A Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Marketing

With over 1.8 billion daily active users, Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the world. This makes Facebook marketing a tremendous resource for businesses to grow brand awareness and directly engage with their target audiences.

78% of American users have found products to purchase on Facebook. Two-thirds of Facebook users have reported visiting a local business’s Facebook page at least once a week. If used properly, the platform is an effective tool to turn impressions and followers into sales.

Many businesses utilize Facebook marketing strategies to expand their reach and grow brand awareness. In fact, about 200 million businesses use Facebook to market their business.

If you want to understand the platform and how to properly leverage all its features to the benefit of your business, this guide serves to equip you with the knowledge you need.

Creating a Facebook Page for your business

The first step to growing your business on Facebook is creating a Facebook Page for your business. The majority of profiles on Facebook are personal profiles, but for your business you’ll want to create a Facebook page.

Make sure to have a relevant profile picture, a page cover and that you optimize your page description. Page descriptions have a 225-character limit, therefore they must be concise and quickly summarize your business’ mission.

Lastly, create a Facebook username. This will appear in your custom Facebook URL and will help people easily find your Facebook page.

Types of Posts

Status Post

Facebook status posts (also known as text posts) are the most basic types of post a user can create. There are no visuals or links– only text. Although these posts are not great options if you want to drive up engagement or interactions, they can be used to share quick announcements or business information.

Images

Images are a great way to boost engagement on Facebook. Facebook images garner 2.3 times the amount of engagement as posts with only text. Good photos feel both engaging and authentic. Users don’t want to feel like you are selling them a product.

Facebook Links

Link posts are exactly what they sound like—they are posts with a link. These posts usually consist of a short caption and a preview of the link attached. You can use link posts to share content on your website or blog.

Facebook Video

Facebook video posts are by far the best way to boost engagement on the platform. About 100 million hours of video are watched on the platform every day and video posts get about twice the amount of engagement of any other post type on the platform.

Facebook auto-plays videos, so make sure the first 5-10 seconds of your video are captivating and encourage users to keep watching.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live allows you to live-stream on the platform with up to two people. Whether you are live streaming an event or hosting a Q&A session, Facebook Live is a great way to directly engage with customers.

Facebook Stories

Facebook stories are vertical videos that last up to 20 seconds and disappear after 24 hours. They are used to quickly share information or provide insight into everyday life.

Pinned Posts

Pinned posts are Facebook posts in any format, but they stay at the top of your Facebook page. These posts are one of the first things users see when they enter your profile.

Facebook Watch Party

Watch Parties allow the public to watch and react to a video on Facebook together in real time. It is a great tool to promote a product launch or make a big announcement.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ads are Facebook-approved advertisements businesses create for the platform. Businesses tailor their Facebook ad campaigns to fit their specific goals—whether that be brand awareness or engagement. Businesses can customize their ads to appear in set destinations and target specific audiences within the app. You can also create an ad schedule and plan out your advertising budget within the platform.

Facebook Ads Manager keeps track of an ads’ performance. Ads manager tracks:

Ad impressions
Ad frequency
Click-through rate
Actions
Cost per action

Page Insights

Page Insights is a useful Facebook marketing tool that allows users to view analytics for both their overall account and for individual posts on their Page.

Page Insights tracks:

Likes
Reach
Engagement
Page views
Followers
Facebook reactions

Facebook’s Algorithm

Facebook’s algorithm is extremely complex. The platform uses thousands of ranking criteria to determine an individual’s feed. However, Facebook uses three main ranking signals to determine where a post populates in a news feed: relationship to the user, content type, and interactions.

Therefore, businesses must consistently post engaging content and prioritize user interaction and engagement to gain a high ranking.

Takeaways

Facebook is a great tool for all businesses. Adding Facebook marketing to their overall business strategy can help businesses expand their social media presence, grow their brand awareness and directly engage with their target audience.

If you need help getting started, 1893 Brand Studio’s Campaigns team will work with you to develop and implement a Facebook marketing strategy tailored to your business.