What is Facebook Marketing?
2021 has changed the way we see Facebook marketing. The market is still reeling from last year’s pandemic, struggling to get back on its feet.
And no one has felt this shift more forcefully than small business owners.
At Page Potato, we understand that Facebook Marketing is not limited to just running a few ad campaigns.
Instead, we focus on providing holistic solutions customized to suit your specific business needs.
The long-standing tactics don’t work as effectively anymore.
Add to that issues like lack of market insights and decreased ad spending, and we have a huge problem.
The only silver lining in this situation is – Facebook still holds a major chunk of the market, with over 2.7 billion monthly active users.
Since Facebook has such a large user base, marketers use it extensively to promote brand awareness among the masses.
Small businesses, irrespective of their size, sector, or scalability can profit from Facebook advertising.
The first thing you need for this is obviously a landing page and preferably a Facebook business page.
This helps you in two main ways.
- Post information related to products and services that your company has to offer.
- Reach out to millions of potential customers with just a click of a button.
What else could marketers wish for?
Marketing on Facebook is thus instrumental in helping you acquire new customers and also build long-lasting relations with them.
The best part about Facebook marketing is the filters and analytics it offers. You can identify and define the ideal buyer persona for your business.
It permits you to shortlist the specific type of people you would wish to target based on specifications like demographics, location, and interests, thus refining your reach.
Facebook lets marketers use three major tools:
- Facebook pages,
- Facebook ads,
- Facebook groups.
Each of these options has its own purpose, and they can be combined for greater reach.
Facebook Marketing tools are used by Businesses to be discovered, build presence, create awareness, generate leads, boost sales, etc.
These strategies work seamlessly on mobile as more than 90% of Facebook users use the platform predominantly from a mobile device.
Why Facebook marketing is important for startups?
While all of us are well aware of the strength of Facebook as a social media platform, let us take a look at some staggering statements that corroborate our faith.
600 million users
Facebook has crossed 600 million users and is adding new users at a rapid pace. Had Facebook been a country, it would have the third-largest population in the world, following China and India.
The Facebook Family
According to a report by the BBC, the Facebook Family has four of the most downloaded apps of the decade. Currently, Facebook owns:
- the Facebook App
- Facebook Messenger
Among these four platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp attract a major chunk of users.
An Average spends 55 minutes on Facebook every day
Since users spend about one hour on Facebook each day, it becomes an excellent platform for marketers to leverage opportunities to grab consumer attention.
The average time a user spends on WhatsApp and Instagram is about 30mins to 1hr per day respectively.
That’s a decent engagement rate!
The average user has 338 connections on Facebook
On average, every Facebook user has about 338 friends on their friend list. This number is increasing at a rapid pace with more and more people signing up for Facebook.
Average user “likes” 2 Pages a month
A survey reveals that an average user “likes” and follows just 4 pages a month, which is very less considering the vast number of brands we are surrounded with.
At Page Potato. we ensure that your social media marketing strategy plan comprises customer engagement for enhanced prospect growth.
4% Facebook pages have >10,000 followers
A study by Sysomos revealed that out of a total of 600,000 Facebook pages, only 4% have greater than 10,000 followers and a mere 0.76% have greater than 100,000 followers.
While having more followers on your page could be an arduous task, it still bears the sweetest fruit.
Customized News Feed
You may not see posts by everyone on your friend list on your news feed. This is because Facebook uses analytics to its advantage and shows updates that you are likely to be interested in.
The analysis of your likes and preferences is based on your past browsing preferences as well as likes and shares.
Thus, if you want your content to be visible to a large segment of the audience, make sure it is relevant and adds some sort of value.
Cost-effectiveness
While the cost to reach about a thousand people through newspaper advertisements is $32 and through Google Adwords is $2.75, Facebook ads cost just 25 cents.
Now, who doesn’t want to save money?
How to do Facebook marketing?
Here are a few tips that might come in handy while marketing using Facebook:
- Videos and images capture more attention of the reader. If your content is devoid of either of them, use questions to engage the audience in your posts.
- Engaging customers is often more effective on Sundays and other holidays.
- It is always better to keep your content short, crisp, and catchy. Facebook users often pay more attention to short posts than longer ones.
- If your post mentions a link that is outside of Facebook, there are greater chances of more people exploring the link.
- Images posted directly on Facebook were proven to be more attractive to users, in 2016, as compared to pictures put up on Facebook via Instagram.
Another tactic that I often recommend to small business owners is- find out what the competitors are doing, Keep an eye out for the kind of topics your fellow businesses talk about.
It gives you a fair idea of the latest trends of the industry and also some content ideas. Check out our blog on “top 5 strategies to find your competitors content on Facebook” for more insights.
Create shareable photo and video content
You don’t need a lot of marketing data to know that video ads sell the best on Facebook. Users prefer short video posts, explainer ads, whiteboard animation to text-based content
At Page Potato, our team of creative content experts can design explainer videos, short video ads, etc from scratch.
If you want to know more about video production, you can check out our blog on “How to create a video that sells your idea” to get started with your Facebook content strategy
The more engaging your posts are, the more it is liked, shared and commented on.
Facebook also has these reaction options where you can gauge how many people have given “happy, sad, angry, heart” reacts to your posts.
Use Facebook Live
Facebook Live is a new feature of the immensely popular social media network that permits users to see your videos live.
It is a great platform to launch new offerings and increase the visibility of the brand.
Use paid promotions for extended reach of content if need be.
You can also collaborate with influencers, ask them to join your live stream to attract more engagement.
With the pandemic in full swing, these live streams are becoming more and more popular. We have a quick guide you can browse through to get influencers to follow your brand online.
Giveaways
Keep the audience glued to your page and yearning for more. This can be done by introducing interesting competitions with free giveaways.
Such activities could also help in boosting the number of followers of your page.
Here is a sample of an ad campaign by Kitkat where the brand encourages customers to share messages and earn prizes.
Regular posts
Be consistent with posts and do not let your page run dry. However, being regular with posts does not mean spamming.
Post relevant and useful content. Publish new posts 5 times a week. Try posting content at a time when most users would be online.
A quick tip- you can prepare a month’s worth of posts in advance and schedule them for publishing. For this, you can use a content calendar to automate your posts.
I would also recommend business owners create and run multiple ad campaigns to different target markets. This process called A/B testing gives you a fair idea about your audience base.
Educate and entertain
While it is important that your posts add value to the audience, it is equally important for you to make them as entertaining as possible.
Also, you can use social media to promote your blogs, case studies, and another form of long content pieces.
Who said you could only post short videos and posts on social media? You can post snippets of your blog, give regular updates, promotional offers and so much more.
Check out our blog on how to promote your travel blog on Instagram for more insights.
The bottom line is, social media (including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) is a hub for users spanning different age groups and demographics.
It is a largely untapped market that can make your brand famous overnight! However, for that to happen, you have to put in consistent effort, time and have a lot of patience.
Our advice: Work smart. Work hard. and you’ll see the results. Good luck!
