25 Guaranteed Tips to Rock your Marketing Strategy for Facebook

If you are looking to expand your business, you know how important it is to have a social media presence. Social media is the new battleground now!

Talking about social media, Facebook still dominates as one of the most widely used online platforms. And the vast majority are using it daily, which continues to provide brands and businesses with an opportunity for maximum visibility by implementing a persuasive Facebook marketing strategy. 

It has 2.37 Billion active users every month. There are 1.62 million people who log into Facebook daily.

So Facebook is THE platform to start your digital journey. You can create a healthy audience for your brand, which will, in turn, increase your sales. 

With hundreds of thousands of businesses on Facebook, the competition on Facebook is back-breaking.. There are more than 60 million active business pages. 

Also, there are more than 350 million photos and 55 million statuses posted every day. Ever wondered how your business will survive such colossal competition?

Well, Don’t Worry!

All you need is a strong Facebook marketing strategy so that your content reaches your target audience. Before talking more about Facebook marketing strategy, let’s look at things that are necessary to have, before working on a marketing strategy.

HAVE A BUSINESS PAGE

Your business must have a Facebook page. Small business owners tend to use their Facebook account. However, an account can have a maximum of 5000 friends. 

On the other hand, A page can have many more followers. Plus, it looks professional. Do fill out the description of your business on your page. It gives you a limit of 255 words to tell people about what you do.

Also, provide your contact information, especially your website. This will allow people to contact you.

ADD A COVER PHOTO 

The next thing to do is make your page presentable. A page without a profile picture and cover photo seems bogus. Small businesses overlook the importance of cover photos.

So add a suitable cover photo. For example, If you are a gym owner in Delhi, you can add a picture of your gym.

It is recommended to use high-quality images, especially for the cover photo. You can also use your cover photo to showcase your skills. Example- if you own a tattoo parlour in Chandigarh, you can show some of your best work.

PIN YOUR BEST WORK

These are the posts that are ‘pinned’ on the top of your Facebook page. It is the first thing someone sees when they visit your page. Pin the best posts on your page.

Also, you can pin any article of your current campaign. Keep updating your pinned post from time to time. 

Here is a comprehensive guide to help you make the right Facebook marketing strategy for your business.

SETTING GOALS

The first step to growing your business is to set the right goals.  What is it that you are looking to achieve out of your Facebook strategy?

• Do you want more people to know about my brand and my products?

• Do you want increased website traffic?
• Or more leads from your Facebook strategy is what you are looking for?

These questions will help you understand what you need out of your Facebook strategy. There is no one size that fits all strategy on Facebook. So you must understand what your brand needs and aim for it accordingly.

Well, while setting goals, it is beneficial to set SMART goals. 

S- Specific

M- Measurable

A- Attainable

R- Relevant

T- Timely

For example, Rather than setting your goal as ‘an increase in website traffic’, your goal can be to gain 20% in your website traffic in four months. This is a SMART goal because it is specific, can easily be tracked and measured, realistic, and has a time component. Similarly, if you’re aiming to increase leads and sales, your goal could be to have 25 leads at a cost per conversion of less than $15 by the end of the month. Setting SMART goals can help you determine whether your Facebook marketing strategy is working or not, and make changes accordingly.

KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Now that you know what you want, it’s time to understand your audience. Marketing on Facebook is useless if you don’t reach out to the right people.  Whether your target audience is make-up artist, teenagers, gamers, or graphic designer, they are already on Facebook.

So, where do you start? If you have a basic idea of your target audience, you can start building an audience in Facebook Ads Manager. You can create a custom audience on the Ads manager.

While creating a custom audience, Facebook provides you with a lot of options to build your audience. The choice you choose depends on the amount of information you already have available on your target audience.

The first option on the list is to upload a customer file. It is for the businesses that already have information about their customers, including names, phone numbers, and email addresses, Facebook can use it to generate what is referred to as a lookalike audience. 

Some other options include targeting people who have visited your website, having previously engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page, and more. These options work for businesses that observe a lot of engagement and want to turn your followers into customers. 

Facebook allows you to create an audience from scratch. To do this, all you need to do is fill the information you desire in your audience. You can use that custom audience in future ad sets and tweak it as needed.

While creating a custom audience, make sure that you aren’t targeting an audience too specific or too broad.  The more, the merrier doesn’t necessarily work here.

Facebook Audience Insights also allows you to know about your competitor’s audience. This will give you a starting point from which you can create your own unique target audience. Once you’ve obtained the demographic information you need from Facebook Audience Insights, you can build your own custom audience.

 

• Facebook Plugins

Using Facebook plugins can improve your brand awareness as well as your following on Facebook. This can include having a like and a share button for your website so that people can share about it on Facebook.

People can like your Facebook page without leaving your website.

• Facebook Pixel

It is a few lines of JavaScript code that allows you to track user’s activity on your website. Facebook Pixel helps you track some micro-events that your followers perform on your site. It is part of the Facebook Ad Manager.

This helps you to track your ads, as well as your website’s effectiveness.

CONTENT IS THE WAY TO SUCCESS!

No matter how good your marketing skills are, your campaign is going nowhere if your content sucks. Now there are some essential points to keep in mind while deciding the content of your ad.

Brand: Does the content relate to your brand and effectively showcase your product/service? Make sure your brand’s logo is correctly placed on the ad.

Reward: Why should your audience watch your ad? Do they get anything out of it

Action: Your content must urge your viewers for a response, which is in accordance with your Facebook goals. More explicit your call to action is, better it is.

Fun: Humour is the easy way to your audience’s heart. Funny content gets more engagement than all other things. 

If you want people to share your content, make your content worth sharing. The most shared content on Facebook falls under these categories-

1. Delight others with valuable & entertaining content.
2. Spread a word about new things.
3. Foster relationships.

No wonder some of the most viral content on Facebook is related to food, animals, fashion, humour, and beauty!

TYPES OF POSTS

Now Facebook provides a variety of posts to share your content. It is recommended to use all the post in your Facebook Marketing Strategy for your small business, if you want to compete with big brands. These are –

• Text Post

It is the most basic post. It contains just text, that’s it. It can be used to start a conversation or ask a question. This can help in increasing your engagement with your audience. 

Don’t write an essay on your post. People don’t like to read long posts.

It is observed that posts with 250 words or less are likely to get more engagement than other text posts.

• Photo Post

These posts contain a picture, with or without a caption. Studies show that Posts with Pictures can get you more than twice the engagement you will get from an average post.

Also, if your post contains a photo album, it is likely to have 3.5 times more engagement than an average post. So clearly people prefer photos over text.

Try to include at least one picture in your post. Don’t worry if your product or service is less tangible. The image in your post doesn’t need to be a photo at all.

It can be an illustration, a poster, any visual, etc.

• Video Post

Now comes the star of the show. Video post takes up almost the whole of your customer’s feed. People love a post with a video. Research shows that video’s get more engagement than pictures!

You can post anything from an announcement to any exciting content. 

People have minimal attention span these days. Anything forcing your customers to come out of their comfort zones, and they will scroll away.

It is observed that the optimal length of a video is under 2 minutes. People love videos of 15-30 seconds the most. 

If you are mostly going to use videos, you can also show your content on Youtube. Read my article to know more about ways to get Youtube subscribers.

Also, it is found that only 15 percent of the people watch videos with their sound on! 

It is a crucial point to keep in mind. Make sure your videos make sense even without sound. Also, do add subtitles. They now carry extra responsibility in the absence of sound.

People tend to prefer vertical video viewing over horizontal viewing. Facebook studies reveal that more than 75% of consumers found the vertical video format more engaging.

• Thumbnails

Now, what on earth is a thumbnail?? 

It’s the picture that is shown before the video starts. Most people decide whether to watch a video or not, based on how interesting is it’s thumbnail.

So, Make sure the thumbnail captures the viewer’s attention and conveys what the video is all about.

• Live Video Post

It is what it sounds like. You can connect with people at that very moment. Your audience gets to interact with you. It can be a great way to make an announcement.

It sounds like a promising opportunity to improve interaction with your audience, but you need to be extra careful with it. 

People start a live video with high confidence, but if you get nervous on a live video, it leaves a drastic negative impact. So be prepared with your content. Form a rough itinerary of your live post in your mind.

• Linked Content Post

Linked post lets you share content outside the Facebook. It is one of the most comfortable posts to create. Just share some content with a caption, and your post is ready!

Just make sure you put some caption on your post, so your audience knows what it is about.

It gets more engagement than regular text posts but less than photo/video posts.

• Facebook Poll Post

You can make a poll for your audience. This post lets you interact with your audience even better. Also, you can have a poll post when you can’t choose between some things.

It makes you understand your audience better. Also, your audience will feel respected and feels that their opinion matters to you. People like businesses that care for them.

• Facebook Stories

Facebook stories tend to stay for 24 hours. Photos appear for five seconds, and videos can surface for up to 20 seconds. Stories should be part of your Facebook Marketing Strategy in 2020.

Since they appear on top of the news feed, it has better chances of reaching your audience.

As the competition is increasing, you should aim to leverage all the posts in your Facebook Marketing Strategy.. Since all the posts interact with the audience differently, it can be a bit overwhelming to remember when to post which one. 

So, It is highly recommended to use a Social Media Calendar to keep a proper schedule of your posts. There are a lot of options available in the market, like Trello, Microsoft Excel, etc.

Make sure you produce quality content for all your posts.

DETERMINE THE BEST TIME TO POST

It’s natural to post your content when it gets maximum impressions from your followers. Facebook audience insights let you know the best time to post your content.

Be Mobile-Oriented

It is an era of Smartphones. As of 2020, your smartphone easily outperforms your desktop. People prefer smartphones these days.

It is observed that more than 95% of your audience uses Facebook on their mobiles. So, all your content must be compatible with mobile phones.

There is a popular 80-20 rule in the matters of Social Media. It means 80% of your content should inform, educate, or entertain your audience. The rest of the 20% content should promote your brand.

The goal is to present more value to keep your followers entertained.

Facebook’s Algorithm

Facebook keeps changing its algorithm from time to time. In 2020, thanks to Facebook’s algorithm, an extremely less percentage of your followers will have your posts in their feed.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, around 5% of your followers will see your post naturally. That’s one drawback of having a harsh competition. Well, this is when sponsored ads come into the picture.

Sponsored Stories have 46% higher Click-through rates and 20% lower cost per click than regular Facebook ads. So sponsored ads are a great asset to your marketing strategy for Facebook.

Facebook Contest

If you want to boost your performance to achieve your goals, you can create a contest on Facebook. Doing a simple yet exciting contest can increase your following.

A simple ‘caption-this-photo’ contest can be 5.5 times more engaging than regular posts. If you are selling something tangible like T-Shirts, etc. then you can give your product as a prize.

Do keep your contest on things that are famous and trending, so that more people can join. Know more about how to run contests on Facebook.  

Post Regularly

If you want to make the most out of Facebook, then you need to post your content regularly and consistently. Your followers will always find your new content. This increases the chances of conversions.

If you want to gain interesting insights about Social Media and Marketing Strategy, watch this video:

Audience Insights

The Audience Insights tool provides you with various information about your audience. These are the things that you can know – 

• likes
• reach (the people who see your posts)
• engagement (how many people liked, clicked, shared, or commented)
• which of your posts results in people unliking your page.

It displays information like age, gender, location, what they do for a living, and various others.

You can also find out what other pages your audience shows interest in. You can learn about your audience’s interest and the kind of content they prefer.

This helps you to create an image of the audience. You can also know how much time they spend on Facebook daily, their income, and what they like to purchase online. Now you can plan your content in your ads accordingly. 

Creative Hub is a great feature that lets you know what influential brands are doing on Facebook to succeed. Well, if an excellent ad idea is suitable for a huge brand, it can work for you as well!

You can also ensure that your image ad will be approved on Facebook beforehand. 

Also, you can also create a Mock-up for your ad campaign. This can perform as a check for quality and ensure your ads are effective. It benefits you by previewing your ads in a habitat it is supposed to perform. It also allows you to manage and edit the ads simply. It’s quite easy to export your ad to Facebook from here.

Page Posts 

Page Posts tool allows you to see all the posts on your page and how people are responding to it. It provides you with a lot of options like managing your Scheduled Posts, Published Posts, and Ads Posts. 

You can also know how many people saw your post (Reach), how many total clicks and actions your post received, how many people took action, and when your post was published.

Automated Rules

You can set some conditions as rules around which your ad campaign revolves. This feature is valuable to keep track of your activities so that things don’t go out of hand. For example – you can set an ad limit of 100 rupees per ad per day. This way, you can keep a check on your daily budget.

Want to know more about marketing tools, then read my article on Top tools to champion digital marketing for business growth.

Interact

If you are planning on asking a few questions in your post, or your followers ask you some questions, make sure you answer them. Interacting with your followers on Facebook builds a healthy relationship, trust, and loyalty. It is seen that 71% of consumers who had positive social media interaction with a brand are likely to recommend it to others!

Also, engage with other Facebook pages as well. People can like your answers on other pages, and this can lead them to your page.

Promote your Event

Let’s say you are having a promotion event at your store. So you can promote it on Facebook by creating an event. All you need to do is insert the date and place of the event, the place where it will be held, relevant keywords, a link to the website where tickets are sold (if any).

This can increase the footfall to your event. It also shows that your business is actively engaged with the community.

Ad Reporting

This feature allows you to measure the success of your ads. This will help you to analyse your previous ads so that you can know what really worked. This way, you are always making your ads better. This is beneficial when you want to compare two different campaigns of yours so that you know which key metrics work for you.

FACEBOOK GROUPS

You need to make sure you don’t  lose your existing customers. The best way is to show them you care. You can give them incentives from time to time. One of the ways to do that is to create a Facebook group. There are three types of groups.

1. Open Group – Anyone can see who the members are, anyone can post in it. It can be used to build awareness of your brand. 
2. Closed Group – Anyone can see who’s in the group, but only the group members can post in it. You can use it for your customers. Encourage them to give their ideas. This will make them more loyal to your brand.
3. Secret Group – Only members see who’s in the group, and what members post. Secret members-only groups are excellent for higher-level conversations that need confidentiality.

You can use your offline customers to strengthen your online presence. Let’s suppose you have a store in Delhi. So you can give your users a discount when they share their review on Facebook. This will improve your relationship with the existing customer as well as make people aware of your brand.

You can also give them a discount if they post a picture of them in your store and tag your Facebook page.

Incentivize your Campaign

If your goal is to have more traffic to your website or getting people to download your app, then you need to give them something in return. According to a research, 42% of fans like a page to get a coupon or discount. 

Another study shows that campaigns with coupons or discounts as incentives receive the highest engagement rates.

News Feed

You can also get your ads in the news feed of Facebook. It improves the visibility of your ads and increases the chances for more interactions. Since engagement rates of news feed ads are 10 to 50 times higher than that of usual ad placements in the right column.

Facebook Messenger

Businesses often overlook Facebook messenger in there marketing strategy. This communication tool can be beneficial, especially when combined with chatbot technology.

Chatbots are virtual assistants designed to communicate with your audience. 45.8% of consumers said that they prefer interacting with a business through a messaging app than email.  

Facebook Marketplace 

If your product is something wearable like watches, clothes, etc. then you can put your products on Facebook Marketplace.  It can really boost your earnings. Just put your product on Facebook Marketplace, and you are good to go!

If you want to know how you to make a solid strategy around Facebook, this video is quite insightful

CONCLUSION

Facebook is a great place to start your marketing journey. It’s time for you to apply these tactics to see the benefits that you would love to see. Just don’t compare your progress with anyone but yourself, and keep working hard. 

Good things take some time. But once you start, you will understand what works for you and what doesn’t. Keep improvising your Facebook Marketing Strategy from time to time. Also, you can improve things by taking your business to other platforms like Instagram. 

Now it’s time to hear from you guys! If you have any doubts about any of the tactics or have some tactic that you love using, do mention it by leaving a comment below.