Last week, we spoke about getting your business started on Facebook. This week I’d like to delve deeper into this issue and document ways to make Facebook work for your business in order to connect with your target market. In this blog, we’ll introduce you to Facebook Ads as well as general good practice for optimising your Facebook page. So let’s begin!
Know Your Audience
It all starts with knowing your target audience. You will never hit the target if you don’t know where you’re aiming. Facebook offers a very useful tool for marketers which allows us to understand our audience, popular content, the best time of day and the best day of the week to post. It lets you see what is and isn’t working. This nifty tool is called Facebook Insights.
To access this wealth of data, all you need to do is click on the Facebook Insights tab on your Facebook Business page. Once clicked, you’ll observe its broken down into the following tabs – overview, promotions, likes, reach, page views, actions on the page, posts, events, people, and videos. This lets you dissect the success of certain posts i.e. a photo you posted recently. Instead of looking through all your posts, you can easily sort by photos.
More Effective and Efficient Marketing
Peering into the People page you’ll notice the demographics of your fans - age, gender and location. Our fans are pretty much split between both males and females within the age demographic of 25-35. That’s why Facebook is an ideal medium for us. Being a millennial marketing agency we place an importance on connecting with and understanding the millennial market.
Kissmetrics studies have shown that information like this gives you the ability to create personas of your target audience. This provides the potential to truly get to know your target audience. By knowing your audience, you’ll improve your ability to craft compelling, engaging, and actionable Facebook Ads and posts.
Another useful feature is the Post tab supplying data about when your fans are online. Armed with this knowledge, you may change the time or even the day you post. You might start out posting during working hours, but notice most of your fans are online at night. As a result, this might force you to change the schedule of your posts accordingly. You can even determine which type of post is most successful based on post reach and engagement. E.g You may compare photo posts vs blog posts. All this data helps improve your marketing strategy facilitating a closer connection and better reach with your audience.
Facebook Advertising
Average Facebook Advertising spend continues to increase year on year. Facebook hasn’t been oblivious to the number of sales Facebook Ads are generating for companies. In consequence, they’ve chosen to alter their algorithm forcing companies to spend more money to increase ad visibility. This has made Facebook a relatively expensive advertising platform for many organisations.
However, with effective targeting, even a small advertising budget can go a long way. E.g €50 can reach hundreds of people and can increase unique visitors to your website. This leads to higher conversion rates as the audience is more relevant. Wider ad exposure allows you to grow brand awareness and recognition. With Facebook’s targeting tool, you’re able to set campaigns that only target those not following your business. This captures new leads and customers. Area specific targeting also permits your business to reach people in certain locations with your message. Even more interesting is Facebook’s ability to target by demographics - interests, behaviors etc.
Facebook has recently released another new feature – Page Engagement Custom Audience. This permits you to include people in your campaigns who like your page but aren’t actually interacting with your ads. However, you can also build an audience based on how people are interacting with your ads. This helps you target the people who are most engaged and interested in your product offering. You’re more likely to see a better click-through rate with this type of targeting, as you’re already top of mind to this subset of customers. The possibility of creating ads that are targeted to people who’ve visited your page or clicked on your call–to–action button is also available.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you overcome your fears and shows the real value of investing in Facebook marketing. I know there are companies out there, who feel their business won’t benefit from having a Facebook presence. However, it really is an extremely powerful tool to reach your customer base more effectively. Or even, find a new type of customer that you never previously thought of.
No matter what sector you’re in, customers exist on Facebook which you could be targeting. It offers you a platform where for great interaction with your overall marketing activities. This gives you an avenue, to remind your customers about your business. If your business is struggling and needs some help then at BXT we’re always happy to help with your social media marketing. So get in touch.