It’s hard to imagine a business that doesn’t at least have a presence on Facebook. But is your brand taking advantage of all the marketing opportunities that exist on the platform?
With more than 2.8 million monthly users, Facebook still holds the title of being the biggest social media network. And while a primary use for users is to connect with friends and family, two-thirds of Facebook users visit a local business Facebook Page at least once per week.
The following are six Facebook marketing tips that you should know to better reach and engage with your target audience.
Set your Facebook goals
While obvious, determining your goals for Facebook is critical to moving forward with any marketing strategy.
For instance, you might want to generate sales leads, increase your website traffic or improve customer service.
Ultimately, there is no right or wrong goal here. Just be sure to evaluate what’s most important to your brand. Then, get specific and set a timeline to achieve it.
Define your target audience on Facebook
Understanding who you want to reach should be at the core of any digital marketing strategy.
If you’re an existing business, auditing your customer database is a great place to start. Who are your best customers?
If you’re new, part of your overall business plan should already have identified your target audience.
Either way, you want to answer the following questions:
- How old are they?
- Where do they live or are they traveling? If traveling, where from?
- What are their needs or problems that you can solve?
- How often and when are they using Facebook?
Of course, the more demographic information you can determine, the better. Marketing too broadly is less successful than finding your niche.
On the flip side, if you have an existing Facebook page, take note of your follower demographics. You can find this in the Insights section of your page and then click on Followers.
It helps to understand both who you want to reach and who is already following you. This will help shape your messaging and even specific campaigns you might want to run.
Plan your mix of Facebook content
When it comes to the content you publish on Facebook, there are several factors to keep in mind.
First, your goals, which should already be set. Second, your target audience. Who are you talking to?
Then, variety is imperative. However, to simply advise “variety” is a disservice. There’s more to it than that.
One general rule of thumb is to strive for the 80-20 Rule, where about 80 percent of your posts inform, educate and/or entertain. And the other 20 percent is used to promote your brand and/or services and products.
Another approach is the Rule of Thirds, where one-third of your Facebook content is intended to share ideas and stories, another third strives for personal interactions with your followers and the last third promotes your business.
The key is to not go too hard on the sales posts. Not only will you struggle to reach and engage your target audience, but Facebook’s algorithm does not like overpromoting pages.
So, while you’re striving to break up your promotions among other content that’s intended to purely reach and engage with your target audience, you also must consider mixing up the actual content types:
- Text-only posts
- Link-preview posts
- Image posts
- Videos
- Facebook Lives
- Facebook Stories
A content calendar can help you plan and stay organized. In addition, refer to our tips for curated content so that you’re not having to spin your wheels creating every piece of content from scratch.
And it never hurts to approach your Facebook publishing with an overall content marketing strategy.
Explore other Facebook tools
Facebook is a more robust platform than just what you can do with a business page. And, of course, because every business is different, it’s worth experimenting to see what additional options could work for your brand and audience to attain your goals.
Other Facebook tools include:
- Facebook Business Manager, which can help you level up your page presence. In fact, Facebook itself calls it a “one-stop-shop to manage business tools, business assets and employee access to these assets.” The Business Manager allows you to manage both your organic and paid posts and work effectively with not only colleagues but outside contractors and agencies. Plus, it’s free to use.
- Facebook Groups, which can be considered digital spaces for people to share information and ideas. About 1.4 billion people use Facebook Groups every month, and they really are a great opportunity for increased engagement between your brand and your target audience. See our 12 tips for using Facebook Groups to grow your business.
- Facebook Messenger chatbot, which can help you maximize your opportunities to connect and be there for your potential customer when you otherwise can’t be. Facebook users exchange about 20 billion messages with businesses every month. And the bigger you get, the harder it is to keep your responsiveness high. Find out more about conversational marketing, plus our eight tips to get started beyond just Facebook.
Experiment with Facebook ads and pixel
Organic reach is not what it used to be, largely due to changes in the Facebook algorithm, which controls what is shown to users in their news feeds based on a number of engagement and other factors.
While the actual formula of the Facebook algorithm is always shifting (and always a secret), posts from friends and family take priority. This puts pressure on brands to stand out in order to reach their target audience.
And even if your brand is creating and publishing great, engaging content, you may still need to consider paying for the boost you need to reach your target audience.
The Facebook Pixel is a simple piece of code that you can embed in your website to track conversions from Facebook, retarget those who’ve already visited your website and build custom audiences for future ads.
See our seven tips to better target your Facebook ads.
Measure your Facebook performance
Facebook is a living, breathing social media platform, and your marketing not only has to rise to the occasion but be monitored and tracked as well.
You must understand what’s working and what’s not so that you can pivot your Facebook strategy as needed.
Fortunately, Facebook Insights is a section on your business page that can help you for free. It can help you monitor:
- Post reach
- Post engagement
- Which posts result in followers unliking your page
- Overall audience and follower demographics
Check out our snapshot of Facebook Insights to help you better understand all the metrics available to you.
Of course, Facebook metrics also can be tracked through various social media management tools. So, you can choose the best approach and methodology for your business.
As you’re working through your Facebook marketing strategy, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.
