Let’s be honest, when you have time in between meetings, at lunch, or are about to fall asleep you take a few minutes to check your social media pages. You scroll through stories, pictures, and advertisements for a brief moment of distraction or to unwind. You’re not alone. So why not use these moments of indulgence to your advantage?

Facebook remains to be one of the most prevalent social media sites among potential customers. It is less limiting than other social media sites, and services over two billion users. It is the perfect platform for free digital marketing. Facebook provides specific business marketing information on their site. They help you identify your goals: building your presence, creating awareness, driving discovery, generating leads, boosting sales, or earning loyalty. They then break down what managing a page or creating different ads all entails.

Once you identify your marketing goals, Facebook helps you determine your ideal audience. Using the data you’ve already collected via contact lists; you can begin to connect with your customers. You can also market to people who have visited your website that have yet to provide contact information through the use of ads (more on that later). First, let’s discuss how to market with pages.

What Should Your Facebook Page Look Like?

When first creating a page for your business, you need to display your name, two appealing pictures or images, and your company’s call to action. Your pictures or images should include your company logo, your business location(s), your employees, or something visually appealing related to your content. The “About” section acts as a brief introduction and clearly identifies your call to action. This section should tell your audience what sets you apart from your competition. What makes you more successful? More useful? More accessible?

It essentially looks like a profile with basic information, but offers your customers the potential to subscribe or shop. You can customize your page, allowing people to message you with inquiries, leave reviews, and share out your information for others to see.

What Should You be Posting?

Once people like or follow your page, you want to provide updates on your services. You don’t want to overwhelm your followers so that their newsfeed is clogged and they begin to resent you, but rather remind them of services, specials, timelines, etc. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What time of year is it?
  • Could you remind them of some significant date or event coming up in which your services would be essential?
  • Are you offering any deals or discounts around these dates?
  • Could you build in some type of referral rate into what you’re offering to help build your network?

These are all things to consider when posting. You want relevant information that is going to address your audience’s needs and answer their questions.

You also want to build relationships with your customers, so consider asking them questions. Asking for their input or feedback regarding small business decisions will make them feel heard and useful and will in turn promote your business. You can inquire about feedback on specific products, hours of business, organization of your site, or effectiveness and timeliness of communication with customer service.

After you understand how to successfully manage your Facebook page, you want to look at creating ads. Ads are a useful and tasteful way to market without seeming like annoying, unwarranted spam.

What Do You Need to Start with Facebook Ads?

Again, identify your objective. Why are you running the ad, simply to promote your business? Or, is it more specific than that? Are you promoting an event or a product? Your ad could be used to increase the sales on your website, the downloading of your app, or the awareness of your business or brand, and so much more. To better understand who your target audience is, consider these factors:

  • What is the average age of your customers?
  • Do you typically service one gender more than the other?
  • Where are your customers located?
  • How many years of schooling does the average customer have?
  • What are common interests that your customers have?
  • Are there social networks in which your customers belong?
  • What is the average customer’s relationship status?
  • What kinds of cultural backgrounds do you service?
  • Do you need to consider advertising in other languages?
  • Is there a commonality in types of employment among your customers?

Based on the contact lists you already have, identify who uses your services or products the most. Then, create your ads to appeal to that specific demographic.

You also want to consider the lifetime of the ad and how much you are willing to spend on it. Again, is the ad specific to an event or product, or is it more general in simply promoting your business? Remember, these are visual advertisements, so the final thing to consider are the images themselves. What are you going to display within the ad? What will draw the attention of the demographic you have researched? After you have identified those four basics, you can begin to organize what the ad will look like.

How Should the Ad be Formatted?

You can choose from five different formats: Photo, Carousel, Video, Slideshow, or Canvas.

Each is slightly different, and some options offer more than others. For example, the carousel format allows you to display multiple images or videos in a single ad. Like the slideshow, you can include multiple items or links in one ad without having to create several. You can see specific recommendations and tips regarding carousel setup below.

Next, you place your order. Facebook organizes this as an auction where you place bids to earn advertising time. You want to keep your bidding low in the beginning, but then re-evaluate your spending based on the ad’s performance in targeting your specific audience. Facebook has a tracker system that will tell you the number of people that have utilized or clicked on the ad, so you can consider timeline and adjustments as needed. For more information on managing a Facebook ad, visit here from Facebook itself.

When all is said and done, it is pretty simple to create ads and manage pages and Facebook remains to be the most used social media-networking site. If you have experience creating value from your Facebook page, let us know your secrets in the comment section below!