1. Facebook Photos, Videos, Live, Instant Articles, stories & Virtual Reality
2. Audience
3. Automation
4. 70-20-10 Rule for content creation
5. Groups strategy
6. Facebook ads
7. Facebook Pixel
With almost 3 billion users Facebook or Meta as they are now known, still remains the most-used social media platform in the world.
But Facebook's engagement rate is only 0.067%!
So how is it that some brands get a ton of engagement on Facebook?
The following fundamentals of facebook marketing will teach you exactly that!
But Facebook's engagement rate is only 0.067%!
So how is it that some brands get a ton of engagement on Facebook?
The following fundamentals of facebook marketing will teach you exactly that!
But before we start diving into making your Facebook a success, the following perquisites need to be fulfilled:
- An Facebook account
If you don’t have an Facebook account then click here to learn the basics of setting up an Facebook account!
- An Facebook account
If you don’t have an Facebook account then click here to learn the basics of setting up an Facebook account!
1. Facebook Photos, Videos, Live, Instant Articles, stories & Virtual Reality
All social media platforms love content as they keep the eyeballs of their precious users glued to their platform, and Facebook is no different so content is key.
You as a business need to post as much content as you can and you can do this using these features provided by Facebook.
Photos can be added to Facebook posts to add visual appeal and grab your audience attention. The saying a picture is worth a thousand words was easily proved as a study showed that using photos increased engagement by 2-3 fold, that's a 200% increase!
Videos are a much more stimulating way of storytelling, especially nowadays as a majority of Gen-Z and even millennial audiences love video, and if a picture is worth a thousand words imagine how much a video is worth.
Luckily we don’t need to, a study done by databox shows that businesses(especially SMEs) using facebook ads have seen a 44% increase in engagement of their video ads and conversion increase of 20-30%!
Another key thing to remember: Facebook auto plays videos without sound. I repeat without sound . 90% of them at least.
So you you need to add subtitles to your videos to get the most out of those autoplays.
You as a business need to post as much content as you can and you can do this using these features provided by Facebook.
Photos can be added to Facebook posts to add visual appeal and grab your audience attention. The saying a picture is worth a thousand words was easily proved as a study showed that using photos increased engagement by 2-3 fold, that's a 200% increase!
Videos are a much more stimulating way of storytelling, especially nowadays as a majority of Gen-Z and even millennial audiences love video, and if a picture is worth a thousand words imagine how much a video is worth.
Luckily we don’t need to, a study done by databox shows that businesses(especially SMEs) using facebook ads have seen a 44% increase in engagement of their video ads and conversion increase of 20-30%!
Another key thing to remember: Facebook auto plays videos without sound. I repeat without sound . 90% of them at least.
So you you need to add subtitles to your videos to get the most out of those autoplays.
Stories are a feature of Facebook that lets users to post photos or videos which automatically disappear within 24 hours.
They appear in a vertical format and are fast, memorable, and fun by design allowing brands and businesses to show a much more lighter side to them and test out new content strategies. Facebook stories also allow brands and businesses to create interactions with customers a more direct manner, with polls, questions and link features that are actionable.
Live as the word itself eludes to is streaming video live from a device with a camera. Now I know what you are immediately thinking, lives are usually done by influencers and celebrities, so it doesn’t pertain to me. Wrong!!!
It is this mentality adopted by many businesses that makes it such an untapped resource and gives an advantage for those that do use Facebook Live. As businesses you could live stream charity events, openings, day in the life, behind the scenes of a process, etc.
As an added bonus once your live stream finishes it is automatically saved to your page as if it was a video you posted, reducing your time spent on content.
They appear in a vertical format and are fast, memorable, and fun by design allowing brands and businesses to show a much more lighter side to them and test out new content strategies. Facebook stories also allow brands and businesses to create interactions with customers a more direct manner, with polls, questions and link features that are actionable.
Live as the word itself eludes to is streaming video live from a device with a camera. Now I know what you are immediately thinking, lives are usually done by influencers and celebrities, so it doesn’t pertain to me. Wrong!!!
It is this mentality adopted by many businesses that makes it such an untapped resource and gives an advantage for those that do use Facebook Live. As businesses you could live stream charity events, openings, day in the life, behind the scenes of a process, etc.
As an added bonus once your live stream finishes it is automatically saved to your page as if it was a video you posted, reducing your time spent on content.
2. Audience
Business rule numero uno: know who you are selling to. Selling to an Audience you dont know is like throwing a stone at a dart board, you might accidently hit the bullseye but it will never stick and you’ll eventually end up breaking the whole dartboard.
So you really, really need to know your audience, not just as a whole but as individuals. Now aside from actually becoming close friends with each and every single customer the next closest possibility of doing this is to create an audience/buyer persona.
So you really, really need to know your audience, not just as a whole but as individuals. Now aside from actually becoming close friends with each and every single customer the next closest possibility of doing this is to create an audience/buyer persona.
A Buyer persona is a fictional description of your ideal client, what they do, how they behave and essentially everything that allows you to relate to them.
What all that information means is that you will know exactly how to influence your ideal audience to engage with your posts, follow your page and buy what you sell.
Facebook’s Meta business suite and its audience insights tool will give you the analytics you need to hone these buyer personas, get much more indepth information about them.
Audience insights tool will give you a peek inside the mind of your ideal audience, providing data such as :
. Page likes
. Age
. Gender
. Top cities and countries
. Location
. Interests
All of this helps you better connect and better serve your target audience.
What all that information means is that you will know exactly how to influence your ideal audience to engage with your posts, follow your page and buy what you sell.
Facebook’s Meta business suite and its audience insights tool will give you the analytics you need to hone these buyer personas, get much more indepth information about them.
Audience insights tool will give you a peek inside the mind of your ideal audience, providing data such as :
. Page likes
. Age
. Gender
. Top cities and countries
. Location
. Interests
All of this helps you better connect and better serve your target audience.
3. Automation
As a business owner and entrepreneur you have a million things on your plate and hundreds of fires to put out and thousands of ideas to work on.
You shouldn’t be forced to do tedious small tasks, but no matter how much you try to wish them away they are still there. And the thing with small tasks is that they tend to pile on and on and on till the small tasks become a giant dam that could dry up all your hard earned progress and drain all the growth of your business.
Luckily facebook realized this!
Facebook’s Meta Business Suite holds a bevy of useful tools that help you automate all the small tasks as well as some big ones so that you can invest your time in actually growing your business.
You shouldn’t be forced to do tedious small tasks, but no matter how much you try to wish them away they are still there. And the thing with small tasks is that they tend to pile on and on and on till the small tasks become a giant dam that could dry up all your hard earned progress and drain all the growth of your business.
Luckily facebook realized this!
Facebook’s Meta Business Suite holds a bevy of useful tools that help you automate all the small tasks as well as some big ones so that you can invest your time in actually growing your business.
Cross-posting
Social media platforms reward content so if you want to stay top you need to post away as much content as you possibly can.
Multiply this requirement by the number of social media platforms you want to be on top of and that is quite a large pit to fill so naturally you are going to want to post the same content across multiple platforms.
However there are two major “NO-NO”s when it comes to cross-posting that you have to look out for.
Firstly, not all platforms have the same format for sharing content and when you cross-post sometimes this might mean that you post an incredible-looking, amazing piece of content on one platform but the same content looks blurry, half cropped-off and just plain awful.
Secondly you run the risk of looking rather callous and amateurish when you post the exact same content on all platforms.
Meta business suite enables you to crosspost for facebook and instagram so you get twice the content output for the price of posting one. Being under the same company allows the business suite to optimize your single piece of content for both platforms. It also allows you to easily edit and change content you post to each platform so you don’t end up sounding a one schtick pony.
Facebook post Scheduling
It’s the first day of your vacation,you’re on a tropical island, laying on a beach chair, after sipping the most refreshing glass of pina colada, youre slowly nodding off to sleep, when BAM! You remember you haven’t posted since yesterday because of your flight schedule. You try opening up Facebook but the WIFI at hotel is slower than sending something via post! and your flight is in two days! What do you do?!?!
Well this won’t be a problem for you in the future because with Facebook’s Post Scheduling you can schedule content to be posted automatically , whenever you want it to be posted. This way you can schedule content for a week or even a month if you want and take your vacation in peace.
Customer service Chat Bots
Keeping up with your customers/audience is a difficult but quite necessary job, especially if they are global and operate on different time zones to you. You could either forget the verb to sleep ever existed in your vocabulary or you could use facebook’s messenger chatbot to help automate handling customer questions and replying to them as you would.
This way your business will be operating even while you sleep.
If tweaked properly you can forget about ever having a staff as the facebook messenger bot will not only be able to answer customer questions but also track packages, make product recommendations and even close on sales.
Social media platforms reward content so if you want to stay top you need to post away as much content as you possibly can.
Multiply this requirement by the number of social media platforms you want to be on top of and that is quite a large pit to fill so naturally you are going to want to post the same content across multiple platforms.
However there are two major “NO-NO”s when it comes to cross-posting that you have to look out for.
Firstly, not all platforms have the same format for sharing content and when you cross-post sometimes this might mean that you post an incredible-looking, amazing piece of content on one platform but the same content looks blurry, half cropped-off and just plain awful.
Secondly you run the risk of looking rather callous and amateurish when you post the exact same content on all platforms.
Meta business suite enables you to crosspost for facebook and instagram so you get twice the content output for the price of posting one. Being under the same company allows the business suite to optimize your single piece of content for both platforms. It also allows you to easily edit and change content you post to each platform so you don’t end up sounding a one schtick pony.
Facebook post Scheduling
It’s the first day of your vacation,you’re on a tropical island, laying on a beach chair, after sipping the most refreshing glass of pina colada, youre slowly nodding off to sleep, when BAM! You remember you haven’t posted since yesterday because of your flight schedule. You try opening up Facebook but the WIFI at hotel is slower than sending something via post! and your flight is in two days! What do you do?!?!
Well this won’t be a problem for you in the future because with Facebook’s Post Scheduling you can schedule content to be posted automatically , whenever you want it to be posted. This way you can schedule content for a week or even a month if you want and take your vacation in peace.
Customer service Chat Bots
Keeping up with your customers/audience is a difficult but quite necessary job, especially if they are global and operate on different time zones to you. You could either forget the verb to sleep ever existed in your vocabulary or you could use facebook’s messenger chatbot to help automate handling customer questions and replying to them as you would.
This way your business will be operating even while you sleep.
If tweaked properly you can forget about ever having a staff as the facebook messenger bot will not only be able to answer customer questions but also track packages, make product recommendations and even close on sales.
4. 70-20-10 Rule for content creation
Social media as the word would indicate, is content that is meant to be social, or shared as a society.
That being the case to grow on facebook or most any other social media platform an obvious thing that we tend to forget is that you have to be social.
You have to not only post content but also interact with other peoples content.
That being the case to grow on facebook or most any other social media platform an obvious thing that we tend to forget is that you have to be social.
You have to not only post content but also interact with other peoples content.
Top social media content gurus suggest the adoption of the 70 - 20 - 10 model for content creation which rings especially true for Facebook.
Unlike Instagram and YouTube where content is much more easily discoverable Facebook mostly shares content of pages users have already liked, so to be discovered you have to: “BE SOCIAL”!
This is where the 70 -20 -10 model comes in.
- 70% of your content should be something that serves your target audience and provides them with value.
- 20% of your content needs to be other peoples content which you share with their permission and giving them credit. This makes them not only know about you but it is highly likely that they will like your page and interact with your content as well, thus opening you up to their friends or audience. Its a win-win for all!
- 10% of your content should be calls to action to get your audience to either purchase or do something to progress them through the customer journey.
Unlike Instagram and YouTube where content is much more easily discoverable Facebook mostly shares content of pages users have already liked, so to be discovered you have to: “BE SOCIAL”!
This is where the 70 -20 -10 model comes in.
- 70% of your content should be something that serves your target audience and provides them with value.
- 20% of your content needs to be other peoples content which you share with their permission and giving them credit. This makes them not only know about you but it is highly likely that they will like your page and interact with your content as well, thus opening you up to their friends or audience. Its a win-win for all!
- 10% of your content should be calls to action to get your audience to either purchase or do something to progress them through the customer journey.
5. Groups strategy
Whilst a Facebook page will be the face of your company, groups on Facebook can be used to build community.
Unlike pages which are broadly a one way street of communication, groups offer a two way conversation not only with you but also with other members in that group.
Unlike pages which are broadly a one way street of communication, groups offer a two way conversation not only with you but also with other members in that group.
Groups also have greater engagement than a page as content is generally created by the people for the people.
A group is also a good way of lead generation as more often than not if you make the proper group to attract the proper audience they will recruit more likeminded members thus increasing your lead gen.
Creating your own Facebook group has its benefits and challenges all of which are more thoroughly examined here.
Whilst creating your own group is a viability it is also a hard and long winded exercise .
So rather than making your own why not borrow the lead gen of other existing groups?
You can do this by either joining as a legitimate member and being an active member of that group really putting out valuable content. If the content is good enough other members will be curious about you and eventually end up liking your page.
OR You can always approach other groups that you are sure to find your target audience at, for promotional content at a price.
Which ever strategy you choose groups would play a major part in the success of your business on Facebook
A group is also a good way of lead generation as more often than not if you make the proper group to attract the proper audience they will recruit more likeminded members thus increasing your lead gen.
Creating your own Facebook group has its benefits and challenges all of which are more thoroughly examined here.
Whilst creating your own group is a viability it is also a hard and long winded exercise .
So rather than making your own why not borrow the lead gen of other existing groups?
You can do this by either joining as a legitimate member and being an active member of that group really putting out valuable content. If the content is good enough other members will be curious about you and eventually end up liking your page.
OR You can always approach other groups that you are sure to find your target audience at, for promotional content at a price.
Which ever strategy you choose groups would play a major part in the success of your business on Facebook
6. Facebook ads
Before we dive into how to be successful at Facebook ads, we need to be fully aware of the terminology used in Facebook ads
Ad:- Individual ads that you will post on Facebook.
Adset- Ad sets are collections of ads that target specific audiences. You'll need separate sets if you're targeting multiple audiences.
Campaigns: A campaign is a collection of ads that fall under one overarching objective.
Ad:- Individual ads that you will post on Facebook.
Adset- Ad sets are collections of ads that target specific audiences. You'll need separate sets if you're targeting multiple audiences.
Campaigns: A campaign is a collection of ads that fall under one overarching objective.
Going off of that, before you start making cool advertisements you need to strategize and decide what you want out of this ad campaign, what’s the goal? what does your business need to get done to grow and succeed?
Facebook has simplified your options of goals into three appropriate objectives:
- Awareness - If your requirement is to inform your target audience of something, anything, your objective will be to raise their awareness. Facebook gives you the option of further focusing either your brand awareness or the Reach of your advert.
- Consideration - If your requirement is to engage your target audience, your objective will be to make them consider taking some action. This is divided into Traffic to a link, Engagement in terms of likes, comments, shares, etc. , App installs, Video Views, Lead generation and Messages which prompt direct contact with your target audience
- Conversion - If you're requirement is to convert your target audience into customers then your objective will be conversion. Under Conversion you can choose the option of increasing conversions, asking that big ask and getting your customers click the “GO” button or better yet making them do store visits, physically moving them to come to your store. You could also go with catalogue sales showing only the right items in your catalogues to ideal customers increasing their conversion.
Now that that is out of the way lets look at one of the fundamental pillars of marketing :
Targeting
It may seem like beating a dead horse but it is vital for the success of your Facebook ads that you know exactly who you want this ad to be seen by, their age, interests, behavior, etc.
This information is the life blood of proper targeting. You need to use it not only when you are selecting your audience in the ad manager but also when designing the creative itself.
Without it your Facebook ad campaign will sink faster than the Titanic and maybe cost you even more.
Once the first advert launches retarget those who have watched or seen your ad and then watch as the sales come in.
The final must do in your ad campaign is monitor the results against your KPIs and goals. Get information about performance through page insights, post details, likes, click-through-rates, cost-per-action, Reach, etc.
This will help you tweak the ads if they aren’t performing well, provided rational reason; find why some adverts fail or don’t resonate with the target audience..
Facebook has simplified your options of goals into three appropriate objectives:
- Awareness - If your requirement is to inform your target audience of something, anything, your objective will be to raise their awareness. Facebook gives you the option of further focusing either your brand awareness or the Reach of your advert.
- Consideration - If your requirement is to engage your target audience, your objective will be to make them consider taking some action. This is divided into Traffic to a link, Engagement in terms of likes, comments, shares, etc. , App installs, Video Views, Lead generation and Messages which prompt direct contact with your target audience
- Conversion - If you're requirement is to convert your target audience into customers then your objective will be conversion. Under Conversion you can choose the option of increasing conversions, asking that big ask and getting your customers click the “GO” button or better yet making them do store visits, physically moving them to come to your store. You could also go with catalogue sales showing only the right items in your catalogues to ideal customers increasing their conversion.
Now that that is out of the way lets look at one of the fundamental pillars of marketing :
Targeting
It may seem like beating a dead horse but it is vital for the success of your Facebook ads that you know exactly who you want this ad to be seen by, their age, interests, behavior, etc.
This information is the life blood of proper targeting. You need to use it not only when you are selecting your audience in the ad manager but also when designing the creative itself.
Without it your Facebook ad campaign will sink faster than the Titanic and maybe cost you even more.
Once the first advert launches retarget those who have watched or seen your ad and then watch as the sales come in.
The final must do in your ad campaign is monitor the results against your KPIs and goals. Get information about performance through page insights, post details, likes, click-through-rates, cost-per-action, Reach, etc.
This will help you tweak the ads if they aren’t performing well, provided rational reason; find why some adverts fail or don’t resonate with the target audience..
7. Facebook Pixel
Facebook pixel is one of Facebook's neatest tools that gives you insight into your target audience in a much more in-depth and real way.
It is a piece of HTML code that you insert into the back end of your website.
It is a piece of HTML code that you insert into the back end of your website.
Once installed, it gathers the data of all visitors to your site and monitors their activity.
How it works is, after the pixel is installed, when a user clicks on one of your ads and visits your site, the pixel will track their activity. You can see how long they spend on your site, what links they click, which pages they visit, which products they buy, and essentially the journey that they take after being interested and invested in your ad.
This not only makes it easier to run effective targeted Facebook ad campaigns in the future, especially if you collect customers' email addresses, but also helps you tweak their customer journey on your website to increase conversions and make them happy.
Not having Pixel on your website is a huge loss of valuable information that you can capitalize on which your competitors might already be doing, giving them a serious advantage over you .
How it works is, after the pixel is installed, when a user clicks on one of your ads and visits your site, the pixel will track their activity. You can see how long they spend on your site, what links they click, which pages they visit, which products they buy, and essentially the journey that they take after being interested and invested in your ad.
This not only makes it easier to run effective targeted Facebook ad campaigns in the future, especially if you collect customers' email addresses, but also helps you tweak their customer journey on your website to increase conversions and make them happy.
Not having Pixel on your website is a huge loss of valuable information that you can capitalize on which your competitors might already be doing, giving them a serious advantage over you .
Armed with the above 07 fundamentals you’re one step ahead of your competition and well on your way to being an Facebook success.
There are more resources available for you to continue this success into all aspects of your business. Just follow the white robot!
There are more resources available for you to continue this success into all aspects of your business. Just follow the white robot!
