Facebook is an incredibly powerful digital marketing tool for raising brand awareness, engaging with your target audience and even driving conversions. When used effectively, Facebook Business Pages, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms enable small businesses to connect with potential customers and fuel lead-generation efforts.
Of course, Facebook marketing, and social media marketing in general, are yet additional responsibilities for local businesses to juggle. But with a strong Facebook marketing plan in place, you should see a return on investment in the form of new client conversions and testimonials, making it well worth the effort.
Here’s everything you need to know to develop an organic and paid Facebook marketing strategy that delivers results.
Is Facebook a good platform for marketing?
Yes, Facebook is a must-have marketing platform. Nearly all (97%) Fortune 500 companies use social networks such as Facebook to promote their businesses. 86% of marketers report using Facebook specifically to increase brand awareness and using Facebook advertising to reach their target audience.
Benefits of Facebook marketing
Here are some top benefits of using Facebook for your business.
Creating a presence for your local business on Facebook can help you:
- Be a part of the world’s largest social media platform. Facebook is ranked #1 in the world, ahead of other popular social media channels, such as YouTube and TikTok.
Not only that, other platforms owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, are also some of the most popular globally: WhatsApp is ranked #3, Instagram is ranked #4 and Facebook Messenger is ranked #7.
- Improve your SEO (search engine optimization). One reason Facebook is essential for marketing for small businesses is because a company’s Facebook Business Page can actually influence search engine algorithm rankings.
As Facebook users engage with your Facebook posts and Facebook ads, this activity shows interest in — and the value of — your content marketing. This activity elevates your search engine results page (SERP) rankings and generates more organic traffic for your website, driving conversions.
Here are email templates to ask for reviews and SMS review request templates to get more Facebook reviews for your small business.
Facebook marketing 101
Now that you know the value of Facebook marketing, here’s our step-by-step guide to developing your plan of action on the social network.
Step 1: Identify your audience
Who’s your target audience?
- Who are the consumers you’re trying to reach?
- Are they part of the Facebook audience? Are they likely to be Facebook users?
Not all demographics use Facebook equally, and the tools on the Meta platform vary. It’s critical to consider your customers’ ages, locations and other characteristics to evaluate whether you’ll be successful at connecting with them via a Facebook Business Page, Facebook ads, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram.
Step 2: Define the business objectives
Determine your overall business and broader marketing goals by asking the following questions. Are you trying:
- To drive awareness among your target market?
- To fuel lead generation efforts?
- To improve your customer service and customer care efforts?
- To increase sales or other conversions?
- To enhance customer loyalty?
- To boost search engine rankings?
It’s important to know what your broader objectives are before launching your Facebook marketing efforts. That way, you can be sure your Facebook marketing tactics support your goals.
For instance, if you’re interested in improving customer service, you may prioritize Facebook Messenger, a channel that can support and complement your other customer service channels, such as a Live Chat on your website. To generate more sales and conversions, you might start with Facebook advertising first.
Step 3: Decide the Facebook metrics and other KPIs you’ll use to evaluate your success
Spell out what Facebook marketing success looks like for your business. Define which metrics you care about the most and why. What results do you want to deliver via Facebook marketing?
- More traffic to your website?
- More leads or conversions from Facebook?
Perhaps your goal is to reduce customer support phone calls and customer wait time for answers by using Facebook Messenger. If that’s the case, call volume and wait time are the metrics you should track.
Maybe you want to get more Facebook reviews and improve your Facebook rating. If you decide to focus on getting reviews on Facebook, then you’ll want to keep track of the total number of reviews on your Facebook Business Page.
Step 4: Determine which Facebook marketing tactics you’ll use
Get specific about which Facebook marketing tactics you’ll use to meet your business objectives (defined in step 2) and maximize your KPIs (defined in step 3).
Some potential Facebook marketing tactics to consider include:
- Use Facebook ads: There are many ad formats to choose from, including Facebook lead generation ads, which are paid marketing campaigns that appear in your target audience’s news feeds as sponsored posts and include a call to action (CTA), such as joining a mailing list, to encourage users to share their contact information.
Retargeting ads are another option — you can launch these once you’ve installed the Facebook pixel on your website to retarget website visitors. This will help you reach custom audiences, such as high-quality leads who have added an item to their cart on your website but haven’t completed the transaction.
- Develop a content strategy to create compelling Facebook posts to grow and engage your Facebook audience.
- Working with influencers with a noteworthy social media following among the demographics you’re trying to engage with who can post about your products or services on their Facebook Pages.
- Leverage outside channels to promote your social media, such as emailing customers to ask if they’d write Facebook reviews for your page using your Facebook review link. (Note: Don’t buy Facebook reviews, as doing so is illegal and hurts your brand reputation.)
- Build a Facebook Group to foster a community of fans for your company.
For instance, let’s say in step 2, growing a community for your local business is one of your business objectives. In step 3, your KPIs should include the number of new Facebook Group members and the number of Facebook posts in the group each month. In step 4, you would create a Facebook Group and engage the Facebook users with helpful content.
If your goal is to grow conversions, your primary Facebook marketing tactic might be buying Facebook ads. Or suppose your goal is to decrease your average cost per lead. In that case, you may lean into other Facebook marketing tactics, such as working with local influencers and growing your presence organically using content marketing on your Facebook Business Page.
Step 5: Go live with your efforts
After deciding on what you want to do, it’s time to go live. Create your first Facebook ad campaign. Build your Facebook Group. Start adding posts to your Facebook page. Move forward with whichever tactics you’ve decided on in step 4.
Step 6: Measure your success, iterate and optimize
Depending on the channels and tactics you use, Facebook offers detailed reporting so you can monitor your progress.
For example, Facebook Ads Manager provides data about budget spending and the number of leads and conversions generated.
Meta Business Suite offers other Facebook insights, such as reporting about your Facebook posts and information about your Facebook audience.
How to create a Facebook Business Page
Check out Broadly’s guide to making a Facebook Business Page, which includes step-by-step instructions for getting set up.
In short, follow these steps:
- Choose your business type
- Add some basic information about your local business
- Fill out the “About” section of your Facebook Business Page
- Create your Facebook URL
- Add a profile photo
- Optional: Promote your page to reach more people using Facebook ads
- Set up your page admins
- Get started posting organic content to show up in the news feed of your followers (page likes)
- Plain text updates
- Photos with captions
- Links with captions
- Videos with captions
- Event pages
- Location check-ins
Nurture your Facebook leads and manage reviews from one place
Broadly partners with small businesses across industries to help business owners get more Facebook reviews and manage their online reputation across various social networks.
Schedule a demo today to see how Broadly’s social media management tools can help your small business.
