If you’re considering utilizing Facebook for digital marketing, you might be interested in utilizing its extensive user base to expand your local small business. Due to Facebook’s significant audience size, it provides numerous chances for you to connect with a fresh audience and increase your company’s outreach.
To increase consumer and client engagement and website traffic using Facebook, the following questions will be explained to guide you on what you should do.
Facebook Marketing
The strategy of Facebook marketing involves promoting brands and ensuring their presence on the platform. This strategy encompasses the use of Facebook ads as well as organic (free) postings and interactions to promote brands.
Promote your local business on Facebook by posting and interacting within the platform without any cost, as promoting your business using Facebook pages does not require any payment.
The text can be rephrased step by step as follows: 1. Facebook users utilize the platform to connect with their friends and family. 2. They also use the platform to browse through products that might attract others for purchasing.
How Does Facebook Digital Marketing Work
With a growing number of over 2.6 billion active users, Facebook provides businesses with the opportunity to connect with a large segment of consumers through their dedicated business pages.
Your Facebook page or pages serve as your representation on the platform, visible to both your target audience and all Facebook users. This representation enables them to express their approval by “liking” your business or brand, as well as commenting on your posts. Ideally, you aim for a significant portion of these individuals to like your page and ultimately interact with you.
By sharing content updates from your page to their News Feed, your “fans” will be able to stay updated with your business. This allows your business to enhance brand awareness, gather audience insights, execute and monitor ads, and engage in conversations with users seeking information or updates about your business.
Setting Up Your Local Facebook Page
If you have not already created a local Facebook page for your business, the process is simple and can be summarized step by step.
1. Go to Create a Page and select Local Business or Place
Once you click on it, you will have the option to choose a category for your business and provide the necessary details. Make sure to use a local street address and phone number with a local area code to achieve the best local search optimization.
2. Enter your local Facebook page details
After you click on the next screen, you will be asked to provide more information about your business. To begin, you must input a more precise category for your business. If you are uncertain about which category to choose, you can utilize Facebook Graph Search to look up some of your local competitors and observe the categories they have chosen.
Afterward, you will include a concise overview of your business, a brief description that encapsulates the services your business provides to potential clients in 1-2 sentences, limited to a maximum of 155 characters. Regard it as your elevator pitch.
Once you have finished that, you will need to input your website URL and select a web address for your Facebook page. It is important to choose the web address carefully as it cannot be modified later. The majority of businesses typically opt for:
- http://www.facebook.com/businessname
Once you click Save Info, you will receive a prompt to include the profile picture for your page. This profile picture should match the one you use in other business profiles, such as your logo, a picture of your building, or a professional headshot.
In the setup wizard, the third step is to easily access your page in the future by adding it to the Favorites menu on the left side of your Facebook home screen.
3. Complete your page set up
After completing the three-step wizard, there are still more tasks to be done for your page setup. On the next screen, you will find your Admin Panel along with your page. To begin, click on the “Add a Cover” button in order to include a cover photo for your page.
After uploading your cover photo, click on it from your page to view the photo details. The photo should have a width of at least 815 pixels and a height of 315 pixels, or larger. Additionally, the photo should closely depict your business.
To start, please click on the “Add a description” link. Afterwards, provide a concise description of your business along with its website URL. By doing so, visitors who click on the image will be able to access your website.
To rephrase the text while maintaining the same meaning: After updating your cover photo, access the “About” link located underneath your page’s profile photo and basic details. On your page’s About tab, select the Edit button to provide the necessary information for your business.
This includes adding unnecessary words and phrases. Please rephrase the text step by step while keeping the same meaning. Do not add any new information or remove any information.
- a long description for your business
- price range (most for restaurants)
- parking details (if applicable)
- primary email contact
- hours of operation
After completing the following rephrased steps, your page is considered complete! You may now begin building your audience and posting status updates.
Connecting with Local Fans
To begin developing your local fan base on Facebook, you can follow three approaches. First, you can utilize the “Invite Friends” function found in your “Admin Panel” to send invitations to your friends, encouraging them to like your page. Alternatively, you can choose to invite individuals from this section, or access a more sophisticated dashboard by clicking “See All,” which enables you to search for specific friends to invite based on various criteria.
- recent interactions
- location
- shared groups
- friends lists
To connect with local fans, an alternative approach is to prompt your employees to establish a connection with your business page. However, this can be challenging because you only desire your most professional employees to establish a link with your business, rather than those who frequently engage in partying or publicly share their adventures.
To make your business page appear on personal profiles, follow these steps: 1. Go to the “About” tab in the “Work and Education” section. 2. Add your business as your current workplace. 3. By doing this, your business will gain visibility among your employees’ personal connections. 4. Moreover, it will be prominently displayed in Graph Search results when users search for individuals with particular interests.
By gaining a local fan base, your local business will benefit. Another strategy to expand your audience is to engage with other local Facebook pages where your ideal customers are active. To execute this, you need to click on the settings wheel icon located at the top right corner of your Facebook screen and choose your page from the “Use Facebook As” section.
You will now be able to utilize Facebook as your page, giving you the ability to search for other business pages, like them, and leave comments, all in the name of your page instead of your personal profile.
When operating as a B2B enterprise, it is advisable to favorably react to the pages of other businesses that align with your target clients, followed by actively engaging in commenting on their posted updates.
If you are a B2C business, it is advisable to follow and engage with local pages where your target customers are present.
To begin with, there are a few excellent local pages that are suitable for almost any local business.
- local news sites
- city government pages
- chambers of commerce
- etc.
In order to rephrase the text while maintaining the same meaning, you can consider the following: Additionally, consider engaging with businesses in your industry. For instance, a wedding photographer could interact with a local bridal magazine’s page, while a veterinarian might engage with a local pet store’s page. Finally, making use of Facebook advertising can be an effective method to promote your own page.
To set up a Facebook ad efficiently in order to promote your page, utilize the Promote Page feature in your Admin Panel. This feature enables you to target individuals in a particular location, such as the city or cities where your business operates.
If you wish to reach individuals with specific interests, you can utilize the main Facebook Advertising panel. Within this panel, you can create an advertisement with the goal of acquiring page likes. After setting up the advertisement for your page, you can then target a particular audience in your region who hold specific interests through the Create Your Audience section.
Tips for Your Facebook Marketing to Stand Out
In order to stand out amidst increasing competition on Facebook, it is crucial for businesses to possess a Facebook page. Therefore, your objective is to rise above the competition by employing efficient Facebook marketing techniques.
If you have knowledge of what is effective and what is not, it is possible for you to achieve such a feat even though it may be challenging to compete. Take a look at the following tips.
Seek Specialist Coaching
In order to accomplish your goals, search for a reputable marketing agency with expertise in Facebook marketing that can provide guidance and assistance. Allocate a portion of your budget towards consultation sessions, as these personalized sessions will impart valuable knowledge on optimization strategies and alternative approaches, encompassing various aspects such as:
- Audience targeting
- Copywriting
- Budgeting
- Photo design
- Tracking analytics, etc.
By enrolling in professional teaching sessions, you can anticipate an enhancement in your website traffic, brand awareness, and sales.
Hold Simple Contests on the Platform
Boosting audience engagement can be achieved by running contests on Facebook. To begin, you should identify your goal, determine the giveaway prize, and choose the entry method for your Facebook contest.
If your Facebook contest is successful, a greater number of individuals will engage with your content on the platform. Consumers enjoy entertaining activities, and with the contests that you organize, they have an opportunity to win something valuable.
Contests possess the ability to stimulate the creation of user-generated content as participants engage in conversations, leave comments, and share the event with their acquaintances. Develop contests that leave a lasting impression on your audience and motivate them to organically spread the word about you through their personal networks.
Here is a list of contest prizes that can be given away as giveaways.
- Gift cards
- Gym membership
- Dinner vouchers
- Holidays (travel-related prizes)
- Toys and vacation trips for kids, etc.
Post Videos on Your Facebook Page
Facebook states that businesses can utilize videos on the platform to showcase their products, services, and brands in innovative manners. Videos can be employed to exhibit distinctive attributes or narrate the brand’s story. The following are a few Facebook video suggestions to enhance viewership, engagement, and sharing.
- Create square videos. – Square videos take up more space on the feed. If your videos are square in shape, your audience can see only your video playing on the screen.
- In contrast, horizontal videos are shown on the screen with other videos. In that setup, it is easy for the viewer of your video to be distracted by someone else’s content.
- Catch the attention of viewers to your video within three seconds. – You can do this by getting your points across as quickly as possible. Also, inspire emotion as soon as possible.
- Craft your video title so that it encourages people to view the content. Also, add captions to explain the gist of your video content.
Target Existing Clients or Leads
If you have a list of email addresses for your current clients, you can upload it to Facebook and then direct your Facebook content towards these individuals. By remarketing to them, you can capture their interest. Additionally, it is important to customize your content to cater to the clients you are already engaged with. Nevertheless, make an effort to personalize your message as extensively as you can.
Use Emojis in Your Facebook Content
When planning your textual content to engage with your Facebook fans, make sure to include emojis as they are commonly used by many social media users to express their thoughts more effectively.
Marketers are now being encouraged to utilize emojis on the Facebook platform and other social media sites as they aid in displaying the author’s personality and emotion within the content.
Please rephrase the given text while maintaining the same meaning, without adding or removing any information. Feel free to experiment with the use of emojis.
