How Small Businesses Can Use Facebook
How Small Businesses Can Use Facebook
Facebook has more than 2.91 billion active users, making it a vital platform for small business sales and social media marketing.
A Facebook Business Page can connect you with customers and offer key information about your business, products, services, and upcoming events.
Facebook Ads and Messenger Ads are highly targeted and effective ways to reach potential customers.
This article is for small business owners interested in using Facebook to improve their social media marketing and advertising strategies.
Every small business can benefit from a Facebook presence. With more than 2.91 billion monthly users, Meta – the Facebook company’s new name – gives small businesses many ways to promote their services, increase customer support, and boost sales and recognition through their Facebook platform.
Using Facebook for your small business may seem challenging because the platform’s rules and algorithms change frequently. However, with the right strategies, Facebook is one of the best ways to use social media for business.
One of Facebook’s biggest strengths is allowing you to target a specific audience through paid campaigns and advertisements. The platform maintains a significant amount of information about its users, which can be advantageous when targeting ads. In addition, creating a Facebook Business Page can be an effective small business marketing tool.
Source:
businessnewsdaily.com
Do Facebook Ads Work?
If you want to be sure you’ll get a good return on your marketing investment from Facebook ads, the first place to turn for insight is naturally going to be hard numbers. We’ve compiled some statistics here to highlight Facebook’s effectiveness as an advertising channel:
22% of the world’s population is made up of active Facebook users, including 68% of adults in the United States.
76% of users look for interesting content on Facebook and content consumption on Facebook has increased 57% since 2014.
66% of social media users log on to learn about new products and services.
Customers who like a business on Facebook are 79% more likely to make a new purchase than non-fans.
A 2015 study found that 52% of consumers were influenced by Facebook when making both online and offline purchases—and rising.
Facebook’s hyper-targeted Custom Audiences feature lets you advertise so specifically that advertisers have seen their new customer acquisition costs decline by as much as 73%.
When it comes to building awareness, the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for Facebook ads is around $7.29 versus upwards of $35 for television commercials.
Facebook is also useful in the B2B realm—73% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes.
All in all, it seems pretty clear that Facebook has a great deal of potential when it comes to delivering an appreciable return on any business’s marketing investment.
Source: impactplus.com
Talk to existing and potential customers
You can use Facebook to 'talk' to existing and potential customers by posting and receiving messages. But don't use Facebook to aggressively promote your products or services. You'll have much greater success if you share information related to your business that is actually useful or interesting to other users. This increases your credibility and promotes your business by building long-term relationships with other users. For example, a veterinarian could post tips for looking after pets, timing them according to when particular health issues arise (e.g. ticks in summer).
You should also listen as much as you talk. Paying attention to what the market thinks about your business, your industry, a product or a marketing campaign can provide valuable insights.
Source: business.qld.gov.au
Build ads around your goals.
Facebook’s advertising platform lets you create ads based on any of 12 specific objectives, each of which is categorized by stages in a basic marketing funnel—Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. Knowing which is your priority will not only let you build your ads to the best possible effect, but accurately gauge your ROI as well.
Source: impactplus.com
Engage new and longtime customers.
Not even your most loyal customers see what happens inside your business on a day-to-day basis – that is, unless you regularly share elucidating social media content with them. A Facebook Page is a great place to post shots from inside your storefront or behind the scenes with your support team. You can also boost customer engagement by updating followers on new products and discounts.
Source: businessnewsdaily.com
Provide customer support
Customers can post after-sales questions on your Facebook wall, and your staff can answer them there. This is often more efficient than staff answering phone calls, and allows other customers to read common questions and answers without having to approach you individually.
Source: business.qld.gov.au
Boost web traffic.
By linking to your company’s website on your Facebook Business Page, you’ll drive more traffic to your website. The more people you get to your website, the better the chances of people reading in-depth descriptions of your products and services. Better yet, if you sell products online, people who jump from your Facebook Business Page to your website might even buy something.
Source: businessnewsdaily.com
Improve SEO.
Facebook Business Pages are good for more than just your social media presence; they’re also a boon to your rankings in search engine queries.
Tip: When your company website is Google mobile-friendly, you’ll do better in search engine rankings, because Google prioritizes mobile page load speed as a key metric.
Source: businessnewsdaily.com
Always be monitoring.
Facebook’s low minimum budget of $5 and the short half-life of social content make for a platform that’s uniquely suited to aggressive testing. Facebook ads are never a "set it and forget it" tactic. It is critical that you constantly monitor and review your progress. Very rarely will you build a campaign and it instantly produces the results you set your goals on. Your campaign needs to optimize itself, which means that your results will usually cost more in the beginning. But knowing how to manage the campaign to drive down your CPM (and even some of the most important hacks to do this) is the difference between wasting thousands of dollars or having a successful Facebook Ads campaign with stellar ROI.
As more people end up on Facebook and more of your competitors start trying to target them, Facebook advertising is going to become less an issue of “if” or “when” for your business, and more one of “how well.” The options are endless, from simple lead generation ads to comprehensive multi-step ad funnels for lead nurturing and conversions. Dabbling will only waste your time and money. The most important thing is to get started sooner than later and be willing to treat Facebook Advertising as the powerful platform that it is for your business and make it a staple of your marketing plan.
Source: impactplus.com
The Bottom Line: Yes, Facebook Ads Work!
One of the best parts about using Facebook ads is how much marketers and businesses can learn about their ideal people, from learning about their interests to understanding each one of their behaviors and patterns.
Once you know your best-performing audience(s), make sure to test various types of ads and copy.
Marketers can create different ad sets or ads in separate campaigns, which will help you see any correlation between your ideal audience and your ad types.
Testing is the key to discovering what resonates with your ideal audience(s).
When using Facebook, identifying and reaching one's goals and target audience(s) is easier than ever.
Source: wordstream.com
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