In this 6-minute read:
- Create your business page
- Add products and photos
- Get recommendations
- Post content regularly
- Build up your following
- Share in the Marketplace
- Boost posts and create ads
With Facebook’s 2.32 billion monthly users spending an average of 35 minutes per day on the social platform, it’s no wonder businesses feel the need to create a presence here. And retail businesses can really benefit from promoting their stores on Facebook.
Attract and keep more happy customers with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
Not sure how to get started? We have a few steps that can help your retail business rank better on Facebook and get found by more customers.
Create a Facebook business page for your store
The first thing you need to do is create a business page for your store. You will need to have your own Facebook profile to get your business page created. Here’s a quick tutorial to get you started.
When you set up your store’s Facebook page, there are several items you’ll want to be sure to include for people who find you:
- Your store’s name (this should be the same as what you list on your Google and Yelp business profiles)
- Store address
- Phone number
- Open hours (include special holiday hours)
- Description of your store
- Website
- Email address
- Profile picture (a logo goes great here–utilize your branding!)
- Cover photo or video (a picture of your storefront or product spread would be perfect)
- Products and price range
Once this information is all there, you can really start promoting your retail business on Facebook.
Add photos and products
Add lots of photos of your most popular products, and prices if these aren’t subject to change often. People want to get an idea of the types of things you carry to see if your store is a good fit for them.
Whenever you get new products in, post about it on your store’s Facebook page to let your dedicated followers know. This will help you get more customers into your store, and the activity on your Facebook page will provide more opportunities for your customers to engage with you. The more engagement with your page, the better it will show up too.
Get reviews and recommendations
People love to read reviews to get more information about the customer experience at your store. More, positive, and fresh reviews means increased likelihood that customers researching your store will come in for a visit.
Happy customers don’t always think to leave reviews though, so sometimes you need to offer a little encouragement. Here are a few ways to get more reviews to your store’s Facebook page:
- Ask your customers to leave a recommendation for your store. As a customer is checking out and just thrilled with their new purchase, that’s the perfect opportunity to make the ask.
- Place “We’re on Facebook” or “Rate us on Facebook” signs throughout the store. At the cash registers and on the exit door are the perfect places for this.
- Set up QR codes or short URLs on customer receipts to invite customers to leave a review.
- Try reputation management software. Solutions like this allow your employees to send emails or texts to customers so they can get a direct link to leave you a review on Facebook.
Post content on a regular basis
If you’re going to have a Facebook page for your store (which you definitely should), then you’ll want to make sure someone is posting content on a regular basis from your store’s page. A great frequency to try for is 3-4 times per week. This way you are staying present, but not bombarding your followers with tons of posts each day.
You can even schedule out your posts. Take an hour or so each week to create some interesting posts, and schedule them to post automatically throughout the week so you don’t forget.
Make sure your posts are visually appealing and easy to engage with. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:
- Post images of your new products with the prices
- Employee features
- Discounts and other promotions
- Holidays posts (including wacky national days)
- New locations or renovations
Build up your store’s Facebook following and engage with them
In order to grow your Facebook page and promote it better, you’ll want to get a lot of followers (people that “Like” your page are by default followers). More followers will help your store rank better on Facebook and increase the amount of people that see and engage with your content.
Try some of these tactics for getting more followers:
- Post content on a regular basis
- Invite your Facebook friends to “Like” your store’s page and encourage your employees to do the same
- Add “Like us on Facebook” signs to your storefront and website
- Boost your Facebook posts, especially local promotions
- When someone “Likes” one of your boosted posts or Facebook ads, invite them to “Like” your page
Boost your Facebook posts locally
Facebook has this cool capability that allows you to advertise your store by “boosting” any of your posts. When you boost a post, you are essentially creating an advertisement that gets displayed in the news feeds of specific audiences.
Have you seen “sponsored” posts in your news feed? Those are often from boosted Facebook posts.
When you boost a post, you can set a specific audience with location targeting, demographics like gender and age, and interests. Then you set a total or daily budget, how long you want the ad to run, and add in your payment information. It’s super simple and pretty reasonably priced, too. We definitely recommend giving it a try.
Share products in the Marketplace
You won’t be able to do this from your store’s Facebook page, but on your personal page you can share your store’s products in the Facebook Marketplace to generate more interest.
People generally go to the Facebook Marketplace to get a good deal, so share your products with the best deals or that are the most popular among your customers. You can definitely attract more customers this way.
Also, when you “boost a post” from your business page, Facebook will sometimes display these within the Marketplace feed. So boost some product posts to try that out.
Create ads for your store with Facebook Ads Manager
If you’re wanting ads that are a little more advanced, then try advertising your retail business with Facebook Ads Manager.
With Ads Manager, you can select a goal for your campaign, like brand awareness, increased reach, getting more traffic, lead generation, conversions, and store visits. Then you’ll set up your ad with a nice image or video, good ad copy, and a targeted audience and budget–similar to how you do with a boosted post.
If you link your store’s Instagram account with your Facebook page, you can also display your Facebook ads in Instagram Stories and feeds.
Set up your Ads Manager account with these simple instructions.
Take what you’ve learned here and start promoting your store on Facebook today! If you’re concerned about the time it will take to manage your page, you might want to try reputation management software to help you respond to reviews and keep an eye on your page. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!