14 Effective Facebook Marketing Strategies for Businesses

You probably know that Facebook is the number one Social Media Platform which most of people use. Apart from the fact that we are using it in chatting our friends or sharing the things we love such as Photos, Videos or even Document Files, some people especially business owners use it as their number one source of traffic, branding and sales. However, before you can use Facebook to gain Sales or Traffic, you should let the people know that your business exists on Facebook Platform.

In this list, I will be with you for a tour about the Best, Engaging and Effective Facebook Marketing Strategies for Businesses that most of us can do ourselves. So, let’s start rocking and rolling!

1. Leverage the existing traffic to your site
Remember that it is advisable to have a website for every business since it will function as your Sales Transaction Hub where people buy your Products or Services. We can easily leverage the existing traffic on our site by putting Social Media Icons that can be seen and clicked towards your Facebook Page or any other Social Media Account Pages you have. Refer to the picture below as an example.

Hot Facebook Marketing Tip: Most websites put their Social Media Icons above their Homepage since it could be easily seen, thus provides a better CTR (Click through Rate).

2. Use your email signature to display your Fan Page URL
If you’re using Email’s as a way of contacting or reaching your Customers, this one would be effective. Having your Pages URL beneath your Email Messages will make your recipient see it easily and probably click it that can convert into traffic or a following.

Hot Facebook Marketing Tip: If you have current events on your Social Media Pages, you might want to include it in a Call to Action Format.

Example: “Want to receive a Free Gift from Us? Like Us at our Facebook Page”.

3. Send out an Email Blast
Letting people know that you are on Facebook is the first goal we should achieve. Sending an Email Blast is just a one way to do this.
Hot Facebook Marketing Tip: Send an Email Blast between Mondays to Wednesday Morning for most conversions, a recent study from The Science of Email Marketing and Hubspot stated that Morning Emails Get High CTR.

4. Promote Facebook Page In-Store
Does your customers are coming at your stores? Promoting your Facebook Page and other Social Media Accounts in-store is just another great way to let your customers know that you are on Facebook.

If you’re inserting efforts on your Facebook Marketing Online, you should also do it Offline.

Bonus Facebook Marketing Tip: You might also want to put your Social Media Account Pages Links on your:
-          Business Cards
-          Front Mirror or Doors
-          Walls
-          Packaging
And more!

5. Schedule your Status Updates
You might be busy doing other things that you love, however if you want to leverage from Facebook you need to post contents for your Fans which your goals could either to – Educate, Entertain or Empower them. Facebook has a feature that allows you to schedule a post to appear on your Page later, if you want to know more about it and the detailed steps on how to use it, refer to this link.

Hot Facebook Marketing Tip: 2-5 Post per day between 9:00AM – 5:00PM with at least 2 hours interval on each post is effective. Beyond 5 Post is not healthy and recommended on your Facebook Page.

6. Use the Facebook Plugins
Integrating Facebook Plugins on your website will give you more advantages on Branding awareness on Facebook. For blogs or websites with sidebars, use the Facebook Like Box. While for your Website Pages, it is best to use the Like Button. You can actually use them both! You may want to experiment on what’s the best plugin for your website though.

7. Use Facebook Ads
You may hate it but investing on Facebook Ads will give your business a lift especially if you’re just a startup or a small business. Facebook Ads isn’t really expensive as you thought, you will love them once you tried to test the best conversion impacts that they could show on people and your business. Thus, another testing and experiments is necessary once you used them.

Facebook Ads has different types:
-          Facebook Ads redirection on your Page or on your External Pages (Website Pages Link)
-          Sponsored Stories: Promoting your Page targeting the Friends of your current Fans
-          Page Posts Promotion: Promoting your Contents and Status Updates on your Facebook Page.

Here’s my tip on how I used them effectively:
-          Target your desired audience Gender, Age and Locations
-         Use an Engaging Picture if you’re planning to use Facebook Ads for your Page or External Pages.
-         Use an easy to answer or an engaging Ads Description, here’s some example:

If you’re selling a gift, you might want to put something like this:
“If you think giving gifts can make someone smile, Like Us today!”
Since the text is easily answerable by Yes or No, those people who most likely say ‘Yes’ will convert as your Fans. Trust me, this is effective.

Note: You can only use 90 characters for your Facebook Ads Text/Description.

8. Think outside the box through Facebook Contest
People loves contest and free stuffs, doing a Facebook Contest exclusively to your fans will give you a higher Engagement Scores and Activity. If you sell products, you might want to give one of your products as a Prize. While if you provide services, perhaps a Free 1 Hour consulting, Designs and any of your services can be used as the Prize. Make sure that everybody can join and don’t forget to promote it!

9. Use the @ feature in Facebook
Using @ feature for Facebook will let your fans feel that they were important and part of your business page. The Facebook @ feature will let you tag People or even other Pages Accounts.  Show gratitude and enthusiasm by using Facebook @ feature whenever your fans appreciate, or asking something about your business because it can build a fruitful relationship and loyalty between your business and your customers.

10. Develop a Facebook Reveal Page
Reveal pages are great options if you want to offer an exclusive advantage for your Fans. Facebook Reveal Pages or Custom Tabs are usually visible to those people who already liked your page. You can gain more fans and likes if people know that you have this kind of continuous event or business feature.

Bonus Facebook Marketing Tip: Most Business who used Reveal Pages put exclusive discount coupons or Free Downloads such as Ebooks.

11. Integrate Social Media Sharing
Using Social Media Plugins or integrating Social Media Sharing Buttons on your website will make your visitors and customers easily share your website pages. Once a person shared your content through Facebook and other social media sites, their friends can easily see those links on their Facebook Profile and Newsfeed. You could also gain a share from them which will make the process repeatable in a sense that it can also be shared by their friends of friends – possibly making it viral.  This will also help increase your website traffic.

12. Engage with your Facebook Community
Engaging and talking with your community on Facebook could build a strong relationship, trust and loyalty. The most exciting result about this is that they can also turn as your repeat customers or potential leads.

13. Engage with other Facebook Pages
You might want to engage with other Facebook Pages using your Facebook Page Account. Find those Facebook Pages where your customers hang out. Your comment will serve as a Link towards your Page that can lead to an additional Like or Following (see below image). You could convert those Likes as Fans into a Likes for Sales Conversion Result.

14. Use Images and Videos for your Content Updates
People love Images and Videos; they can also be seen easily on Facebook Newsfeed which makes them easily for people to engage with them.

Hot Facebook Marketing Tip: You might want to put a Call to action button such as shortened links on each of your Photo descriptions towards your website to gain traffic. My favorite resource for this is Bitly.

Facebook Marketing and any other Social Media Marketing campaign is just like a courtship in real life. We do it step by step until we build the relationship we wished to have.

There should be more Facebook Marketing Ideas out there, but I assure that above list will give your Facebook Business a lift. Hope you’ve enjoyed our tour! While if you need more of Facebook Marketing ideas, get in touch with me on Twitter @Gheeclyde.

Ghee Clyde

Ghee is the CEO and Founder of North Social Media, a Design and Social Media Marketing Team from the Philippines. He is a Social Media Marketing Consultant that works with more than 75 clients and businesses in the world. You may follow him on Twitter @Gheeclyde.

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