In today’s digital economy, your company’s online presence is the first thing potential customers see. In fact, 68% of consumers rely on search engines to discover local businesses.
If you want to attract new customers and gain visibility in this highly competitive landscape, you need to effectively promote your business on Facebook. To succeed in business, you need a solid marketing plan that details short- and long-term goals.
Promoting your company on Facebook is an essential part of any effective marketing strategy, but it’s not as simple as just creating a profile and posting updates when you have time. You need to understand what type of audience you’re targeting and how they prefer to be reached. Read on for 18 ways to successfully promote your business on Facebook.
1. Build a solid marketing foundation
Facebook marketing is a long-term investment, but it won’t pay off if you don’t have a solid foundation. Before you dive into any marketing campaign, you need to make sure you’re equipped with the necessary skills and resources to succeed. First, make sure your company’s branding and identity are on point.
Facebook and Instagram have strict branding guidelines that govern what can and cannot be posted on the platform. If you don’t follow these rules, your account could be banned. To make your marketing efforts more effective, hire a marketing consultant to audit your business’s online presence.
They’ll evaluate your current strategies and recommend improvements to help you reach your target audience. A marketing consultant will also help you create a social media strategy.
2. Know your audience and platform
Before you create any content or start promoting your business, you need to know your target audience. To attract new customers, you need to understand their needs and pain points. If you don’t know your audience, you’re not going to create effective or useful content. Identify your target audience and the demographic that you serve.
To be successful on Facebook, you need to understand how your ideal customer uses the platform. What are their preferences when it comes to consuming content? How often do they check Facebook? Once you know your audience’s preferences, it’ll be easier to create content that resonates with them.
Once you have a clear understanding of your audience and the platform, you can create a social media strategy. Your strategy should detail how you’ll create content, what tone you’ll use, and when you’ll post it. Having a strategy in place will help you reach your goals faster.
3. Create quality content
Even if you have a solid foundation and know your audience, you won’t succeed on Facebook if your content isn’t up to par. When creating posts, you should always keep your audience in mind. While it’s important to promote your business, you need to do so in a non-spammy way.
The best way to do this is by asking yourself one question: Would I like to see this? If the answer is no, then don’t post it. If you want to attract new customers, you need to create content they can relate to. You don’t want to create content solely for your current customers. Instead, you want to attract new people to your brand.
4. Partner with other brands
As you build your online presence, you’ll notice that some of your audience members are influencers. These people have a large online following and can help you promote your business. One of the best ways to reach these influencers is to partner with other brands. When you partner with other businesses, you’re leveraging your audience to reach new people.
To find potential partners, do an audit of your current audience. Think about the demographics that you reach and where they like to hang out. Then, reach out to brands that are relevant to your business and offer to promote them to your audience members.
When you partner with other brands, you gain visibility in their audience. In turn, they’ll promote your business to their audience.
5. Pay for visibility
While you can partner with other brands to reach new audiences, there may be times when you want to be more visible in general. When promoting your brand, sometimes it’s better to pay for visibility than to build a relationship. Visibility comes in many forms, and you can purchase it on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
Paid ads let you target specific audiences and show your ads to people who haven’t yet discovered your brand. To create paid ads and boost your visibility, familiarize yourself with the various types of ads Facebook offers. The three basic types of ads you need to know are:
- Sponsored posts
- Video ads
- Native ads Sponsored posts are your basic Facebook ads.
They display at the top of your page, in your followers’ feeds, and on their timelines. Native ads are ads that look like posts on your page.
6. Ask your audience to discover their pain point
Once you’ve attracted an audience and built a relationship with them, you can encourage them to reach out to you. Building a relationship with your audience is important, but it doesn’t end there. To foster a lasting relationship, you need to actively engage with your followers by answering their questions and addressing their pain points.
When you involve your audience and actively engage with them, you can begin to see who your true fans are. You can then address their pain points and offer solutions. For example, if your customers are asking about how your product or service can benefit them, respond with examples.
When you actively engage with your audience, they feel like they’re part of a community. This fosters a positive relationship between your company and your customers.
7. Use Facebook ads to find out what works
As you promote your business and interact with your followers, you’ll begin to see what types of posts perform the best. While you should always maintain authenticity, you can test and retest certain types of content to see what resonates most with your audience. When you create ads, you have the ability to test and retest different variations of your content.
This allows you to test different headlines, offers, and images to see what resonates best with your audience. To create effective ads, start by understanding your audience. Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, you can begin to create variations of your ads. Be sure to track the results for each ad to see which ones perform best.
8. Create a Facebook Business Page
If you want to attract potential customers from outside your network, you need to create a Facebook Business Page. A Business Page is a professional platform where you can promote your company, post updates, and interact with your audience.
Before you create a Business Page, you need to decide what your page name is going to be. You can either use your company name or create a name that’s more memorable. Once you’ve decided on a name, you can create a Business Page.
To get started, go to Facebook and click “Business” in the top right-hand corner. From there, click “Manage Pages” and select “Create a Page”. Your Business Page is a tool that lets you reach a broader audience.
9. Host a Contest or Promotion
Another way to increase engagement on your page and reach new customers is to host a contest or promotion. There are a few ways you can go about this, but the most popular way is to host a contest or giveaway. When you host a contest or promotion, you’re engaging your audience and encouraging them to share their positive experiences with your brand.
For an example, Starbucks hosts a monthly contest where they give away free coffee to one lucky winner. By hosting contests and promotions, your company will appear more human and approachable. This fosters a positive relationship between your customers and your brand.
10. Send Out Brand Awareness Emails
If you want to reach a larger audience, you can send out brand awareness emails. Sending out a brand awareness email is like sending a newsletter to your subscribers. To create brand awareness emails, you need to have a list of subscribers. You can reach out to potential customers with offers and discounts.
When you send out brand awareness emails, you’re building a relationship with your subscribers. This helps you reach a larger audience because messaging services like Facebook and Instagram limit you to your followers.
11. Make sure your Facebook ad is fully optimized
Your Facebook ad is essentially a mini sales pitch that’s designed to drive clicks and generate leads. If your ad isn’t optimized to effectively reach your target audience, you’ll end up wasting a lot of money with a poor return on investment (ROI). When planning your ad campaign, keep these tips in mind:
- Your ad’s headline should be short and compelling. Don’t make the mistake of including your entire product or service offering in the headline.
- Your ad image should be attention-grabbing and visually appealing. Don’t make the mistake of using something that’s generic or uninspiring.
- Your ad copy/description should clearly spell out what your business can do for customers. Use SEO-friendly keywords to boost your ad’s relevancy to potential customers.
- Your ad’s destination URL should lead people to an action-driving landing page that prompts conversions.
12. Use relevant and high-quality ads
Every Facebook ad you create should be closely tied to your target audience’s interests. If you’re targeting parents, for example, targeting people who like parenting groups and websites will help your ad get in front of the right people.
If your ad isn’t relevant, you’ll end up wasting money on clicks that could have otherwise converted into sales. To ensure your ads are as effective as possible, keep these tips in mind:
- Keep your ad’s copy short and avoid unnecessary jargon. Your audience will respond better if you use clear and concise language.
- Use a clear call to action that prompts people to click through to your website or contact you for more information.
- Find out what your audience is most interested in and rely on those topics for ad targeting. Avoid using broad topics that don’t attract the right kind of attention.
13. Leverage Facebook’s powerful targeting tools
Facebook’s powerful targeting tools let you reach the right people at the right time. This can help you save money on ad spending while generating leads and growing your overall audience.
With Facebook’s built-in insights tool, you can discover more about your audience and their interests. This will help you better target them with specific ads. It’s a great tool to use if you’re just starting out with Facebook ads and don’t have a ton of information to put into the ad creation process.
If you already know a great deal about your audience, you can use the ad creation process to tailor your ads to specific groups. Here are some of the targeting options available:
- Age: You can target your ads to specific age groups for better ad performance.
- Education: You can target your ads to people who have specific levels of education to target them at the right time.
- Employer: You can target your ads to people who work for specific companies based on their job title.
- Language: If you’re targeting a multi-lingual audience, you can choose the language they prefer to see your ads in.
- Relationship Status: You can target your ads based on people’s relationship status to reach single individuals.
- Interests: You can target your ads based on specific interests to reach people who are actively interested in what you have to offer.
- Occupation: If you’re targeting your ads to professionals or people who work in specific industries, you can use this filter to reach them.
14. Establish a brand presence through organic posting
Once you’ve begun promoting your business on Facebook, you also need to focus on building a brand presence through organic posting. This is the best way to reach your existing audience and gain new followers.
In order to stand out, you need to create unique content that’s relevant to your niche. Avoid simply reposting the same things your competitors are posting.
Instead, create unique content that appeals to your audience and inspires engagement. When creating content, you should always keep these tips in mind:
- Make sure your content is highly relevant to your audience.
- Incorporate images, GIFs, and videos into your posts.
- Create a shareable post template to save time and increase engagement.
- Respond to comments and messages in a timely fashion. This shows your audience you care about their feedback.
- Don’t be afraid to pivot your content if it isn’t working.
- Stay away from click-bait titles and stay true to your brand.
- Create a posting strategy to help you stay consistent with your content.
15. Promote exclusive offers and events
Once you’ve established a strong brand presence through organic posting, you can start promoting exclusive offers and events to your growing audience. These posts are great for increasing engagement and driving leads. You can promote these posts based on your target audience and the times of the day they’re most likely to be online.
For example, if you know your audience is most active during lunchtime, you can promote an exclusive offer during that time. You can also create events and promote them on Facebook to get your audience more involved with your company. This is a great way to build relationships with future customers and get them more excited about your brand.
16. Partner with Influencers
Another great way to promote your business on Facebook is to partner with relevant influencers. This is a mutually beneficial relationship that can help you reach a new audience and increase brand visibility.
To find potential influencers to partner with, you can use Facebook’s influencer tool. This will help you find top influencers in your niche and see how often they’re posting on Facebook.
Once you have a list of potential influencers, you can reach out to them. You can use Facebook Messenger to quickly reach out to influencers and ask if they’d be interested in partnering with you.
17. Measure and Adjust
Now that you’ve started promoting your business on Facebook, it’s important to regularly measure and adjust your efforts. You can do this by tracking your engagement and lead generation through Facebook’s analytics platform.
This can help you see what types of posts perform best for your audience and adjust accordingly. To track your progress through Facebook’s analytics, follow these steps:
- Create a Facebook page for your business. If you don’t already have one, you can create one for free by following the steps here.
- After you’ve created your page, make sure you’ve selected the correct analytics plan. You can do this by clicking ‘Insights’ on the top navigation bar and selecting ‘Settings.’
- Follow these steps to track your engagement and lead generation.
18. Create a solid Facebook ad foundation
Once you’ve implemented the tips above and your Facebook ad campaign is off to a strong start, you need to make sure you’re building a solid foundation for future campaigns. By following these best practices, you can make sure each ad is reaching your audience effectively and generating the best ROI possible. Keep these tips in mind:
- Create a strong ad campaign. Facebook allows you to run ads for up to 90 days, but the best results come from creating a campaign that runs for at least 60 days.
- Use a budget that makes sense for your business. You don’t want to overspend on a campaign that isn’t generating results.
- Focus on one ad at a time. You don’t want to reach your audience with a variety of different ads.
- Create different variations of your ad to test different audiences and copy. This can help you see what works best.
