Facebook is a great marketing tool for businesses of all shapes and sizes!
It’s a great way to find a new audience, spread your message and sell products.
However, there are a few things to know before you get started with Facebook for business.
1. Page vs. Profile
If you’re on Facebook today, you probably have a Facebook profile page. That’s how you interact with friends, family and contacts on Facebook. A Facebook page is how businesses use Facebook. You must have a profile to manage a Facebook page. The main reason why you want to have a Facebook page for your personal and business brand is because that will allow you to access analytics to see what posts are, and aren’t, working.
2. Facebook Ad Objectives
Ads are a great way to grow your Facebook audience. Before you start working with Facebook ads, you must know your goals for doing so. You have to decide WHY you want to run an ad and what success of that ad will mean to you. You also need to determine how much you want to pay Facebook to run these ads and how long you’d like to do it. For an event, we recommend 8-10 days of ads in advance for sign-ups and for a product launch, we recommend two rounds of ads starting at least 1 month before.
3. Assets
Assets are images, video and text (or copy) that you put on Facebook. These are posts, but they’re more than that — they’re the elements of your brand story. When determining which assets you’ll use for your brand on Facebook, you have to also think about your goals AND how many ads (if any) you’ll be running. You’ll want to test images and videos organically first and then run ads on the content with a separate link to track the success.
4. Interaction
Are you going to respond to all comments on your Facebook posts? It is recommended that you do so but it is also important to remember that, sometimes, you might need to take the conversation offline to truly help someone. Are you going to respond to direct or private messages on your page? This is a great way for my team to assist as you grow your brand as a response grid can truly make a difference in how you build your Facebook brand page. We can also setup automatic messages for common questions on Facebook and reduce the time spent answering messages.
5. Measuring Success
Having realistic goals and expectations can help you feel successful, especially when you start growing your brand. Some things to think about when determining what success on Facebook means for you is to determine what you WANT your Facebook to do. What do we mean? Well, do you want to use your Facebook as a tool to showcase your reach on the Internet? As a way to sell products? All of the above? If you’re using Facebook to sell, an engaged audience that can be turned into customers is key but if you’re just looking for a large audience, they don’t necessarily have to be as engaged. That’s something to think about and we’d love to have that conversation with you about your brand.