Facebook is one of the most effective digital marketing channels, and it has been for many years. It’s quite obvious why Facebook rules over the social media marketing landscape. The platform currently has almost three billion monthly active users and one of the highest engagement rates among major online social networks. This mind-blowing number means one thing: No matter what business you own; There’s a very high chance your potential customers are on Facebook. And you’ll definitely know this basic rule of marketing: Promote your brand where your customers are.
But Facebook’s advantage is not limited to its sheer user count. Ever since the start of Facebook’s business side, Zuckerberg and co knew that they have to make the most out of their userbase and the massive amount of data they’re accumulating. That’s why this social network also owns one of the most sophisticated digital advertising platforms in the world. The company has truly harnessed the power of its invaluable userbase and developed a very feature-rich, advanced, and flexible advertising tool to help businesses find customers and make huge money from advertising.
More than a hundred million businesses actively use the platform to promote themselves. Throughout the years, the company has gathered a huge amount of user data and developed its catalog of advertising features that are unparalleled in the industry right now. Facebook has been fine-tuning its commercial features to help businesses better engage with their customers with relevant and high-quality content. Facebook Ads is now more powerful than ever. It provides high advertising flexibility with advanced targeting abilities. You can have total control over how much you want to spend on your campaigns, and be confident that Facebook will display your ads to the right people. It’s perfect for both B2B and B2C advertising, and with Facebook Ads, you can target prospects at every stage of your marketing funnel. Thanks to its superb profiling algorithm, you can introduce your brand to people who might be interested in what you offer. You can retarget users who’ve shown interest in your products and entice existing customers to purchase again.
So is your success guaranteed with Facebook Ads?
Sadly no. You see, Facebook provides a terrific platform for advertising. It has great features, it houses the audience, and it’s extremely good at connecting you with your potential customers. But that doesn’t mean you’ll definitely achieve success by adopting Facebook Ads in your marketing efforts. First of all, as mentioned earlier, more than a hundred million businesses have also found Facebook effective, so you’re going to face fierce competition regardless of your niche. Secondly, many of these businesses fail to get the desired result from advertising on Facebook. It could have many reasons, but the most important of all is the lack of a robust Facebook marketing strategy. You shouldn’t make the same mistake. Having a well-thought-out advertising strategy is absolutely necessary to achieve desired goals with Facebook Ads.
But what makes a good Facebook marketing strategy? Without delving into specifics (which are unique for every business and really needs a whole other article), we’re going to tell you the basics of developing a strong strategy for marketing on Facebook.
Set goals for your Facebook presence first
What are you looking for on Facebook? Do you want to build brand awareness, generate leads, or increase sales? Is your target audience even present on this platform?
Asking yourself these questions and giving a clear answer to them is crucial before diving into Facebook. After determining your goals, you can adjust your Facebook marketing strategy according to them. Remember that every business is unique, so there’s no single strategy that would work for everyone. Having a clear understanding of why you’re stepping into the world of Facebook marketing will help you tailor your own strategy.
Who’s going to be your target audience?
The next step is identifying who you’ll be going to talk to. This determines the overall tone you’re going to use and the audience you’re going to target with your ads. You could segment your audience based on demographics (age, gender, race, religion, etc.), location, interests and behavior, pain points and so on.
If you haven’t shaped your core audience yet, you’ll need to find another way to specify targets for your ads. Don’t worry though. You can find a preliminary audience with the least amount of trial and error using the following methods:
Use your buyer persona
If you’ve mapped out your customer personas before, now would be the perfect time to use them. Having buyer personas means you’ve already visualized your ideal customers. You already have a good idea of their characteristics, interests, and concerns. Use all this valuable info when setting targets for your awareness ads.
Use a Facebook as spy tool
The best way to define a core audience is to use a Facebook ad spy tool to discover whom exactly your rivals are targeting. For instance, use AdFlex to search for successful ads in your niche and see their targeting properties.
Thanks to AdFlex’s powerful search filters, you can narrow down your search results to ads that are most relevant to you. You can select specific product or service categories and CTA types, then sort the results based on popularity. Look for the ads with the highest engagements and check which demographics, locations, and interests they’re targeting.
Create a marketing funnel
When it comes to Facebook marketing, having a well-defined marketing funnel is essential. Funnels shine a light on the journey your customers take from the moment they make contact with your brand, all the way to the point where they purchase from you. A marketing funnel has different stages which determine multiple factors about your potential customers like how much they are familiar with your brand, what tone you should use to lead them further down the funnel, and what ad type is best for their position. Consider these three stages for your funnel:
- Awareness: At this stage, people have never heard of your brand and are just starting to notice you. The goal here is to grab their attention without going for the hard sell right away. You’ll introduce your brand with your Facebook ads and make them interested.
- Consideration: The next stage in the funnel is encouraging the people you’ve just attracted to consider what you offer to solve a problem they have. You should highlight your strengths and show your uniqueness. For this to happen, you can publish more detailed content or video ads.
- Conversion: The “Aha!” moment. The conversion stage is where you go for the kill. Prior to this stage, you have grabbed potential customers’ attention, nurtured them down your customer journey to show them how your product or service best fits their needs, and now all you need is a little push to convert them into actual customers. This push could be a tempting incentive, or a clever retargeting campaign.
It’s not all about paid promotions
Advertising on Facebook alone does work, but its best to combine it with a powerful organic presence on the platform. Posting a steady, thoughtful stream of content on your Facebook Page is the main pillar of your organic activity. What you include in this stream and when you this content must be according to a well-thought-out content marketing plan.
Multiple factors influence the content of your posts. Your target audience is an important one, meaning you need to establish a tone and create a message that your audience finds interesting and engaging.
There’s no one-size-fits-all Facebook content strategy. You need to find a balance between publishing entertaining, informative, and fun posts to drive engagement, and subtly promote your brand, your product, or your service and convey your brand values. Using your creativity and riding on the wave of the hottest online trends is encouraged. Categorizing your content into topics is also very helpful. For example, you could segment it into news posts, fun posts, tutorial posts, community posts, and so on.
Final thoughts
There you go. We hope this article give you a good idea about what you need to do before adopting Facebook in your marketing strategies and taking every step on the platform with care and precision. With a well-thought-out advertising strategy combined with active organic presence on Facebook, you will be well ahead of the competition and successful in finding new customers, establishing a strong connection with existing ones, and expand your business while saving costs.
