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17 Proven Facebook Marketing Strategies for Businesses

Over 20% of the world population is on Facebook. That’s a huge percentage.

Alphabet (Google’s parent company) may be worth more than Facebook in monetary value, but Facebook is more valuable to marketers than Google.

How?

Facebook has more information about web users than Google.

For example, Facebook knows your likes and dislikes, favorite foods, age, demographic, social behavior, how many kids you have, family and more.

This means Facebook serves more targeted and relevant ads to its users.

And Facebook is powerful and effective than just using it for advertising.

In this article, I’ll share with you 17 incredible ways to market on Facebook.

Let’s get started.

1. Drive traffic from your website to your Facebook Page

Facebook is a lot more useful and powerful when you have an active website that receives decent traffic.

It was estimated that there are about 3.2 billion Internet users in 2015. That’s a big increase when you consider that only 400 million people used the Internet back in 2000.

the-number-of-internet-users-in-2015

In a developed country like the United States, there are 10 web users for every 12 people.

Consumers use the Internet to search for products and services they need. Having an active website will help your business gain the credibility it needs to convert web users into customers.

According to a report released by business-to-business research firm Clutch, nearly half of U.S. small businesses still don’t have a website.

nearly-half-of-US-businesses-still-dont-have-a-website

You can drive traffic from your website to your Facebook page.

People who visit your website use Facebook.

By giving them the opportunity to further connect with your business on Facebook, you’ll have a higher chance of converting them into customers.

For example, Saah Furniture is a family-owned furniture company that serves Virginia, Maryland and the Washington, D.C. areas.

Their site is active, and they give you an opportunity to connect with them on Facebook and other social sites.

small-business-gives-you-an-opportunity-to-connect-with-them-on-Facebook

2. Grow your Facebook Page through advertising

You may want to know why having a Facebook page is so important.

As of December 2016, Facebook has 1.86 billion monthly active users. That’s huge!

A Facebook page is your business home on Facebook. It’s where prospects would learn more about your business while on Facebook.

With such a huge number of people who use Facebook each month, your business should have its own Facebook page.

Even a California pool construction company like Sun Pool Construction has a Facebook page.

pool-building-company-based-in-California-has-a-facebook-page

Now, you don’t just set-up your Facebook page and leave it. You have to promote it to potential clients. Facebook ad platform lets you do that with ease.

The good news is that Facebook ads are cheap. You only pay when someone likes your page. That way, you can easily build loyal fans on Facebook.

3. Host a Facebook contest

Running contests on Facebook is a smart way to get more likes for your Facebook page and increase the reach of your brand and product.

Facebook contest works, and it’s cheap. You do not need any technical skills to run contests on Facebook. Just a click of the mouse and you’re done!

Facebook allows you to promote your contest through advertising on the platform.

For example, this contest post by Wishpond was seen by 16,386 Facebook users.

promoting-your-facebook-contest

4. Integrate social media sharing everywhere

Social media is the most powerful form of marketing the world has ever seen.

Facebook is at the forefront of social media. It holds 18% market share. That is 7% more than its closest competitor which is the Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

Facebook-dominates-the-social-market

When you add together the market share of Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, that makes Facebook almost unbeatable.

To really succeed on Facebook, you need to integrate social media across everywhere your company shows up.

Facebook dominates social media. By sharing your social profiles everywhere, you’re likely to get more leads from Facebook.

5. Engage with your Facebook community

If you own a pet care company, people are talking about pets on Facebook. There are communities for pet owners and lovers.

Because someone is sharing their sweet experience with their pet and they live in New York doesn’t mean they can’t refer a friend who lives closer to your Los Angeles pet care company.

Facebook is the biggest social platform and information travels very fast these days.

Anyone can become your client.

Start engaging with people on Facebook. The more you do it with prospects, the more customers will flood your business.

6. Engage with other Facebook Pages

Even when you have a Facebook business page, Facebook allows you to like and engage with other pages. It doesn’t matter if they are related to your industry or not.

You need to start getting on the radar of other Facebook page owners. You can develop a solid relationship with them. That can open an opportunity to collaborate with content creation or even partner with them.

7. Post images on Facebook

Over 300 million images are uploaded on Facebook per day. That is a big indication that Facebook users like images.

BuzzSumo found that Facebook posts with images receive 2.3x more engagement that posts without.

facebook-posts-with-images-receive-more-engagement

Another study by HubSpot shows that Facebook photos generate 53% more likes and 104% more comments that the average post.

Facebook-photos-generate-more-engagement-and-comments

Whether it’s a photo, chart, comic, annotated screenshot or a visual representation of something, Facebook users would like it.

Adding images to your Facebook posts will help you develop a stronger and deeper relationship with your company fans.

You don’t need design skills to create attractive images for Facebook.

Tools such as PicMonkey, Picktochart, and Canva will help you create high-quality images people will want to share with their friends on Facebook.

8. Post videos on Facebook

We now live in a video-first world.

Facebook recorded an increase of 800% in video consumption from 2015 to 2016, jumping from 1 billion daily views to 8 billion daily views in just a year.

Videos are even more effective than images when marketing on Facebook. Video posts on Facebook have 135% greater reach than photo posts.

Marie-Forleo-using-video-to-market-her-business-on-Facebook

Big brands are already taking advantage of videos to market on Facebook.

UPS-is-already-taking-advantage-of-videos-to-market-on-Facebook

Why is video so powerful when marketing on Facebook?

As you know, capturing people’s attention on Facebook is hard.

Facebook users follow a lot of brands, celebrities and when you add that to the updates of their friends, it makes it extremely difficult to keep their attention to your business for a long time.

But videos have been proven to help attract and keep people’s attention better than any other kind of content.

People can easily watch videos for 10 – 20 minutes and even more if they find the video interesting, engaging and entertaining.

Engagement is an important metric to watch when doing any form of digital marketing.

As I mentioned earlier, video content receives higher engagement on Facebook.

In fact, according to a report published in Fortune magazine, engagement for non-video content on Facebook is declining.

There’s no faster and better way to build trust with prospects on Facebook than using videos.

web-users-interact-better-with-videos

And that’s not all.

52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video marketing strategy as the type of content with the best ROI.

videos-the-content-type-with-the-best-roi

And 50% of advertisers are shifting budgets from TV to digital video.

Facebook is one of the best places to promote your digital videos.

You can use video to explain everything prospects need to know about your product. A local firm like Elville and Associates, which provides estate planning, special needs planning and elder law services in Maryland, could use Facebook videos to explain its services to prospects.

Something that would take you 1,000 words to explain and probably over 10 minutes for web users to read can take less than 2 minutes to understand when you use videos.

9. Create or join Facebook Groups

There are millions of active Facebook groups for marketing today. There’s a group for every interest or topic under the sun.

In fact, there’s a Facebook group for servers, bartenders, and all restaurant workers.

Facebook-groups-for-servers-bartenders-and-all-restaurant-workers

There’s also a Facebook group for obese people.

Facebook-group-for-highly-obese-people

You can use Facebook groups to build your business and grow your influence.

Join Facebook groups that are connected to your products. Doing that will help you connect with peers for possible partnerships and prospective clients.

If you can’t find active Facebook groups that are related to your brand, you can create a new one. It’s just that it will take some time to build up membership for a new group.

Be genuine and helpful on Facebook groups. People will know if you’re faking it.

Genuinely helping people will lead to solid reputation and relationships. Nothing can beat that.

When you have a good reputation and know lots of people, promoting your product and convincing people to buy becomes a lot easier.

Being an active group owner can drive a lot of traffic to your Facebook page.

For example, Melyssa Griffin uses her Facebook group to promote and grow her brand presence on Facebook. She has built a group with 50,000 members.

Melyssa-Griffin-has-built-an-active-group-that-helps-her-brand

Laurence Bradford also has an active Facebook group that promotes her personal brand and blog on Facebook.

Laurence-built-an-active-web-developer-group

I can give you a lot of examples of smart marketers using Facebook groups to increase their brand presence on Facebook. It’s because it works.

If your small business’s website is already receiving a lot of traffic from social media and search engines, you can create a Facebook group where your customers can connect and interact with each other.

For example, Karen Brody is a relationship coach for men. You could launch a private Facebook group where married men interact with each other and ask her questions about improving their relationships with their partners.

And you can also use your Facebook group to provide customer support service to customers.

Setting up your Facebook group is super easy and simple. Facebook created a guide to help you with that.

10. Promote your posts with Facebook ads

A Facebook page is similar to a real website. The difference is, Facebook hosts it. It’s your business home on Facebook.

Just like you publish content on your site so that visitors can have something to read or view when they visit, the same thing applies to a Facebook page.

Your Facebook page shouldn’t be inactive.

An inactive Facebook page makes it difficult to trust a brand or do business with that brand.

It’s very important that you’re publishing on your Facebook page on a consistent basis.

But ongoing activities on your Facebook page isn’t enough. You need more.

You can’t just post on your Facebook page, fold your hands, and wait for your company Facebook fans to see it. You need to promote your Facebook posts if you’re serious about seeing any real engagement.

The average organic reach on Facebook has been declining for a few years now since the platform became more competitive.

It got worse in the first six months of 2016 as it fell 52% further.

the-average-organic-reach-on-Facebook-fell-52-percent-further-in-2016

To get your Facebook posts seen, you need to pay. There are plenty of excellent Facebook Ad examples from which you can learn.

The Facebook advertising platform gives you the opportunity to make your Facebook posts reach your fans and even their friends. Facebook ad also offers more targeting options.

11. Take advantage of your Facebook cover photo

Many small businesses neglect their Facebook cover photos – a powerful medium to advertise your product/service, gain more subscribers, or add a call-to-action.

Chelsea Piers is a sports club in New York. They use their Facebook cover to tell anyone who landed on their page why they are the best.

Who wouldn’t want to join the #1 rated gym on Yelp?

how-Chelsea-Piers-use-their-Facebook-page-cover

They are using their Facebook page cover to convey a strong marketing message.

NoteMaker uses their Facebook page cover to display their products.

notemarker-Facebook-page-cover

If you offer services, you can use your Facebook cover to highlight your skills.

your-Facebook-page-cover-to-showcase-your-skills

You can use your Facebook page cover to show your work office.

use-your-Facebook-cover-page-to-show-your-work-office

Even a local business in Brooklyn like Tattly is using their Facebook page cover to show what they do: they draw tattoos.

Tattly-a-local-business-that-draws-tattoos

A Maryland law firm like the Law Offices of Nicholas A. Parr may use its Facebook cover photo to highlight all the services it offers. So along with your Facebook profile picture, the cover photo of your profile is very important.

12. Become a content machine

Today’s most successful Facebook marketers are content machines. They create content day in, day out.

Successful content providers don’t rest. The moment you stop producing new content, the moment you start losing to competitors.

I just came across this amazing post while writing this:

become-a-content-machine-to-succeed-on-Facebook

The logic is simple:

The more content – articles, videos, podcasts, guest posts, infographics, interviews you produce, the more you will have to share on Facebook and other content distribution channels.

And the more you share on Facebook, the more successful your local business becomes.

It’s called content marketing. Content marketing is KING!

I know business owners who write 4 – 5 blog posts per week. Some even write books. They publish hard.

The secret of their success is simple:

They turned themselves into content machines.

When you produce so much remarkable content for Facebook, achieving success on the platform becomes easier.

Don’t expect to build a successful business that gets loads of clients from Facebook if you only publish new content occasionally. You have to take it seriously.

13. Track, measure and improve

Facebook is a giant planet on its own. If you aren’t tracking and measuring your marketing efforts on Facebook, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to increase the number of customers you get from the platform.

Facebook metrics can be overwhelming, which is the number one reason most small business owners ignore it.

But ignoring it would be a big mistake.

If you are really serious about driving highly-targeted traffic from Facebook, then you should be tracking, measuring and improving your efforts.

You do that by paying attention to Facebook metrics.

These are the metrics you should watch:

  • Fan Reach: This is the number of your fans who have seen a given post. This views occurred directly without any action from a friend or fan. The metric helps you measure the appeal of your content to your fans.
  • Organic Reach: This is the total number of people who have seen a given post organically (fans and non-fans).
  • Engagement: This is the number of individuals who clicked anywhere on your post. This includes liking, commenting, and sharing. It also includes people who viewed your video or clicked on your links and photos.
  • People talking about this (or storytellers): A very few people understand this metric. This metric consists of only three actions: shares, likes, and comments. It’s totally different from the “engagement” metric because it looks at these three actions alone.
  • Click-through rate: This is a metric that has been around on the web for many years. Click-through rate is the same thing on Facebook as it is in AdWords advertising, email marketing, and landing pages. It’s nice to know how many people have seen your content. And how many people act on it.

It’s important you pay constant attention to these five metrics. Make a continuous effort to improve them.

14. Post at optimal times

Knowing the best time to post on Facebook is more important than what you’re posting.

Why post something when your fans don’t see it?

The more you know about your fans, the better you know when they are likely to see your posts.

For example, if most of your fans are in the United States, you should know that 80% of the U.S. population are in the Central and Eastern time zones.

80-percent-of-the-US-population-is-in-the-central-and-eastern-time-zones

Now, you may want to share content when many of the people who live in these time zones are online.

According to CoSchedule, the best days to post on Facebook are Sunday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And the best times to post on Facebook are 9:00 am, 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm.

the-best-times-and-days-to-post-on-Facebook

15. Take advantage of pinned posts

Facebook gives admins an amazing feature that allows them to pin a post to the top of their pages’ timeline.

You can manually select any post of yours to pin to the top of your page’s timeline.

Why should you pin a post?

Pinning a post is another way to display something you want first-time visitors to see. You can also pin a post because you want everyone to see it.

Don’t just pin any post. Pin a post that is likely to drive subscription, likes, leads, and sales.

It could be an amazing offer you want your fans to see.

For example, Walmart pinned this post:

Walmart-pin-a-post-to-their-Facebook-page

As you can see, this pinned post promotes a 2-day free shipping program. Every Walmart customer will surely want to take advantage of this offer.

Stella & Dot pinned this post to tell their fans about an upcoming event.

Stella-and-dot-pinned-post-on-Facebook

Mabel’s Label pinned a post to create awareness for a newly released product.

Mabels-Labels-use-pinned-post-to-advertise-their-product-on-Facebook

16. Respond to comment on your Facebook posts

You should keep in mind that Facebook is a social network. It’s not a broadcasting tool.

Using a Facebook page means interacting with both your supporters and critics.

Replying to comments is one of the most important things a small business owner should do – if not the most important!

If you publish educating, interesting and entertaining content on Facebook, a lot of your fans will want to engage with you. Always be willing to respond to their comment.

Responding sends a positive message. It tells them that they are valued.

Top brands like Walmart, Nike, Zappos employ social media managers to respond to comments that are being posted on their Facebook pages. It’s because they know the importance of responding to those comments.

Here’s a perfect example of Walmart responding to comments that are being posted on their page.

example-of-Walmart-responding-to-comments

17. Use Facebook Insights to improve engagement

Facebook Insights is like Google Analytics, but for Facebook.

Facebook Insights will tell you everything you need to know about your fans.

Facebook-insights-tell-you-everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-fans

Do keep in mind that the more you know about your fans, the better you can market to them.

Facebook Insights tell you your fans’:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Work
  • When your fans are mostly online
  • Organic reach
  • Engagement
  • And a lot more.

The data you’ll get from Insights will help you make better, informed Facebook marketing decisions.

Conclusion

With over 2 billion active users worldwide, there’s no doubt that Facebook is one of the primary platforms you should be.

Marketing on Facebook is cheaper and more effective than Google AdWords. It’s very easy to gather high-quality leads on Facebook because they provide you with all the information you need.

It’s also easier to make fans trust you on Facebook. People are addicted to Facebook. They unconsciously sign in every single day.

That makes them exposed to your brand every day.

When you market through search engines alone, people will only get to see your website when they search for something related to your business.

But that’s not the case with Facebook. They get exposed to your brand every day. And that makes it easier to build brand loyalty among fans.

Facebook increases traffic to your website. No wonder content giants like the New York Times, CNN, and Huffington Post are doing more promotion on Facebook.

You should take advantage of Facebook to market your business.

Comments (10)

  1. Yes, you are 100% right. Facebook is the only way to reach maximum Customers, Traffic, Conversions and Leads.
    Anyway, you already explained very well about facebook marketing. No extra points to add. I like the way you explained here.

    Great thanks to you. Please keep sharing.

  2. Certainly Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tool to keep customers in track and improve the business, whether its a small or a big business. Very lovely write up on Facebook Marketing with useful tips and information, they are so well written and explained for the users to understand and follow them. Keep writing great articles like them. I shared a post on Fz Movies, a portal where you can download your favorite shows/series and movies, and will be glad if you could check it out. You can check it using this link or if it doesn't work, use this one instead https://www.techfiver.com/fzmovies/

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