NASE News

Facebook Marketing

For Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses

Overview:
There are so many social media channels out there these days, it’s hard to determine which ones are more effective and worth your time to market your business. I will focus on Facebook marketing, as I find it the most effective and affordable for small business owners to get their message and brand noticed. Facebook marketing is an excellent way to grow your business, and you can have fun while doing it.

Facebook is the big one for small business marketing; it has been around a long time and is focusing on companies marketing their products through the Facebook platform. The platform offers great tools like boosted posts, paid targeting ads, and a relatively new Facebook pixel so you can track exactly what consumers do once on your website. The added bonus is Facebook provides analytics on your campaigns, so you can adjust your creative, messaging, audience, etc. to optimize engagement and results.

An Infosys Study Found:
- Consumers interact with retailers’ Facebook pages (38 percent) more than the brands’ own websites (36 percent); a difference that is significantly more pronounced for younger consumers
- 89 percent of those who interact with a retailer online through any social media outlet say that the interaction has an impact on their purchase

The second finding really stands out and is extremely important to small business owners. It means you can utilize your Facebook page to fully engage your audience and have an important and impactful influence on their buying decisions. That’s incredible!

And if you need even more convincing, take a look at the reach and demographics of the Facebook audience:

Facebook Demographics
Among internet users, the % who use Facebook

Source: Pew Research Center, March 17-April 12, 2015
Pew Research Center


You can see that Facebook has a gigantic presence in people’s lives when 72% of all Internet users are on Facebook. And Facebook is now a place for all ages and demographics, and an ideal platform to market your business, regardless what your targeted audience may be. Another demographic of note is the data on income. When you see 78% of those with incomes of $75K+ are on Facebook, you know there is money to be made and sales to grow your business. Next I will list tips for optimizing your business presence on Facebook and connecting with your potential customers and clients.

Top Tips for Optimizing Facebook Marketing

Tip 1 – Original Content
Be sure to write engaging and useful content for your audience. You can easily import your blog (if you have one) into your Facebook page, but also make sure to write original posts for your Facebook audience. (You can schedule multiple posts to save time via scheduled posts.) There is no set rule for how many posts you should put out in a day. I’d say one is the minimum but only if you have quality content to share. Never post a weak post just to have something to put out there. This type of posting leads to people un-liking your page, which is the opposite of what were shooting for. A helpful tool is the build out your content calendar to manage your content delivery schedule.

Tip 2 – Engagement
Once you’re delivering compelling content to your audience, you are sure to have interactions with your fans. It’s very important to respond to your audience quickly and personably. Your direct correspondence with your audience becomes your business personality, your brand ambassador. This is a great way to nurture leads, grow sales, and develop brand loyalty. I want to reiterate, reply to your audience promptly. Many users are under the impression (no matter how unreasonable it may be) that you have a team ready and waiting to reply immediately when they make a comment or ask a question. If you don’t respond quickly, the audience may think you’re ignoring them and get turned off. I know it’s a bit unreasonable, but in this modern fast paced age, people want immediate results, so small businesses must accommodate the best they can.

Tip 3 – Know Your Audience
Use Facebook’s Insights to really learn your audience. You can get your basic demographic profile (age, gender, etc.) and also track which posts are engaging your audience and which are not. This information allows you to customize your content to the preferences of your audience. You can also feel out how many posts per day your particular audience is interested in seeing by tracking post engagement in the Insights. The Insights tool can be used for myriad purposes and can determine if you’re missing your target audience. If you are, there are numerous ways to reach them and I will talk about that next.

Tip 4 – Utilize Facebook Marketing Tools
Facebook has a number of tools you can use to capture a new audience and expand your current audience. They offer ads and boosted posts, which are both effective tools for your marketing purposes. These tools can be extremely effective if used properly, and they are affordable – you set your own budget with each campaign. With both ads and boosted posts you are able to target the audience you want to reach. You can target by location, sex, age, and preferences with boosted posts, and you have a bit more detailed targeting options with the ads. For example, if you are promoting children’s eBooks, you can target moms, grandmothers, father, homeschoolers, etc. The beauty of these ads and boosted posts is Facebook tracks all engagement, so you can determine if you’re hitting the mark with your promotion or not and adjust it accordingly. The ads and posts are also great way to reach your target if you haven’t already.

Tip 5 – Be Personal
This may be redundant, but I cannot express how important it is to understand that your Facebook page is your business personality. Be authentic, genuine, and true. Be yourself and get to know your audience and let them get to intimately know you. This communication creates incredible emotional connections with your brand and develops brand loyalty and increases sales. The more your brand’s personality is loved, the more your fans will share with their friends. It’s your chance to talk to your customers and make friends. It’s a really unique marketing tool and highly effective, so make sure to have fun with it!

Tip 6 – Join Facebook Groups
There are myriad Facebook groups out there: There’s pretty much a group for everything. You can go to the search bar up top and start putting in keywords that are relevant to your business. And don’t just join the groups, take some time to engage with the group to gain trust. When you’re promoting your business, you can maximize on these relationships to get traction with sales. Once you establish a relationship with the group, they won’t feel like you’re selling to them; you’re contributing to the group with information that is helpful.

What Does All This Mean?
It means it’s time to start utilizing Facebook as a marketing tool if you’re not already. With billions of users actively engaging on this platform, it’s essential to be a part of it to promote your small business. As I mentioned earlier, not only is Facebook marketing for small businesses affordable, it’s highly effective. Happy Facebooking!