Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world with more than 3 billion people busting it monthly. It is the perfect place for marketers to get new audiences and connections. Facebook ads offer one of the most cost-effective yet effective methods of brand promotion.

For small businesses, Facebook ads offer the best platform to boost income with a solid return on investment in your marketing efforts. However, it often takes a while before small business owners get how attracting new customers on Facebook works. BUT no matter what industry you’re in, Facebook offers the best opportunity to expand your business.

Did you know that 36.7% of the world’s population uses Facebook monthly? That means that your potential customer is probably on there, and that Facebook is a great way to reach them..

Facebook Advertising Explained

How do you set up Facebook for Business? It is absolutely free to set up a Facebook page. A Facebook page allows you to post content, communicate with your fans and followers and link to your website for free. For small businesses, this is an incredibly valuable feature that does not break the bank. It is also pretty straightforward to set up a Facebook Business page, which will allow you to start using Facebook paid advertising guide, including Facebook ads. In case you are having any issues setting up your Facebook Page, here is how:

1. Set Up your Facebook Page

• Log into your Facebook account, click on “pages” then “create”. Your personal account information will not appear in your newly set up business page.
• Select the page type you would like to set up. Community/public figure or Business/Brand
• Enter business details

2. Add Images

Upload photos from your device or select a few from your personal account that best describes your brand. Also, make sure the profile and cover photos are the optimum sizes for Facebook to keep them looking clear and attractive.

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3. Edit your Page Info

To complete your page info, click on “Edit Page Info” and fill out the sections below:

• Description: Give the best description of what your business entails in 255 characters
• Contact Information: Provide your customers and audiences with multiple channels that they can reach you through (including a link to your website)
• Extra details: Here you can fill in your business’ operating hours, privacy policy and price range.

4. Create your Username

Creating a username for your business page will help Facebook users find you. To set up a Facebook username, click on “Create Page @Username”. It would be great for your page if you chose a search-friendly username. In most instances, your brand name makes the most search-friendly username for business pages. If possible, make sure your username remains consistent across all your social media networks.

5. Create a Call-to-Action Button

A call-to-action is a link that allows people to shop for your products, engage with your business, or reach out to you. To add a call-to-action button on your Facebook business page, click on “Add a Button” under your cover photo and set one up. Here is an example of a call-to-action button:

And that’s it, you are all set up with a brand new Facebook business page. Now, your brand is ready to do some serious Facebook advertising.

Types of Facebook posts

Armed with a Facebook business page, you will need to figure out the type of content you will be posting to your audiences. Below are the different types of Facebook posts you can use to connect with your followers.

Facebook Status Post

This is Facebook’s most basic type of post, made up of nothing but text. A text-only post can help you promote your brand among a mixed audience. However, it cannot direct users to your website or improve conversion rates. It is often used to spark engagement on business pages, making them lively and attractive to visitors.

Some of the status posts you should employ most on your Facebook page are questions designed to understand the audience better. They are also a great way to get people involved in your offerings. Make them simple; asking what your customers want is a great way of figuring out how to improve your product and what to post.

Facebook Photo Post

Photos spark memories and imagination beyond texts. They give a more vivid description about your products or services, and spark more engagement than text posts.

There are plenty of firms that are already taking advantage of Facebook pages to post photos consistently to show off their latest products. Most of these photos have a high visual appeal, inviting people to browse their product offerings. Your photo post does not necessarily have to contain a photo per say; it could be an infographic, GIF or illustration or any other kind of visual image. Here is an example:

Facebook Video Post

Facebook video posts offer people a great overview of your product offering. A short compelling video often has a stronger visual appeal than an image. Since videos play automatically on the Facebook News Feed, a short clip could be one of the best ways to catch someone’s eye. Short videos are also Facebook’s recommended way of making announcements and polls.

You can use longer video posts to share memorable content with your followers. If you are sharing a story on your Facebook business page, it is recommended that it should be three minutes or longer.

You can also use Facebook Live Video, which is a live broadcast on Facebook. You can use it to give your customers a behind-the-scenes view of your firm, production, or individuals behind your brand.

Facebook Live is also a great opportunity for brands to interact with followers directly and share product related announcements in real time. It is, however, essential to keep in mind that anything can happen once you go live, and it is important that you prepare ahead of time.

Link Posts

Link posts allow marketers to post links to content outside Facebook (mostly their websites). They are perhaps the easiest posts to create. All you will need to do is copy a link of the page you want to direct your visitors and paste it in your Facebook post. Facebook will automatically populate the post with a photo and a Meta description. That way, you do not need to decorate and edit your link posts, Facebook will do it for you. For instance:

Facebook Poll Posts

A Facebook poll post gives your followers the option to vote for one or two options. Poll posts often have a higher engagement rate than most other Facebook posts; people just love voting. Once the set time for voting is over, the automatically tabulated results become public. For productive engagement in your Facebook poll posts, it is advisable to keep the subject related to the products you are offering. This unique Facebook marketing strategy can be a great way of building brand awareness.

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories are photos or short videos that appear at the top of your news feed. Facebook Stories disappear after 24 hours.

Facebook Stories are currently ahead of most Facebook posts with more than 500 million people viewing them every day. They offer the perfect opportunity to connect with your audiences. Since they are always located at the top of the Facebook News Feed, your promotion efforts will enjoy traffic irrespective of the Facebook algorithm. The image below shows an example of two Facebook story ads:

(Image Credit: Marketing Land)

Pinned Posts

Pinned posts are simply posts that you pin to the top of your Facebook business page. That way, they are the first thing anyone who lands on your Facebook page sees. Pinned posts offer Facebook marketers the opportunity to keep the posts with the most influence at the top of their page. Maybe you have that one piece of content that best captures the potential of your brand and you would like to be the first post that visitors view on your page.

Facebook also allows you to change your pinned posts as often as you like. That means that you get to schedule the updates you make on your pinned posts. That means that you can keep your audience expecting to see something exciting and fresh at the top of your Facebook page posts.

Which Type of Facebook Post is Ideal for Your Business?

If you are already wondering what Facebook post is the most ideal for your page, engaging in social listening could be your best option to learn about what resonates with your audience. Social listening can help you understand what the existing customers love about your products or brand. Additionally, it helps you learn the challenges that people are facing, which your products could help them resolve.

You could also use social listening to differentiate your brand from your competition. To start social listening, post content that is already performing well on other platforms. If you have a blog page that is getting a lot of comments, share it on Facebook as well.

You could also use the direct approach model and ask your audience what they want to see. Be sure to share all your content using cross-platform promotion rather than just cross-posting.

Facebook Ad Campaign Strategy for Small Businesses

The main goal of your Facebook Ad campaign should be to offer your prospective customers on Facebook a demonstration on how your product can offer a solution to their problems, reach their targets, and make their lives more comfortable.

Facebook offers the best opportunity for businesses to target the widest variety of audiences and utilize the most cost-effective marketing methods to drive leads and conversions.

Targeting can be broken down into two categories:

• Cold traffic targeting
• Re-targeted Traffic

Cold Traffic Targeting

Cold traffic consists of the people that are not aware of your brand or product and have never had a look at your website or Facebook page. These people offer marketers the opportunity to increase their recognition and brand awareness. Facebook offers marketers the rare opportunity to target audiences based on their behavior, demographic location, interests, age, as well as language.

Retargeted Traffic

Retargeted traffic consists of the people who have come in contact with your brand before. These include:

• People who engaged with your posts or ads
• Website visitors
• People who liked your Facebook Page
• Facebook video viewers
• Custom lists uploaded to Facebook from your email

When inviting retargeted traffic on Facebook, you can post ads that remind them of the products or services that they browsed on your website or saw in a video that you posted. Your ads can be dynamic to show a wider selection of your product offering and invite a wide audience to view your products.

Facebook currently allows you to share your posts on Instagram as well, allowing you to get your re-targeted marketing efforts to a broader audience.

Facebook Ads Guide

Now that we know all the different types of Facebook posts and tracking categories, let’s have a look at the Facebook marketing ideas that could help your brand’s popularity grow.

1. Define your Target Audience

To understand who exactly your target audience is, you must ask yourself some questions;

• What is the income level of your target audience?
• How old are your target audience?
• What are some of the most common challenges your target audience experiences?
• Where does your target audience live?
• How and how often does your target audience use Facebook?

To get the answers to these questions, you must begin by understanding Facebook’s basic demographics. Once you can tell how your audience uses Facebook and how it maps back to your product offering and target audience, you are ready to create ads that match the needs and wants of your target audience.

You can use Facebook Audience Insights to get into the details about your target audiences that are potential customers. The tool is useful in finding information on:

• Gender
• Age
• Education
• Location
• Relationship status
• Language
• Facebook usage
• Past purchasing activity

(Image Credit: Hootsuite Blog)

Always have an idea of the type of people you are trying to target to be able to use the platform successfully.

2. Plan your Content Mix

The key to a successful Facebook Ads marketing strategy is having the right content mix. The golden 80-20 rule is recommended for startup businesses to get a footing in the market:

• 80% of Facebook posts should inform, educate and entertain
• 20% of your Facebook posts should promote your brand

Facebook business is all about building relationships. Self-promotion is, therefore, not a great way to promote your brand on Facebook PPC guide. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will likely be open to the 20% of your posts that are focused on marketing your products.

The Facebook algorithm also penalizes brands that push sales too hard. According to Facebook, pages should post content that users would like and share, and as a marketer, you should want the same. The likes and shares get your brand and products more audiences.

Figure out when and how often you will be sharing your posts on Facebook. This part might take a few tries. However, according to research, the best times to post on Facebook are between 9 am and 2 pm EST on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for B2B brands and 12 pm EST on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.

It is essential to be consistent with your posts. To help you build a balanced mix of content, create a content calendar and keep your posting schedule on the most productive track.

3. Consider Using other Facebook Features

Once you have begun building up a following on Facebook, you may want to consider bringing some other Facebook tools into your Facebook ad marketing strategy. Some of the tools that are readily available for marketers on Facebook include:

• Facebook Groups
• Facebook Messenger bot
• Facebook Business Manager

4. Incorporate the Facebook Pixel 

A Facebook pixel is a simple code that you copy into your website to track conversions, build targeted custom audiences for ads, and remarketing to the people who have already been to your website.

As soon as you place the Facebook pixel on your website, it will begin collecting data and provide you with details regarding your custom and remarketing audience as you begin your ad campaign.

5. Track and Measure Performance and Refine your Offering

A successful Facebook ad campaign must involve continuous tracking and measuring performance to see which aspects of your campaign work and which don’t. Fortunately Facebook offers Facebook Insights, a built-in audience engagement tracking feature that measures likes, engagement, reach, and which of your posts resulted in people disliking your business page. For instance:

(Image Credit: ClickZ)

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You may not be an expert yet, but now you should have a solid understanding of using Facebook ads effectively for your small or medium sized business. Partnering with Diib will provide you with an added measure of security that your Ads are effective and getting to the audience you intend.

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