How to Incorporate Facebook into your Marketing Strategy

• Nov 04, 2018
• Architechs for the Web
• General

At the end of every year comes the time to assess your business strategy and find out what went well and what needs improvement. It is important to do this so you can accurately pinpoint what your goals will be for the upcoming year and create a strategy to make them happen. Whether your goal is to increase sales, bring in new customers, improve your customer relations, or all of the above, your marketing strategy is the most important way to make them happen, and social media is the number one way to reach your target audience.

Compared to other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram who boast approximately 300 million monthly users, Facebook is still the most successful and most used social media website with over two billion. It is the perfect place to market to and connect with your customers and there are many ways for you to do so.

Set Goals

Set up goals that are specific to what you hope to achieve on Facebook for your business. Stay away from arbitrary goals such as likes and followers as these don’t do much to profit anything but your vanity.  Instead, focus on how many people visit your website from Facebook, or the demographics of your viewership. Use it as an opportunity to gather information about your customers so that you can target them in your future marketing. Knowing your target audience is the most important step.

Prioritize Content

Continually refer people to your Facebook page when they are looking for information as this provides you with an opportunity to connect with them but also to market to them with the interesting content you have already shared. Each time you post, make sure you have a reason. The content on your page should be there to connect and educate your followers about your products or services, but never just to meet your posting quota. Posting too much can actually be detrimental to your following and decrease people’s interest in your page, so make sure what you are posting is relevant and necessary.

For example, whatever marketing you are using elsewhere, incorporate it into your business’ Facebook posts. Whether it be a promotion or a seasonal sale, include a special Facebook only deal that makes your Facebook followers feels special and also exclusive. Facebook creates an interactive opportunity for your followers to share and spread the news to their friends quickly so that you reach more customers in less time, and with very little effort on your part.

Mix it Up

Be sure to be diverse in WHAT you post so that your posts don’t become boring. Incorporate a variety of images, videos, questions, and links to your other content or sites so that your followers remain interested and engaged. Posts that include images are more than twice as engaging as straight status updates, and live content is 3 times as effective. Find ways to connect with your followers more personally rather than commercially. Lacking personality is one of the highest complaints against corporate and business accounts, along with posting too often and misusing internet humor. So make sure you understand your audience and concentrate your posts toward what they would enjoy seeing and respond to best.

Schedule Content

While you want to be careful not to post too often, you also don’t want to post too little and risk being forgotten. Scheduling your content is a great way to stay ahead of the game and make sure that you aren’t posting just anything in order to fill some kind of quota. You can plan ahead for seasonal promotions, weekly check-ins, links to your websites blog posts, or even customer satisfaction surveys. Connecting with people at least three times a week in different ways is the perfect way to gauge which types of posts are working and which aren’t.  You can even use a service for this type of scheduled posting and save yourself the hassle of selecting and editing your content.

Don’t Wait, Engage

Don’t wait for your Facebook content to generate followers, engage them! As with most marketing programs, you should put more work into your posts than you expect to get in return, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be worth it at all. Being available for your customers and putting fresh, new, original content out there to be seen is always useful and beneficial for your business. It allows you to stay current and applicable in the market and stay on top of any new trends.

Being trendy shouldn’t be your main goal, but connecting to your followers is and utilizing social media like Facebook is the best way to do that. Just by incorporating a simple content plan and using the marketing campaigns you already have on a platform like Facebook, you can reach more people and generate more traffic with half the work.