting your product, and create some different versions of the ad to run through their page.
“A secret tip is to create a lookalike audience and custom audience from that influencer to target this uniquely designed ad content. Their followers will likely see the product and others who are recognized by that influencer. It’s a win for everyone: they get more impressions on their likeness, and our conversion rates go up.”
Running A/B Tests
Your first ad campaign you create on Facebook may not be the winning one necessarily. The ad that achieves the highest return on investment requires some experimentation to find it.
Use Facebook’s built-in A/B testing tool to experiment with:
- Ad format. From story ads to carousel images, some ad formats on Facebook capture attention more than others. Use different formats within an ad set to see which ones your target audience engages with more.
- Placement.
Facebook News Feed advertising is considered a high-value asset for advertisers. Test whether this is the case for your small business, or if alternative placements – such as the right column or Facebook Audience Network – perform better. - Campaign objective. Facebook’s ad algorithm uses the campaign objective to build audiences and bill advertisers. Local businesses may see success using objectives like page likes or lead generation, while e-commerce brands adjust their objective to conversions.
- Call to action. Beneath your creative ad is a small CTA button. Test whether “Book Now” or “Shop Now” or “Learn More” does a better job of convincing your audience to complete the goal.
Rothy’s utilizes a mix of single image, vertical video, and fans in its Facebook ad strategy.
Austin Dixon, the marketing manager at hair loss prevention store Adegen, is one of the marketers who have found success by changing the landing page their Facebook ad campaigns direct to.
He says: “While most advertisers focus on directly promoting their products from ads, we take a slightly different approach.
“We start by focusing on education and value first, instead of running ads to our product pages, we run our ads to a podcast episode our founder was featured in. In that podcast, we lead people to a free eBook, and eventually to our Facebook group.
“Thanks to that, consumers feel very informed about what is causing their hair loss before we present our products to them. As a result, our ads achieve a six-fold return without needing to sell customers on the idea that our products are better.”
Turning Facebook Audience into Email Subscribers
Building an audience for your Facebook pages is great. More followers mean a larger group of people to promote your products to.
However, many marketers view Facebook marketing as building an audience on rented land. The platform can shut down your page, or decrease organic reach, or change its algorithm unexpectedly – all of which affect your ability to communicate with the audience you worked hard to build.
Mitigate the risks by converting your Facebook audience into email subscribers. Run ad campaigns that direct your target audience to a lead magnet, such as:
- Quiz
- Coupon
- Free guide
This will give you a direct line to communicate with your target audience – a way to reach them if the worst happens. Elevate your Facebook marketing strategy to a higher level.
Facebook is a massive social network, but despite the recent controversy, it remains a valuable tool for marketers to reach their target audience – whether you have money to invest or not.
Experimentation is key to Facebook marketing success. Test different forms of content, campaign objectives, and posting times to see which works best to engage your audience. Your Facebook insights will reveal the best path for conversions.
FAQs about Facebook Marketing
Is Facebook good for marketing?
Facebook marketing is a great way to promote your business. Billions of people use the platform daily. This likely includes your target customers. Reach them by posting content on your business’s Facebook page.
Is marketing on Facebook free?
It is possible to market businesses on Facebook for free by creating a page and posting content organically. Increase your follower count to build an audience of people who will see and engage with the content you share.
Can I advertise my business on Facebook?
Any business can advertise on Facebook, provided it does not fall into special ad categories such as housing, politics, or loans.
How can I grow my Facebook page from scratch?
The fastest social media marketing strategy to grow a Facebook page is to invest in ads. Set the campaign objective to page follows, target your audience, and spend as little as $1 a day to build numbers.
Source:
https://www.shopify.com/blog/facebook-marketing
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