The complete guide to Facebook marketing for small businesses

In this 9-minute read:

  • Creating and optimizing your business Facebook page
  • Best types of Facebook posts
  • Setting up a Facebook marketing strategy
  • Utilizing Facebook reviews

More and more people are turning to Facebook to find businesses they want to shop with. Whether it’s the first point of contact someone makes with your business or they’ve been researching your offerings for a while, it’s important to make sure you have a great Facebook presence and a strategy for getting customers to your business from your Facebook page. 

Attract new customers and keep them loyal with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!

Facebook has more than 2.5 billion monthly users and over 1.6 billion daily users worldwide. That’s a lot of opportunity to reach more customers and grow your business. 

And that’s why we’ve put together this guide. We’ll walk you through the best types of Facebook posts for businesses, how to put together a cohesive Facebook marketing strategy, and how to best utilize your Facebook reviews. 

Learn more: 11 reasons to use Facebook advertising for your small business

Creating your business’s Facebook page

More goes into managing a Facebook account than simply creating your business page, but that’s definitely where you need to start. 

Here’s a quick overview of how to create your business Facebook page:

  1. Log into your personal Facebook account or create a dummy account. You’ll need a personal account to manage your business page. 
  2. When you are logged in, click “Create” in the top right corner and then click “Page.”
  3. Follow the prompts to fully set up your page.

For a more in-depth look: How to create and claim your Facebook business page

Optimizing your Facebook page

Once you have your page created, it’s important to optimize it to give it the best chance to show up in Facebook search results and to provide an appealing image of your business to customers. 

A few things you need to add to your page to optimize it:

  • A cover photo that represents your business well
  • A profile photo that is recognizable, like a logo or storefront
  • Your website, physical address, and contact information
  • An about section for customers to learn more
  • Your services or products and prices (when applicable)
  • Frequent posts and customer reviews to show that you are active on Facebook (more on each of these shortly)

Basically, the more information about your business you can provide, the better. Eliminate as many unknowns as possible so potential customers feel connected to you and like they know you, making it easier for them to reach out. 

Posting on Facebook

Having a Facebook page is one thing, but if you aren’t actively posting on it then it won’t do much for you. This doesn’t mean that you need to post multiple times a day–nor should you–but you should have a strategy in place for posting relevant and engaging content that will drive customers to you. 

Understanding Facebook’s algorithm

Much like Google and other search engines, Facebook has an algorithm that determines what posts will show up in a user’s news feed. This is no longer based on the time that a post was published, but rather the likelihood that a user will have a positive interaction with that post. 

With Facebook’s algorithm, even the people who like and follow your business page might not see each post that you put out there. 

Facebook has four factors that go into its algorithm for user posts:

  1. Inventory: all of the posts that are available to show
  2. Signals: these tell Facebook what the post is, in other words, the actual content of the post
  3. Predictions: how Facebook thinks a user will react to a post
  4. Final score: this is based on all of the above factors and ultimately determines whether or not a post will be shown and how high in a user’s feed it will be

This is why it’s important to create engaging content and to have a strategy for your posting. Facebook is becoming more concerned with its user experience to make sure that people keep coming back. When consumers find posts that they like and engage well with, they are more likely to come back. This goes the same for your page and the kind of content that you put out there. 

Types of Facebook posts that convert

So, how do you know what kind of content is right for your business? You want to attract the right customers while providing them with interesting and engaging content that keeps them wanting more. 

The types of posts that will do well for each business are going to be different. After all, every business has a different audience they are targeting. But the elements that you should have to guide your post creation will be relatively similar to any other business. 

When creating your Facebook content, use these elements to guide your posts.

Stunning visuals

It’s very difficult to draw attention to a wall of text. Pull in your users with images or videos that speak to your audience and will capture their interest. 

Go deeper: How to get and use professional photos for your business

Compelling copy

Much like your visuals, the actual written content in the post needs to appeal to your audience. It should provide additional information, incentives, or some kind of interest factor to keep their engagement up. 

Call-to-action

Every great social media post has a call-to-action that invites a customer to do something. Whether that’s to call your business, check out a blog post on your website, or share a giveaway post is up to you. Drive conversions by inviting specific action. 

Incentive

People want to know what they are going to get by completing your call-to-action. If it’s a Facebook giveaway, then there’s the chance to win a prize. If it’s information about your product, then they may have a problem that your offering will solve. 

Whatever you post, make sure there is some kind of value that the user gets from acting on your invitation. 

Targeting

You should know your audience better than anyone else. Use this to your advantage. 

When creating content for your Facebook page, use the information you have about your target audience to curate content that appeals to them. 

These five factors will help you to create posts that engage your audience and convert well. 

Learn more: Facebook for small business: best practices, do’s and don’ts

Your Facebook marketing strategy in 6 steps

Your conversion rates and engagement on Facebook are only as good as your marketing strategy. Just like any other marketing platform, you need to have a plan in place to get results. We’ll walk you through six steps of creating a winning Facebook marketing strategy. 

Step 1: Define your audience

You can’t perform well if you don’t know and understand your audience. Define who that is so that you can create the content they are likely to engage with. 

Think about these factors:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income level
  • Interests
  • Location
  • What motivates them
  • What problems they face

blonde woman happy with feedback on Facebook

Step 2: Set your goals

What do you hope to achieve from your Facebook marketing campaign? Do you want more conversions, more customers, or website visits? Do you simply want to provide more awareness for your company?

Set specific and measurable goals so that you can track how well your Facebook campaign is performing. 

Step 3: Create a content calendar

Create content that appeals to your audience and helps achieve your goals. Schedule out a couple weeks or a month of posts at a time. Determine what kind of posts you think will perform best with your audience and test out a few different options. 

Step 4: Identify Facebook tools you can utilize

Facebook has several tools that can help enhance your small business marketing strategy. Identify which tools align with your business goals best and how you can use them to your advantage. 

Facebook groups

You can join relevant community and topical Facebook groups to help expand your reach. Post in these groups often to keep your name out there, but make sure your content is valuable to the audience of that group. 

Facebook Messenger

Messenger is Facebook’s chat application. Each business page has its own Messenger that customers can contact you through. Make sure you have someone managing this inbox to ensure that you don’t miss any opportunities. 

You can even set up automated replies on Messenger to ensure that every customer gets a response. 

Business Manager

Facebook’s Business Manager allows you to create and manage full-featured advertising campaigns. 

Facebook Stories

Use the Stories feature to post snippets and quick updates that don’t need a permanent post. 

Facebook Live

Engage your audience by posting live videos that show what you are up to. Whether you are at an event or launching a new product, keep them in the loop. 

Step 5: Facebook advertising

Facebook has awesome advertising capabilities. It can be as simple as boosting a post for a few dollars or as complex as creating a full-featured advertising campaign. 

Advertising on Facebook is relatively inexpensive and helps you expand your reach. Remember the Facebook algorithm? Even if you create compelling content, it might not reach all of your followers. 

And of course, you want the opportunity to gain even more followers, so you might need to boost a post every now and then to make sure people actually see it. 

Check out our guide: How to set up Facebook Ads Manager for your small business

Step 6: Analyze and refine

After your posts have had a couple of weeks to a month to perform, check back on them and analyze the results. What kind of posts performed well with your audience? Did you receive calls, more page likes, high engagement rates?

Determine which types of posts performed the best and use those to guide the creation of future posts. 

If you set up an advertising campaign, analyze the results for the same reasons. See what kind of potential customers the ads reached and how well they engaged with your posts.  

Facebook reviews

Facebook reviews should definitely be a part of your marketing strategy on Facebook, but review management in and of itself is such a large part of customer conversions that it really should have its own strategy in place. 

Consumers rely on reviews to tell them whether they can trust a business or work well with them. You should be working to grow the number of reviews you have on your Facebook page. 

Along with getting more positive reviews on Facebook, you should be monitoring all reviews and taking action especially if a negative review comes in. 

Put someone in charge of monitoring and responding to your customer reviews. 

Learn more: How to remove Facebook reviews from your local business page

Want some help managing all your customer reviews on Facebook and other review platforms? Womply’s reputation management software allows you to easily manage and reply to all your reviews from your user dashboard. 

With text and email reminders, this solution makes it simple for your customers to go online and leave you a review. 

Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!

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