Facebook Marketing for Small Business Guide: 7 Tips for Success

Almost 70 percent of American adults have a Facebook account. Additionally, about 75 percent of those adults report using Facebook at least once every year.

 

That means that if you run a small business and you’re not using Facebook for whatever reason to market it, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. You could be generating a lot of interest in your company by using a Facebook marketing for small business guide effectively.

There are some small businesses that don’t use Facebook to market themselves simply because they’re not sure how to do it. They fear making the wrong marketing moves on Facebook and coming up empty when it comes to bringing in new customers.

If you fall into that category, you should know that using Facebook marketing for your small business isn’t as difficult as it might seem. Here are 7 tips that will lead you to success.

1. Let People Know What Your Business Is All About With Your Facebook Page

The first thing you’ll need to do when establishing a presence on social media for your company is set up a Facebook business page.

Your Facebook business page should include a number of things. You should make sure it features:

  • Your business name
  • Your business logo
  • Your business location
  • Your business contact information
  • Your business hours
  • Information about the history of your business
  • Information about the products and/or services offered by your business

Essentially, you want to provide people with everything they need to know about your business on your Facebook page. They shouldn’t have any questions about who you are or what it is that you do once they’ve read through the information on your page.

You might even want to think about adding a bunch of photos of your business and your employees on your page when you first set up your page. It’ll allow people to familiarize themselves with your business from the jump.

If you need help, there are companies that can help you create an effective Facebook strategy.

2. Commit to Posting on Facebook Regularly

There are a lot of businesses that take the time to set up their Facebook pages, only to abandon their pages almost as soon as they go up.

Once you set up a Facebook page, it’s your responsibility to update it regularly and to keep it active.

If people log on to your Facebook page and see that you haven’t posted anything in weeks or even months, they might mistakenly think that you’ve gone out of business. Or they might assume that you’re not as committed to posting on social media as you should be.

You don’t necessarily need to post something on Facebook every hour once you establish your presence. In fact, you should steer clear of posting too much since you could end up annoying your customers if you take that approach.

But you should commit to posting something on your Facebook page at least once every day or two. It will keep your page active and encourage people to check up on your page regularly.

3. Establish a Human Voice for Your Company on Facebook

When people log on to your company’s Facebook page, they should feel a sense of connection with you.

The only way they’re going to feel this connection is if whoever runs your Facebook page speaks like a real person as opposed to a robot.

While it can be tough creating a human voice for your company on Facebook, it’s something that you really need to do if you want to get people coming back to your page.

The human voice should be relatable and likable. Otherwise, your page is going to look like one big advertisement for your company instead of a place for your customers to come and converse with you.

4. Avoid Trying to Sell People on Products and Services on Facebook

When you create a Facebook page for your business for marketing purposes, you’re obviously going to want to market your products and services every now and then. The goal, after all, is to entice people to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

But you really want to make it your mission to do more than just advertise your products and services.

People are inundated with advertising as is every time they sign into their social media accounts. If you try to bombard them with it, too, they’ll stop coming back to your page.

The majority of what you post on Facebook should be things other than information about your products and services. It’ll show your customers that you want to do more than just sell them on things when they visit your page.

5. Add Photo and Video Content to Facebook That Will Interest Your Customer Base

When someone visits your Facebook page, you should make every effort to keep them there for as long as you can.

One easy way to do this is by sprinkling photo and video content throughout your page. Whether you run a pizza shop or a hair salon, there are so many photos and videos you can use to entice your customer base.

Some examples include:

  • A photo of some of the new clothes you’re going to be adding to your retail store soon
  • A video of an exercise that you’re teaching to your clients at your gym to help them get a 6-pack
  • A series of before-and-after photos featuring the home your construction company just remodeled
  • A time-lapse video showing the amazing new haircut someone just got at your barber shop

People love to look at photos and watch videos when they’re on Facebook. So make sure you have plenty of both on your company’s page.

6. Encourage Customers to Comment on Your Facebook Page and Respond to Them

Ideally, people will start to comment on your Facebook page as soon as you begin posting content that interests them.

But if they don’t, you can encourage them to do so by making your content more interactive.

For example, if you post a clip of you showing off the right way to do an exercise at your gym, ask your customers to comment and let you know which other exercises they use to work certain body parts. Or ask them to let you know which other exercises they’d like to see featured in your Facebook videos.

In addition to encouraging comments from people, you should also respond to them as often as you can. This will help them feel more connected to your business and force them to come back to your page to see what you’ve said in response to them.

7. Promote Your Company’s Facebook Page Whenever You Can

Once your Facebook page is up and running, you should promote it and try and get as many people to follow it as you can.

You can do this by:

  • Hanging up a sign in your store letting customers know you’re on Facebook
  • Offering a discount on your products or services to those who follow your business page on Facebook
  • Adding links to your company’s Facebook page to your email signature
  • Putting the address for your company’s Facebook page on your business cards
  • Making sure your Facebook business page is listed on all of your promotional items

You’re going to be investing a decent amount of time into running your Facebook page. So, make sure people know it exists.

Take advantage of these 7 tips and you will have the results you desire in no time.