You probably know that Facebook is the number one social media platform, which most people use.
Apart from the fact that we are using it for chatting with our friends or sharing the things we love such as photos, videos, or even document files, some people especially business owners use it as their number one source of traffic and sales and a spot for branding.
Facebook has become one of the best drivers in terms of conversions and sales for most of my clients. See two examples below:
Facebook marketing client 1: This client approached me to do full social media marketing and management for them. Although Facebook is not the platform that best gives them the most traffic, I’ve found out that the social platform that best gives them conversions such as sign-ups and sales is Facebook.
Facebook marketing client 2: This client approached me to do Facebook marketing only for their new brand. Their goal is to increase sales, branding, and of course, following. Since they’ve hired me to do Facebook marketing, it is important to help them achieve their goals.
For most business cases, before you can use Facebook to gain sales and traffic or to produce conversions, you should let people know that your business exists on Facebook’s platform.
In this list, I will be with you for a tour of the best, most engaging, and most effective Facebook marketing strategies for businesses that anyone can do. So, let’s start rocking and rolling!
Effective Facebook Marketing Strategies for Businesses
1. Leverage the Existing Traffic to Your Site
Remember that it is advisable to have a website for every business since it will function as your sales transaction hub or storefront where people buy your products or learn more about your services.
You can easily leverage the existing traffic on your site by putting social media icons that can be seen and clicked, which are direct links to your Facebook page and/or any other social media account pages you have. Refer to the picture below as an example.
Hot Facebook Marketing Tip:
Most websites put their social media icons above their home page or header since it is the area where these icons can be easily seen; thus, this move provides better click-through rate (CTR) placements.
2. Use Your E-mail Signature to Display Your Fan Page URL
If you’re using e-mail as one of the ways to contact or reach your customers, using your e-mail signature to display your fan page URL will be effective. Having your social media page URL beneath your e-mail messages or at your signature will make your recipient see it easily and probably click it, which can convert into traffic or a following.
Hot Facebook Marketing Tip:
If you have current events on your social media pages, you might want to include them in your e-mail signature with a call-to-action format.
Example: Want to receive a gift from us? Like us on Facebook!
3. Send Out an E-mail Blast
Letting people know that you are on Facebook is the first goal you should achieve. Sending an e-mail blast is just one of the best ways to do this.
A few of the great e-mail marketing tools are MailChimp and AWeber.
You might want to consider sending an e-mail blast between Monday and Wednesday mornings for most conversions. A study from HubSpot, The Science of Email Marketing 2012, stated that morning e-mails get a high CTR.
4. Promote your Facebook Page In-store
Do your customers come to your store? Promoting your Facebook page and other social media accounts in-store is just another great way to let your customers know that you are on Facebook.
Remember that if you’re exerting efforts on your Facebook marketing online, you should also do it offline.
Bonus Facebook Marketing Tip:
You might also want to put your social media account page links on your:
- business cards
- front mirror or doors
- walls
- packaging
- … and more!
5. Determine the Best Day to Post
Perhaps my favorite feature that Facebook Pages have is Facebook Insights. By going to your Posts Insights, you will be able to see the average time when your fans are online.
In case you’re planning to schedule three posts, you might want to check the best hours that your fans are online and select those hours for scheduling your post.
You can access your Posts Insights by following the steps below:
- Go to your Facebook Page.
- You will see “See Insights” above your Page, click it.
- You will see your Insights overview from there, find the Posts tab and click it.
- Hover your mouse on the day you want your post to be scheduled and you will be able to see the best hours that your fans are online.
Alternatively, tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social will help you find the data and metrics you need including what type of post you should be using for your social media copies.
6. Create and Schedule Your Status Updates
The average daily active user on Facebook is 757 million, according to a January 2014 report. And a certain percentage of those millions of people could be your next potential customers.
If you want to use Facebook for maximum advantage, you need to post content for your target audience with consistency. Your goals should be either to educate, entertain, or empower them.
There are also some Facebook posting statistics that you might want to consider when creating your status updates:
- Using emoticons increases comments by 33% and makes posts be shared 33% more often and get liked 57% more often than posts without emoticons (source: AMEX OPEN Forum infographic.)
- Question posts get more comments (source: HubSpot).
Scheduling Your Facebook Status Updates:
Facebook has a built-in feature that allows you to schedule a post to appear on your page later. If you want to know more about it and the detailed steps on how to use it, refer to this link and continue reading below.
7. Use the Facebook Plugins
Integrating Facebook Plugins on your website will give you more advantages in branding awareness and followers increase on Facebook. For blogs or websites with sidebars, you may want to use the Facebook Like Box or Like Button.
For your website pages and blog posts, it is best to use the Like Button, although you can use them both! You may want to consider doing experiments on what’s the best Facebook plug-in for your website.
8. Use Facebook Ads
You may hate it, but investing in Facebook ads will give your business a lift especially if you’re a start-up or a small business.
Facebook ads aren’t as expensive as you might think; you will love them once you try to test them to get the best conversion that can impact your followers and your business growth. Consistent testing and experiments are necessary once you use them.
Facebook ads currently help you create your campaign depending on the results you want to gain:
- Facebook Page Engagement— Ads that boost your posts and increase likes, comments, shares, video plays, and photo views
- Facebook Page Likes— Ads to build your audience on Facebook
- Clicks to Website— Ads to encourage people to visit your website
- Website Conversions— Ads to promote specific actions for people to take on your website; you’ll need a conversion-tracking pixel to measure your results
- App Installs— Ads to encourage people to install your app
- App Engagement— Ads that get more activity on your app
- Event Responses— Ads to promote your event
- Offer Claims— Ads to promote offers you created; you’ll need to use an offer you’ve created on Facebook or create a new one
The setup for each ad varies depending on what results you want to see. Below are a few things you might want to consider when you set up your ads:
- Target your desired audience (gender, age, location). If you use Google Analytics display tracking, you can use the data from there and use it for retargeting.
- Use an engaging picture if you’re planning to use Facebook ads for your page or external pages.
- Use an easy-to-answer or an engaging ad description, here’s an example.
If you’re selling gift items, you might want to put something like this:
“If you think giving gifts can make someone smile, Like Us today!”
Since the text is easily answerable by Yes or No, those people who most likely say “yes” will be converted into your fans. Trust me, this is so effective.
Note: You can only use 90 characters for your Facebook ad text/description.
9. Think Outside the Box and Create a Facebook Contest
A 2013 report stated that 35% of Facebook fans like a page so they can participate in contests.
People love contests and free stuff. Doing a Facebook contest for your fans will give you higher engagement scores and activity. A simple “caption-this-photo” contest can bring in 5.5 times more connections than regular posts.
If you sell products, you might want to give one of your products as a prize; whereas if you provide services, perhaps a free 1-hour consultation, designs, or any of your services can be used as the prize. Make sure that everybody can join and don’t forget to promote it!
10. Use the “@ feature” on Facebook
Using the @ feature for Facebook will let your fans feel that they are important and are part of your business page. The Facebook @ feature will let you tag people or even other Facebook pages.
Show gratitude and enthusiasm by using the Facebook @ feature whenever your fans appreciate or ask something about your business because it can build a fruitful relationship and loyalty between your business and your customers.
11. Develop a Facebook Customized Page Tab or Apps
A custom page tab/app is a great option if you want to offer an exclusive advantage for your fans. It allows new visitors to see details of your events, contests, opt-in forms, or deals, which can help you gain more fans and likes.
According to Socially Stacked, 42% of fans like a page to get a coupon or discount. Another study by Wildfire Interactive showed that coupon-based campaigns received the highest engagement rates.
An example of a customized tab/app for your Facebook page is what I currently use to gain subscribers as well as likes in exchange for exclusive business and marketing tips.
Bonus Facebook Marketing Tip:
Most businesses that use customized tabs for their Facebook pages put exclusive discount coupons or free downloads such as e-books. My favorite tool for creating a Facebook custom tab is Woobox, which is free.
12. Integrate Social Media Sharing
Using social media plug-ins or integrating social media sharing buttons on your website makes it easy for your visitors and customers to share your website pages.
Once a person shares their content through Facebook and other social media sites, their friends can easily see those links on their Facebook profile and news feed.
You could also gain a share from them, which will make the process repeatable in the sense that it can also be shared by their friends or friends—possibly making it viral. This will also help increase your website traffic.
My favorite free social media sharing plug-ins are:
- Digg Digg
Digg Digg by Buffer displays all popular social sharing buttons with a count.
- Flare
Although the plug-in isn’t in active development anymore, it features an eye-catching and simple social sharing bar that lets your content get shared.
- Mashshare
Mashshare sharing plug-in is a high-performance share functionality inspired by Mashable. The beautifully designed big buttons of “Share on Facebook” and “Tweet on Twitter” are my favorites.
On this blog, I use both Ultimate Social Deux and Digg Digg.
13. Engage with Your Facebook Community
Engaging and talking with your community on Facebook could build a strong relationship, trust, and loyalty. The most exciting result about this is that they can also turn into your repeat customers or potential leads.
Facebook can also be used as one of your customer support hubs.
14. Engage with Other Facebook Pages
You might want to engage with other Facebook pages using your Facebook page account. Find those Facebook pages where your customers hang out.
Your comment will serve as a link to your page that can lead to an additional like or following (see below image). You could convert those “likes as fans” into “likes for conversions.”
15. Use Images and Videos for Your Content Updates
People love images and videos; they can also be seen easily on Facebook News Feed, which makes them easy to engage with.
Wishpond’s data says that posts that include photos receive 120% more engagement than the average post, while posts that include photo albums receive 180% more engagement.
Hot Facebook Marketing Tip:
You might want to put a call-to-action text with shortened links on each of your photo descriptions on your website to gain traffic. My favorite resource for this is Bitly.
Why shortened links? Shorter posts get 23% more interaction. Posts with 250 characters can get you 60% more engagement while posts with less than 80 characters can help you gain 66 % more engagement.
16. Create or Join Facebook Groups
Facebook groups have three types of privacy: open, closed, and secret. These different types also serve different functionality and ways to use.
- Open Group
Anyone can see the group, who’s in it, and what members post. Open groups are mainly used to build awareness, authority, and interest in your brand. This is the best group if you want to establish yourself as an expert and network with others in your industry. The main focus that you should do on open groups is not selling but rather on participation and interactions.
- Closed Group
Anyone can see the group and who’s in it. Only members see posts. Closed groups are best used for customer support purposes. For example, we are using Closed Group for one of my client’s current customers who wants to share ideas with other users. We also use this for customer support and solving problems.
- Secret Group
Only members see the group, who’s in it, and what members post. Secret members-only groups are great for higher-level discussions that need confidentiality. For example, since I manage lots of teams, companies, and businesses, we use secret groups for collaboration and follow-ups. Other companies find the secret group useful as one way to network with their clients or customers, especially for those in the coaching, training, or consulting industry.
Conclusion
To summarize, here are the most effective Facebook marketing strategies that you can use right now to jump-start your business success on Facebook.
- Leverage your existing website traffic by putting a social media icon, which redirects to your social media pages.
- Use your e-mail signature to display your Facebook Fan Page URL.
- Send out an e-mail blast to let your audience know that your business exists on Facebook
- Promote your Facebook page in-store.
- Determine the best days to post.
- Create and schedule status updates.
- Use Facebook Plugins to easily grow your followers.
- Use Facebook ads to help you achieve the results you want to have for your business.
- Think outside the box and create a Facebook contest.
- Tag other users and pages by using the @ feature on Facebook
- Develop a custom page tab or app for coupons, discounts, and any other exclusive deals. You can also use it for newsletters and other campaign purposes.
- Integrate social media sharing buttons on your website pages.
- Engage with your fans and current community.
- Engage with other Facebook Pages.
- Use images and videos on your status updates.
- Create or join Facebook groups.
Final Thoughts and Ideas
Facebook marketing and any other social media marketing campaign are just like courtship in real life. You should do it step-by-step until you build the relationship you wish to have.
There should be more Facebook marketing ideas out there, but I assure you that the above list will give your Facebook business a big lift.
