10 Beginner’s Guide To Facebook Marketing

1. Provide Value

Are you providing value for your audience? Do they have a reason to keep returning to your page, clicking on your posts, or even sharing your content? What value are your providing to your fans? Are you educating or entertaining? Would you want to see your own posts every day in your personal News Feed? Are you making the lives of people better when sharing your content to them? These are some of the essential questions you can check about your current Facebook Marketing. And if all you do is post content which tries to sell your products or services, stop to review your steps as you are not providing value to your fans. Instead, you are spamming.

2. Use a Consistent and Frequent Publishing Schedule

It is good to ensure a continuous flow of contents which provide value. Once or twice a week is not going to cut it. Post multiple times per day, spaced out by at least a few hours. To avoid any miss out, you can implement a content plan or use Facebook’s built in scheduling. This can make sure that you have posts flowing through on a regular basis in a consistent manner.

3. Interact With Your Fans

Make your fan base feel as part of the community. When your fans comment on your post or make any enquiries, respond in a timely and polite manner. When they ask you a question, give them a thoughtful reply. Address any concerns that your fans have regarding your product or service. It will show your customers that you care about them genuinely. You can use social media monitoring platform such as Hootsuite to keep track on your social media interactions. To involve our fans, create posts that concern the audience. Get their feedback on their opinions. Encourage them to share their story. Even if you’re not sure on the types of content your fans may like, you can also check with them by asking them.

4. Optimize Your Images

When you run a link ad or share a link, check on the thumbnail image if it takes up the width of the News Feed, regardless on desktop or mobile. The bigger the images, the more engagement will be made. Those thumbnails are acting as if to be begged to be clicked on. So if you share link with a small, square thumbnail image, do not expect it to be clicked. Size does matter in Facebook image. Refer to this Cheat Sheet on Facebook Image Sizes:

• Cover photo 851 x 315 pixels
• Facebook post 600 x 315 pixels
• Avatar size upload 180 x 180 pixels, preview 160 x 160 pixels

5. Don’t Click the Boost Post Button

While there may be over a million advertisers on Facebook, a high percentage of these people are actually casual advertisers who used the “Boost Post” button. Even though it is an extremely easy task to do, it may not be your best method. Because easy and simplicity gives a lack of control, this method of advertising will likely lead to a waste of ad spend. You will want a more sophisticated way than this. You will want to reach out to a specific audience in specific placements.

6. Focus on the Metrics that Matter

Many a times, marketers get obsessed over things like Reach and Page Likes. However, neither of them actually mean a whole lot. If you focus on them to drive your strategy, you are likely to fail. Instead, check if you are focusing on the metrics that matter? How much valuable engagement does your content drive? How much traffic is driven to your website? Do your ads result in conversions and sales? What is your cost per conversion? These are the types of things that you should care about or worried about. So remember not to distract yourself with metrics such as CPC, CPM, Reach, or Click Through Rate.

7. Create Multiple Campaign and Ad Variations

There are many factors that can lead to whether or not an ad works. So one single ad will not show if it is a success or failure. Perform multiple test on different images, copy and targeting. Work and test using different ad types, with page posts or Sponsored Stories. You can also test with videos, photos and link shares. Do not rely on small sample sizes. Look out for which ads that does not work and stop them. Find which ads that work and escalate further.

8. Target Your Email List

Facebook Page can help grow your email list using custom apps. And you probably already know that Email and Facebook are currently the two most powerful marketing tools online today. What’s even more powerful, is the possibilities you have to integrate them and put them to work together, for you. When you build your Fan base, do you run an ad that targets your email list to attract those who have already done business with you? When you launch a product, do you run an ad targeted at those who have bought from you before? You can do this with Custom Audiences. And if you don’t use this feature, you are ignoring a very important segment of your customer base!

9. Sell to Your Fans

Usually it is your fans who are the people most likely to purchase from you. So your focus on Facebook should not be only to sell to public. Therefore, if you spend more on ads which are targeting on non-Fans with products offered to Fans, most likely you will be throwing your money away. However, you should target the non-Fans to bring in new Fans. By consistently providing value through knowledgeable and interesting content, you can eventually gain trust from them. Then, sell your products or service. This is a simple Facebook sales funnel, and one that can lead you to a high return.

10. Use Power Editor

If you are serious in using Facebook advertising, you will need to use Power Editor. It is an effective method to promote your post. For example, you can target only Fans and reach out to them only in the News Feed. You get full control over your ads and have full access to all of the tools and features that come with Facebook advertising.

The PORTMAN Education Group