Facebook continues to reign supreme as the top social networking site for connecting and sharing with peers online. Facebook has evolved into a venue for businesses to market themselves through interaction with consumers and self-promotion, surpassing its original purpose as a social network.
In this article, we will examine seven marketing applications for Facebook.
Facebook is a powerful marketing tool, whether you’re a large corporation or a small local business. It’s a fantastic place to keep customers informed, develop brand identity, and expand your reach.
1. Making the Most of Your Facebook Business Page
A business’s Facebook page is an excellent free marketing instrument. These pages enable businesses to identify themselves – not only by listing product offerings and services, but also by sharing links, images, and posts on a customizable page to provide a greater sense of a company’s personality and character.
Your Facebook business profile is an ideal location to establish your brand identity and humanise your company. Facebook is a place where you can relax a bit; don’t be hesitant to be humorous.
Ultimately, you should consider the preferences of your primary audience. Share images, links, and videos on social media as long as they are relevant to your business and appear to be something your target audience would appreciate. Utilize Facebook Insights to determine what your audience finds most engaging.
In addition to hilarious videos of canines walking in tiny shoes, a store specialising in footwear may also post articles on how to accurately measure your foot size, the best shoe inserts for various foot ailments, etc. Ideal is a combination of humorous content, educational resources, and notifications about your store.
2. Facebook Advertising: Classic Ads
Facebook provides its own form of advertising in the form of Facebook ads, which appear in the site’s side columns. These traditional advertisements are designated as Marketplace Ads. They consist of a headline with accompanying text, an image, and a clickable link to a Facebook page, Facebook app, or an external website.
Implementing Facebook advertising into your Facebook marketing strategy is one way to increase likes and visits on your website.
Features of Facebook advertising include:
- Demographic targeting by Facebook user data on age, location, education, and interests.
- The ability to set ad budgets.
- Ad testing, in which multiple ad versions can be run simultaneously in order to compare ad designs and setup.
- Built-in ad performance measurement tools.
- The ability to advertise for your particular area—great for local businesses.
Facebook does not disclose their ad CTRs, making it difficult to determine the efficacy of Facebook advertisements. In our Facebook Ads vs. Google Display Ads infographic, we discovered that Facebook ads have a CTR of 0.051% and an average CPC of $0.80; however, a business’s Facebook advertising cost can differ greatly based on the targeting options selected and the level of competition.
Utilizing Facebook advertising to increase your “Likes” can be extremely beneficial; once a user likes your page, they become followers of your business page, and your posts will appear in their Facebook news feed.
This causes more users to interact with you and your brand, forming relationships that may eventually lead to conversions.
3. Hosting Facebook Contests
Facebook contests, sweepstakes, and promotions are yet another Facebook marketing strategy that can increase brand awareness and the number of followers.
When conducting a Facebook contest, keep in mind that contests cannot be conducted on Facebook itself (i.e., you can’t ask for likes as entries, have people write their responses in the comments, etc.). For establishing a Facebook contest, businesses must utilise a third-party app and then direct users to the app from their Facebook page.
There are a variety of paid and free applications available to assist with this. Shortstack provides a variety of complimentary contest templates for pages with fewer than 2,000 likes. Pagemodo also offers a gratis service. Free versions of many third-party Facebook contest applications are available, but their functionality is limited.
4. Facebook Promoted Posts
Facebook Promoted Posts enable Facebook page administrators to pay a fixed rate to have their individual Facebook posts reach a specified number of users, thereby increasing the reach and impressions of a specific post.
Some businesses have questioned why they must pay to ensure that their posts are seen by their subscribers. Shouldn’t a user who has liked my page always see my posts in their news feed? The answer to this query is no, as it assumes that users spend all of their waking hours on Facebook’s news feed. We trust this is not true for your Facebook followers’ health and safety!
If an admirer is viewing their news feed at the time you post a story, they are likely to see it, but there is no guarantee if their news feed is crowded with other posts. Promoted Posts increases the likelihood that your content will appear in a user’s news feed. Facebook Promoted Posts are displayed to existing fans, with the option to also reach the fans’ peers.
Creating Promoted Posts is simple; simply select the button beneath any of your page’s posts.
While the flat rate facilitates the process, Promoted Posts lack the targeting options available with other Facebook advertisements.
5. Facebook Exchange (FBX)
Facebook Exchange enables advertisers to utilise ad retargeting through real-time bidding on Facebook. Advertisers can target audiences based on web history data; if a user visits a product page on a retailer’s website but does not complete a purchase, the retailer can then display an ad for the same product on Facebook using FBX.
While Facebook retargeting ads were previously restricted to side columns, they are now permitted in news bulletins, the most valuable Facebook real estate. This is excellent news for FBX advertisers, as news feed ad response rates are 10 to 50 times higher than right column ad response rates.
How effective are Facebook Exchange ads? Facebook Exchange ads have a 40% lower CTR than other web retargeting ads, such as those on the Google Display Network. Other retargeting advertisements are also 80% less expensive per unique view than Facebook retargeting advertisements. However, in terms of cost-per-impression and cost-per-click, FBX ads are significantly less expensive, so the financial benefits depend on the requirements of your business. These figures are also susceptible to change as FBX advertisements become more prevalent in the news feed.