Designing a Facebook marketing strategy might be challenging marketing activity. Facebook as a platform has come a long way since its inception. From connecting college students across few universities to playing a crucial part in the presidential elections, this viral social media platform has always in been in the public eye.
In a past couple of decades, the developers of Facebook have added so many interesting features that nobody would have imagined when the platform was launched on February 2004.
Today, around 1.5 billion people use Facebook every day to get connected with the world. They share pictures, status updates, chat with friends. In short, Facebook is their dominating source of communication.
In the era of Gig economy, Facebook also provides bread and butter to many freelancers who are making their living online. Facebook is a major source of getting clients and generating ROI. There are pages, groups, and communities out there on Facebook who is actively providing opportunities to the people.
Here are some of the marketing tips you should follow for your Facebook marketing strategy.
1. Define Your Target Audience
One of the biggest challenges of any marketing activity is to define the targeted audience. You cannot simply keep showing your ads and posts to random people who won’t interested in your offer and services.
For example, if you are the owner of a local sports equipment store then your target audience should be local players, schools and colleges, etc. Otherwise, you would be throwing away your money for nothing.
A specified audience will give you a major boost in your sales. So, you need to define certain demographics to filter users and target only those profiles who falls under that demographics.
Where do people live? How old are they? What occupation they have? What is their designation? What are their interests? These parameters will define who will see your ad. The Facebook will dynamically show your ad in the Facebook feed of those people who meet the parameters you’ve set.
2. Define Your Goals
Even though you’ve worked hard to define the audience, you should still figure out the reason behind running the ad in the first place.
It could be either create awareness for your brand, generate leads for your business, install your mobile application, watch your video, download material from your website, sign up for a newsletter and so on.
These goals define how your ad will perform and what metrics you should be keenly looking in your Facebook ad manager dashboard.
Say, if you are generating leads for your business, then you should focus less on how many people have viewed your ad. Instead, the ideal metric for lead generation campaign would be Cost-Per-Lead or Cost-Per-Click.
Things to Ensure for Your Facebook Marketing Strategy
Make Sure You Have an Optimized Facebook Page
In your usual Facebook use, you might have come across Facebook pages. It is a social identity of business to thrive in online marketing success. Majority of Facebook is made of personal profiles, but if you have a brand, then it must have a Facebook page.
A Facebook profile only allows you to add 5000 people. Moreover, you will have to find those people, send them friend requests or approve requests of other profiles. While a Facebook page can have thousands and even millions of likes and no need to approve requests of people.
You can create a Facebook page and post content regularly without spending any money. So, it is one of the lucrative ways for the brand who have a concise budget in a given time.
Now, people are actively creating Facebook pages but often forget to add information about their business. One must optimize the Facebook page in order to generate solid brand credibility.
To do that, you need to fill some basic information based on the type of services you are doing. The basic fields are address, name, website URL, profile picture, cover image, and you are good to go.
When you create a page, you are asked to choose the category of the page like the screenshot below. Facebook has brilliantly covered almost all the possible type of brands in their categories.
Next, you are then asked to give your page a name and then click the get started to get redirected to the home page.
Add a Profile Picture and Cover Photo
Profile picture and cover image are the first content that users see when they land on your Facebook page. So, they have to be visually expressive in order to generate a good first impression on the visiting users.
You should go with the simple and visual approach for both the profile picture and cover image.
You can upload GIF or photograph as your profile picture. Although the Facebook cover image supports video, photo, or GIF. The profile picture of your page will be your brand’s icon that would float around the platform for your activities.
Create a Custom URL
A custom URL means creating a username for your Facebook page. It is word phrase that follows www.facebook.com
A custom URL will also give you SEO benefits and allow people to find your page instantly. Facebook allows 50 unique characters in a username. Meaning, you cannot use a name that is already used by another business.
Different Types of Facebook Ads
Facebook provides many potential ways to promote your business. Here are the creative and unique ways you can outperform your competitors in Facebook marketing strategy.
Augmented Reality Ads
Facebook announced last year that it is testing Augmented Reality ads. Such ads will revolutionize e-commerce sales from Facebook marketing strategies. It allows brands to build a deeper connection with their audience by letting them visualize how a particular product would look on them using augmented reality.
Users would see “tap to try it on” option on the ad. Once tapped, the Facebook camera will be popped up with the digital version of the advertised product. Users can then check how the product looks on them and the further go-ahead to make the purchase.
Instagram Stories Ads
Instagram stories are a lucrative platform for brands to generate ROI. Thanks to engaging stickers and filters, brands can create dynamic and attractive Instagram stories for their audience by creating brand awareness and building thought leadership.
As per a fact, Instagram stories are very powerful that it has increased the Instagram usage time up to 28 minutes. The feed of social media gives a decent area of a smartphone screen. But, with the Instagram stories, the whole screen is covered so you are able to play around with the maximum area to promote your business.
Page Recommendation
A brand must target to generate more page recommendation to build the brand’s credibility online as it serves a brilliant tool in a Facebook marketing strategy.
As you may know, the reviews on your Facebook page is now turned like the page recommendation. A recommendation can give strong signals to users who want to understand more about a business. So more positive recommendation and reviews will help you build a robust online presence.
360-Degree Video Ads
Video ads have always been a favorite tool for social media marketers because videos can showcase more content than the other formats. But with the introduction of a 360-degree video advertisement, brands have explored different dynamics of achieving customer engagement.
As per Campaignlive, Kitkat leveraged Facebook’s 360-degree video advertisement to generate double conversion rate. In the 360-degree video format, brands can tell their stories dynamically and engage their users by increasing their buying intent. As per a statistic, video ads increased the buying intent of the consumers up to 7%.
Playable Ads for Video Games
Another interesting update for marketers is the playable ads. They allow marketers to aggressively yet smartly target gamers and encourage them to install mobile game applications on their devices.
As Facebook said, let gamers try before they buy and this type of ad allows users to play the game for a couple of moments so they can have look and feel. Once the users have already tried the game, they are more likely to go further and install that mobile game application.
According to Facebook, Rovio and Bagelcode have already tried this format of the ad and have seen noticeable positive results. Bagelcode did see 3x improvement in return in Android devices and around 1.5x improvement on iOS.
What Are The Best Practices For Facebook Marketing Strategy?
There are a couple of tips you need to keep in mind in order to outperform your competitors in Facebook marketing strategy.
Offer Value Proposition
Well, “value proposition” means what valuable information users will get when they purchase your services. You can showcase the value in your ad through either your creative or the ad copy.
If you write “Sign up to get amazing discounts and skyrocket your business.”, then it might get you lesser conversion. Instead, you write, “Sing up today to get $50 credit and a one-to-one session to discuss your idea.”, you are giving the desired value to the people who are seeing your ad.
Such copy can not only perform well but indirectly enterprises will have a solid brand value that in return give them higher conversions in the long run.
See how Inc42 promoted their article above and included a caption that offers a value proposition.
Give a Strong Call to Action
You can write an engaging ad copy, develop attractive visual creative for the ad but in the end, what matters is the positive numbers in your metrics. How many conversions did you able to score is what matters when the campaign is over.
To encourage people to engage with your ad, make sure to add an encouraging to call to action that makes the users click on your ad and engage with your readers. The best practice is to have a direct and plain call to action.
As per a study, brands have got more conversions while they have included a plain call to action. For example, “Sing Up, today!” or “Buy now!” are amazingly strong phrases to encourage people to click on your ad.
See how Bewakoof has promoted their discount range and encouraged people to purchase their products.
Include Offer in Your Ad Copy!
Facebook is also a lucrative platform to promote any on-going sale or festive discounts that you are hosting for your business.
For example, to promote discounts on multiple products, you can have a carousel ad, like in the above screenshot, where you can show different discount options on various categories. This way, you can pitch offers on various products through the same advertisement.
Schedule Your Ad!
Scheduling is one of the most undermined techniques to get the most of the given resource. As the campaign progresses, it might happen that your budget is flushing out and you are not getting expected conversions. At that time, scheduling your ad as per your location is the perfect solution.
Based on that location, you need to think about the best time your targeted audience is active and schedule your ad accordingly. This way, your ad will have enough budget to get the maximum impressions, and eventually more conversions.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Going Live
The feature of going Live on Facebook is like broadcasting news on TV channels. You can instantly share your current happening to the rest of the world.
If you are going to launch a new product or an important announcement about your business, try to go live on social media channels. You can announce on your social profile prior to going to live on Facebook so that people would know and be ready to join your live session beforehand. Also, make sure to entertain comments that you receive during the session.
Concluding Note
Plan and manage a Facebook marketing strategy excellently takes time. One must know that it is already high time now. Based on a business, you may have tough competition to stand out in your industry in Facebook marketing.
Comment your experience with Facebook advertising and your views regarding the ideas discussed in this article.