Facebook has been used as a marketing tool by small businesses, local businesses for quite some time now. Recently though there have been changes in the Facebook algorithm making facebook marketing for small businesses a little difficult.
Facebook reach has decreased quite a lot, that is your messages might not be shown to people who have been following your posts on feedback.
Generally facebook shows the feeds to a small percentage of people who either like your page or in your group.
This percentage seems to be shrinking… and many business owners complain that it doesn’t get them any reach…
So if Facebook a waste of your time?
If you are interested in vanity metrics like the number of people who have liked your facebook page you can still grow those numbers…
But what really matters for any business is conversions…
People taking the desired action ( which benefits you) – a purchase, registration, joining your whatsapp group or placing that call.
So how do you leverage Facebook to grow your business whether it be local, freelance or small business?
By understanding what Facebook wants and using this to generate traffic to your business. Go with the flow and bank on this traffic for insane growth.
Lets move on to the facebook strategy for your business but before that…
Is Facebook for Business free?
This post first appeared on indianmomvlogs.com
Yes Facebook is free to join and join as a business. Just create a Facebook page for your business. Name the page your business name.
This makes it easier for people to find your page.
Did you know Facebook pages, and posts are indexed on Google. This is something I used to grow my page with almost no activity on autopilot and it still is growing.
How do I promote my local business on Facebook?
Lets use the 5 Step quick and easy plan to promote your local business on Facebook.
Before that I would like to ask you to write down the purpose of this page. Is it branding, lead generation, Sales or a combination of these?
This will help make our messages cohesive and help us get a birds eye view on how we should proceed. So lets get started with our 5 step process
- Create a Page
- Optimize the Page
- Share Posts
- Paid advertising
- Integrate with Instagram
Step 1 – Create a Facebook Page
Head on over to Facebook and create a page
Enter in your business name, select appropriate category and fill in the description.
You can select upto 3 categories to represent your business. Pick the most relevant one first, then move on to a broader category.
For a local business you could add in local service.
In the description field enter what your business offers, something about your business offering a reason for people to visit your page.
If you want to add some SEO power to this page, then sprinkle in a few keywords in the description.
Hit Create Page and you have just created a Facebook marketing tool for your business..
Step 2 – Optimize the Page
Lets now add in some jazz and dress up our page. It makes our page look like there is a real person ( or persons) behind the page ( and not a bot).
Follow the prompts provided by Facebook. Fill everything on the page so that your page looks professional and has all the necessary trust elements in place.
- Profile Picture – Add your logo
- Cover Photo – Add a Cover Image, ensure that there are no phone numbers and contact information on the image
- Create a page name – Use your brand name, this will provide an unique url just for your business
- Website – Add your website
- Location
- Business Hours
- Phone Number
- Connect WhatsApp
- Page Button – Use this to either send people to your website, place a call, connect on WhatsApp
- Create Welcome Post – make the first post for your brand new account
Additional Things which can enhance your page
Add in all the services you offer, you can list the price and also allow people to book a slot for this service.
Explain in detail about the service to reduce queries asking about the service.
The more clear your description, the better qualified your customer will be.
If you sell products list the products here with descriptions.
Share posts on the page, spacing them out. Use images where you can as these generate more views. Also share industry news, information about your products and services, how your products are made, the story about your company.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is the quickest way to generate traffic to your offers. Facebook has an advertising platform which lets you target the ideal customer and show your offer to them.
You can target ads based on demographics, interests, location.
You can target your competitors customers or re-target people who visited your website or have interacted with you before.
This is one of the cheapest ways to get instant views on your offers at minimal cost.
Integrate with Instagram
Facebook now integrates with Instagram. This makes it easy to cross promote to Instagram and reach a wider audience.
You can post on Instagram and push it to your Facebook page. This makes it very easy to spread out and reach a wider audience.
There are some other advantages to this which you can learn in the Facebook Marketing for Small Business Course.