Want to improve your Facebook marketing techniques this year? Hoping to gain an edge over your competitors and connect with potential and current customers?
Facebook now has approximately 2 billion monthly users. That makes it one of the best places to market your business. But you can no longer rely on the marketing techniques you’ve always used. If you want to succeed, it’s crucial to be innovative and use the latest techniques to stand out.
No longer can business owners afford to ignore technology. Consider the rise of big data, constant connection on social media, and the Internet of Things changing the way we live and work. Savvy business owners will make the most of this technology and use it to increase their market share.
Read on to learn about the Facebook marketing techniques you should be using this year.
The Best Facebook Marketing Techniques for Your Business
The below techniques are some of the best ways to market your business on Facebook- regardless of your business size or type of customers. Ready? Let’s get started.
Post via Instagram
Sure, it may seem strange that the first of these strategies involves Instagram. But it turns out that brand engagement is ten times higher on Instagram than on Facebook.
By posting your images onto Facebook via Instagram, you can positively impact your engagement.
Stalk your Competitors
If you haven’t yet heard of Facebook’s “Pages to Watch” feature, you’ve been missing out. This is a powerful tool that allows you to analyze the performance of posts from other companies.
You can easily use this tool to add different Facebook pages to see the kind of posts that are being engaged with, and those that are missing the mark.
While you shouldn’t be copying other company’s strategies, this is a smart way to learn. Using “Pages to Watch” can give you and your marketing team some excellent ideas about the kind of posts that people like, share, and engage with.
Get Live
Facebook Live is no longer a new feature. But most businesses are still failing to use the tool to drive engagement. If you’re hoping to wow your customers with your Facebook marketing techniques, Facebook Live is crucial.
Did you know that people will watch Facebook Live videos for three times longer than pre-recorded videos? And Facebook Live has a 135% higher reach than regular posts.
This means that Facebook Live should be an integral part of your Facebook Marketing strategy. You can use it for a number of different things, including:
- Addressing customer concerns
- Promoting new products or services
- Giving an inside look into your business
- Giving your opinion about industry-specific news
- Answering questions and speaking directly to your customers
Use A/B Testing
Split testing is one of the more popular Facebook marketing techniques, and it helps eliminate the guesswork when developing new strategies. When you use A/B testing for your audience, you can easily see what’s working, and what isn’t.
Facebook allows you to split test many different business objectives, such as conversion, app installs, lead generation ads, and more. You can use the split test feature by setting the minimum budget suggested by Facebook.
Your variables could include your target audience, the copy you’re using, your images, ad creatives, or almost anything else. Most business owners will get the most out of the Target Audience split test, as you can experiment to create the precise audience for your goals.
And that will lead to an increased Click Through Rate and higher Return on Investment.
Target More Effectively
Many businesses make the mistake of targeting a broad group of people such as “stay-at-home moms” or “working professionals.” Sure, all stay-at-home moms may be able to benefit from your products, but you need to narrow your market down to a more specific group of people. This will allow you to market your product much more effectively.
Otherwise, your message may be too broad to grab attention.
If you’re not yet sure the gender of your market, this is a big one. You may find that you have a mostly female market, yet you’ve been marketing to males the whole time (or vice-versa).
Age is another big consideration. The way you speak to your prospects, and the things they’re interested in will vary hugely depending on whether they’re 18-25 or 55-60.
Targeting is hugely important, and you won’t be able to make the most of these Facebook marketing techniques unless you know who you’re marketing to.
Schedule Content Wisely
Every social network has particular styles of content. But Facebook stands heads and shoulders above the rest.
With videos, images, Facebook Live, Stories, Groups, and more, you have endless opportunities for your content strategy.
When it comes to connecting with your followers, you need to schedule wisely. A Sprout Social survey found that 57% of social media users found too many promotional posts to be the most annoying action from the brands they followed.
Sure, the occasional promotional post is fine. But if you’re bombarding your audience with posts about how great your company is, don’t be surprised if they begin to unfollow.
Facebook allows you to schedule your content in advance. This is one of the best Facebook marketing techniques for busy business owners. You can quickly glance at your scheduled posts and see how many are promotional. And then you can move adjust so they’re surrounded by non-promotional posts.
You need to produce helpful, entertaining or compelling content to stand out.
The last thing you should do is throw up any old post for the sake of getting something on Facebook. When you plan your content, you’re putting more effort into creating a high-quality post.
And that means you’re more likely to engage and inspire your audience.
Luckily, there are plenty of social media publishing tools available to help you keep your content on track. This also means that you can batch post- spend one day a week finding all of your content and schedule it to go out through the week. Then you only need to login to post newsworthy content and respond to comments or questions.
Use Saved Audiences
Saved audiences are one of the best ways to target a specific market.
Facebook’s Business Manager allows business owners to create these custom audiences. That means that once you’ve narrowed down your demographics, you can then advertise specifically to different groups of people.
Here’s an example. Say your company provides custom software development services to small and medium sized businesses. You may want to tailor a specific ad or type of content towards businesses in the hospitality industry. You can then create a saved audience to target that audience.
Say your company provides custom software development services to small and medium sized businesses. You may want to tailor a specific ad or type of content towards businesses in the hospitality industry. You can then create a saved audience to target that audience.
Not only does this make it easier for you to connect with customers, but it saves precious marketing resources. You’re not wasting time and money marketing to people who won’t be interested in that particular piece of content, product, or service.
Add Video Captioning
Facebook has expanded access to its video captioning tool, but many remain skeptical of how well it works. YouTube rolled out its own captioning service back in 2009, courtesy of Google. While the results weren’t great, the speech recognition technology has come a long way.
If you’re hoping to attract new customers, weird or incorrect captioning isn’t going to work. At least 85% of Facebook viewers are watching videos without sound. Either take the time to edit your captions or hire someone from Fiverr who can give you an SRT file to upload.
Use a CTA
Did you know that you can add a call-to-action on your Facebook page? These buttons are located at the bottom right-hand corner of the cover photo on your page.
These CTA buttons make it easy for your leads and customers to learn more or get in touch with your business.
Know your Time-Zone
Do you know when your Facebook followers are online? Facebook can be one of the more difficult social networks to use for this. And its algorithms are making it challenging for businesses hoping to post at the best time.
This is one of those Facebook marketing techniques that many people have heard of. But you’d be surprised by how many business owners are failing to consider when their audience is online.
Here are a few things to consider:
- The least-recommended posting times are late nights and early mornings
- Posting between 9 am and 3 pm local time will get your post in front of more eyes
- For some reason, Thursday is the best day to post, and 1 pm on Thursday is usually the most active time.
- The strongest days to post are between Wednesday and Sunday
Of course, these are just guidelines, and your customers may be online at completely different times. It’s a good idea to experiment with different days and times so you can see when you’re getting the most engagement.
Upload your List
This is one of those Facebook marketing techniques that many people are unaware of. If you have an email list, you can upload it to Facebook. And once you’ve finished uploading it, you can then advertise to all of the people who have those emails associated with their accounts.
This is one of the best ways to use multiple touch points with leads and customers. Since these people have already given you their email address, they’re warm leads and can be converted much more easily.
Consider running an engagement or Like campaign to encourage your email list to interact with you on Facebook.
Use the Pixel
The Facebook Pixel is one of the more cutting-edge Facebook marketing techniques. You can use the Facebook Pixel in three different ways:
- Optimize your ads for conversions
- Retarget by building custom audiences
- See which ads are converting and which are not
When a lead visits your website and takes an action, you’ll immediately be notified by the Facebook pixel. You can then reach that customer again through the Custom Audience feature.
As more conversions happen on your website, the tool will then get better and deliver your ads to prospects who are likely to take certain actions. This is also known as conversion optimization.
To create a pixel, head to your Ads Manager, click Assets, and then Pixels. Once you’ve created a pixel, you’ll paste that code into each page of your website. That allows you to create audiences once you’ve tracked specific actions.
Creating an audience is easy. Your first audience could be anyone who has visited your website within the past 30 days. You can then choose what you would like to do with these people and how you’d like to retarget them.
This is by far one of the best Facebook marketing techniques around. If you can use this technique efficiently, you can effectively retarget leads and keep your brand top of mind.
Embrace the Chatbot
Artificial intelligence is quickly changing the world, and chatbots are just one example of what AI can do. In fact, you may have already interacted with a chatbot in the past without realizing it.
Chatbots are one of the latest and greatest Facebook marketing techniques and can be implemented in numerous ways.
Chatbots will have a conversation with leads and customers through Facebook messenger. They can help people by:
- Answering questions
- Responding to comments
- Directing them towards content
- Take payments and complete transactions
- And more
Here are some ways that businesses are using chatbots:
Whole Foods
The Whole Foods chatbot is primarily for users wanting to find new recipes. Customers can easily enter requests for “chicken recipes” and will be given a range of suggestions.
They can also go through a series of questions to get recipes personalized for them. And users want to view a recipe, the chatbot takes them straight to the Whole Foods website.
Domino’s Pizza
Domino’s is another great example of a chatbot. Not only can customers order straight from the bot but they can use it to track their order. Calls from impatient customers are greatly reduced, and customers enjoy top-notch service.
RemitRadar
RemitRadar is a money transfer service, and users can find money transfer locations, request exchange rates, pay for international mobile, and send money within the conversation.
These are just a few examples of how chatbots are engaging customers. Chatbots are one of the best Facebook marketing techniques around right now, so be sure to consider whether they would work well for your business.
Need some help implementing some of the above Facebook marketing techniques? Get in touch for a free consultation to learn how we can help with your social media marketing.
