Facebook for your business is an easy decision to make. But using it as a marketing tool and getting results from it are not the same. By early 2017, 62% of small business owners admitted that their Facebook ads weren’t working because they were missing the target. Clicks and likes are great, but what about sales and conversions? Here’s how to see a return on marketing investment you make in Facebook for your business.
Specifically, what are your business goals? Facebook is a multifaceted platform that offers distinct ways to align your marketing strategy with what you want to achieve.
You can use Facebook’s audience of around 2.5 billion users to expose your brand and increase awareness. Be sure to have a specific and measurable goal.
Do you want to increase the number of likes you get for each post?
What’s going to make this happen, and why is that important?
A few hundred new followers each month is an easy goal, especially when you pay to boost quality posts.
What do you have planned for those new followers? Do they need to learn more about you so you can push them deeper into your sales funnel?
Pay close attention to which call-to-action option you select for your post.
It’s no longer sufficient to have a general marketing strategy on Facebook. Those who engage with your posts expect you to be respectful of their time and attention. Your approach and CTA must be in alignment with the business goal you want to achieve.
You already know this, but guess what? You don’t own the relationship with your Facebook followers. The social media platform gets to decide who sees your posts, and business pages continue to see a steady decline in organic reach. It’s possible that only up to 2% of your followers will see a post unless you boost them.
Social media marketing expert Neil Patel believes that it’s your fault – and not Facebook – if your posts and Facebook Ads fail. One of the top reasons for this failure, he explains, is not understanding what type of content moves people deeper into the sales funnel.
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That’s why it’s crucial to become comfortable and proficient in using the Facebook Ads Manager.
This built-in tool helps you with specific audience selection based on your marketing strategy. Then, you’re able to get relevant real-time analytics so you can fine-tune what’s working.
It’s highly sophisticated, allowing you to include attributions so you can see which ads should get credit for a conversion or sale. You can even engage in multivariate testing so you can determine which creative approach or CTA is most effective at engaging your audience.
Above and beyond what you can learn from the performance of your paid ads and boosted posts, there’s a huge treasure trove of statistics from experts that can tell you. You can, for example, see and take advantage of the information on the best time to post on Facebook for optimum reach (Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.).
Video reigns supreme on social media, and Facebook Stories is a powerful way to use video on Facebook. It has more than 300 million daily active users.
One of the reasons why businesses value this marketing tool is because Facebook Stories gets prominent placement on the app. The time-sensitive FOMO nature of Facebook Stories is an effective way to share breaking news about your brand or to offer limited-time sales and discounts.
More than half of consumers prefer video over other types of content. Nearly half a billion people watch 100 hours of video content each day on Facebook. If you’re a marketer with a budget (who isn’t?), the cost of a Facebook video ad is less than image or carousel ads.
Video outperforms static posts on all social media platforms. It’s also more difficult and costly to produce. Many successful businesses use video as a complement to organic or boosted posts, as well as sponsored ads. Here’s how to get as much as you can out of video on Facebook.
As a business, you can’t afford not to be on Facebook with a paid marketing strategy. Organic Facebook marketing isn’t completely dead, but the organic reach just isn’t what it used to be.
Facebook is where your customers spend most of their time, it works in conjunction with your other SEO efforts, and it is budget-friendly. It’s also highly targeted, allowing you to reach people by age, interests, behavior, and location.
Just don’t fall for the claim that Facebook can be a cheap form of marketing or advertising. It’s true. You can reach a thousand people with just five bucks. It’s not the cost of the boost. It’s whether those thousand people will value the content.
Learn how a subscription-based approach to content creation – including social posts – can help you improve Facebook Marketing for your business.