Do you want to increase online sales, build brand awareness and promote your products? Read on…
From global leading brands that boost TV advertising campaigns with Facebook engagement to growing businesses that host creative online offers to keep fans excited, any business, big or small, can use Facebook as a marketing tool.
Social media platforms such as Facebook bridge the gap between businesses and consumers, improving communication between them and leaving brands with a better understanding of their audience.
Whether you are a freelance graphic designer, a successful independent restaurant or a globally recognised brand, Facebook should be at the top of your marketing strategy.
FACEBOOK GROUPS AND PAGES
Facebook groups and pages each have their own strengths. Groups are ideal for intimate communication in communities, to discuss a topic and to share ideas and opinions. Pages are designed to help businesses, organisations and professionals create an authentic presence online to represent their values. Therefore, creating a Facebook page for your brand or business is the first step towards getting yourself noticed on the social network.
KEY STEPS TO PROMOTING YOURSELF, YOUR BUSINESS OR A BRAND ON FACEBOOK
Suggesting your page to friends, putting up signs in your brick-and-mortar store, and adding a Like button to your website wherever possible will all contribute to page growth.
However, the most noticeable change in Likes will be as a result of the content you post on your page.
Let’s look at ways to optimise your Facebook marketing effort for free, by identifying your audience, creating compelling content and analysing your strategy.
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IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Having a clear understanding of your target audience will help your tailor your Facebook posts to provide them with content that will interest them. Most brands have customer profiles outlined through authorised data collection, but as a growing online business, taking time to identify your ideal customer will help you to find more of them.
HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE:
- Create a description of your ideal customer. Decide on age, gender, personality, occupation, hobbies, spending habits, likes and dislikes.
- Locate your online audience. Which websites interest them? What are they reading? What are they likely to search for online?
- Determine their end goals. What is it about your product or service that they like?
- Write a more detailed outline of each identifiable customer. Give them each a name and backstory. Write a short “day-in-the-life of” paragraph about each one that you can refer to.
Those are just a few questions to get you started. There are literally hundreds of customer profiling templates online that can help you build a more comprehensive portrait. Piecing together a clear picture of who you’re ‘talking’ to online will help determine the tone for each post and what customers are likely to respond to.
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CREATE YOUR FACEBOOK CONTENT STRATEGY
A Facebook content strategy is a daily outline of page updates scheduled for the week or month ahead, which include things you want to promote or share.
For example, you know next week you will be posting a blog post about an exclusive time-limited offer available on your website’s online store which will start on Saturday and finish on Monday.
For your Facebook strategy you could schedule the following: an announcement of the upcoming offer on the Thursday before, share a link to the blog post on Saturday and post a product image on Sunday evening as a reminder to those who haven’t already taken advantage of the offer that it will be ending the following day.
Map out your Facebook strategy by determining your weekly or monthly goals and devising daily content around them. Remember to look at your customer profile to find ways of working in content that would interest them.
Your goals may be to drive traffic to your online store, increase your reach and Page Likes, or build brand awareness. You might find that your goals are ALL of these things, so a strategy is central to creating posts that get attention and get results.
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ANALYSE YOUR PROGRESS WITH FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
With your page in place and content being published regularly, you can measure your success using Facebook Insights. Facebook’s easy-to-use analytics service helps you evaluate different aspects of your page.
Tools such as Engagement, Page Likes and Post Reach help with tracking your best-performing content by discovering who’s engaging with you, and at what time. Use these tools to find out what’s working well, write your own best practice, and then replicate it.
These steps are simple, but it takes an active page to make discoveries that lead to growth.
TAKING YOUR FACEBOOK MARKETING TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Advertising and marketing on Facebook is BIG business. Companies large and small are gaining huge followings and profits using this powerful marketing tool.
For creative Facebook marketing tips and strategies for your business, contact us today and we help you to set up a successful advertising campaign.
