Facebook marketing for your business: Don’t autopilot It – Plan it!

facebook marketing

Facebook being an excellent marketing tool, is a fact all businesses should already be aware of.

This social media giant does more than connecting old friends and bringing together new ones. It can be used to promote your business, gain new customers, and engage current customers.

In coming up and implementing your Facebook marketing plan, consider the following pointers:

Learn all the important details about Facebook.

In order to take advantage of Facebook, you need to know it well. You need to learn its different features and the role it plays in the present social media sphere. Get acquainted with everything marketing-related about Facebook. Find out how others use Facebook for marketing. Know the trends and the latest developments that can affect the use of Facebook for marketing. Learn how you can optimize conversions within Facebook. Also, importantly, you need to be properly aware of Facebook’s policies and guidelines. Be sure that your marketing strategies will not lead to having your account/page suspended or deactivated.

Set goals.

Once you have a good grasp of what Facebook can do for your business, you can proceed to setting your goals. Set short-term and medium or long term goals. Short-term goals may include attracting a thousand followers on your Facebook page or getting a thousand likes. For the medium and long term goals, they could be about generating leads, increasing sales, enhancing brand awareness and identity, or achieving business growth at a certain rate. Also, be sure to include in your goals the forging of brand loyalty and favorable feedback from customers.

Put emphasis on using Facebook as a lead generator. Facebook should serve as an effective tool for targeting marketing campaigns, attracting potential customers, and retaining current customers. If you want to engage in Facebook marketing, make sure that Facebook is contributing significantly to your marketing efforts.

Study the target demographic.

Properly identify who your product’s potential buyers are. Facebook is the most used social network for 18 to 29 year-olds. This does not mean, though, that you are limited to this age bracket. There are still a multitude of younger and older Facebook users. What’s more important is that you know who your target customers are so you can come up with suitable marketing copies and strategies.

Map your Content

You can publish informative articles that help attract attention to your product or highlight the benefits your product is able to offer. However, content is not just about articles. Many times, the more effective content to use for Facebook marketing are images and videos. You can develop highly informative and interesting infographics, memes, and videos. You can also collect interesting or humorous content from your customers or fans on Facebook. By the way, if you are publishing articles, be sure to add images on them because images can increase engagement by around 2.3 times.

Other types of Facebook content you should also consider using are links, shares, and Facebook Live. You can share stories from other sites or you can post links to pages that present information helpful in promoting your product. For example, if you are selling coffee, you can share recent research that report on the health benefits of coffee. On the other hand, you can also use Facebook Live to engage customers or to have a captive audience for your announcements or new product launches.

In creating your content, avoid the use of slang and jargon. Make sure your content exudes some personality, something that is relatable. If you want to use humor, be sure that your content is indeed humorous or convincingly funny. Moreover, be sure to carefully review your content for possible offensive language or undertones.

Schedule, Plan and Automate

Next up, you would want to establish a proper schedule in order to create a constant social media presence. This Facebook Marketing plan template can give you an idea as to how an orderly Facebook page marketing should ideally look, schedule-wise.

Also, not “autopiloting” your Facebook marketing does not mean that you can’t do automation. There are aspects in online marketing, including Facebook marketing, that are best automated. For instance, instead of manually posting your marketing copy on Facebook and other social media accounts, you can use social media management apps. You don’t even have to spend for them. There are free apps you can readily use. They can help you schedule the publication of your content and analyze the best time for releasing new content.

An important reminder: avoid posting excessive promotions. Schedule your highly promotional content at frequency that does not annoy your audience. You can sandwich explicit advertisement posts with informational or interesting posts. Don’t barrage your Facebook followers and potential customers with incessant advertising copy.

Get everyone in the company involved.

Facebook is something virtually anyone can use. As such, there’s no reason not to get everyone in your company involved in your Facebook marketing efforts. Take full advantage of Facebook’s social networking function by having everyone in your business playing a role. It could be something as simple as liking or sharing the content posted on your official Facebook page. Employees can also help check the accuracy or propriety of the content being published. They can also respond to inquiries and criticisms. Especially in cases when your online presence is being underhandedly assailed by a competitor, everyone in the company needs to be taking an active part in using Facebook to create a favorable image.

Monitor the achievement of goals.

Lastly, be sure to monitor your Facebook marketing efforts. Keep track of the goals you set earlier. If you are missing your targets, do tweaks or adjustments in your strategies and the marketing content you produce. Make this monitoring periodic or regular.

Plan your Facebook marketing with the points above in mind. Don’t just do Facebook marketing because everybody else does it. Be sure to have a plan and exploit all the advantages Facebook can offer. Facebook marketing is something you should direct and adjust acc, not something that drifts aimlessly because you are just doing it for the sake of doing it.