Over the years, Facebook (owned by the Meta group company) has proven to be one of the go-to channels for most social media marketers. With billions of active users worldwide, Facebook serves more than just a social media networking platform where users, friends, and families connect. It is also a platform where businesses promote their products and services online. The world is evolving and most businesses are moving online. With Facebook, you can reach out to millions of users and potential customers. Aside from the large chunk of active users, Facebook also possess certain amazing features that most eCommerce and social media marketers can leverage to promote their business. Facebook is, therefore, an integral part of social media marketing. In this beginner’s guide, I will discuss all the fundamentals of Facebook marketing, how to create a Facebook business page, and the different ways you can leverage Facebook to promote your business. WHAT IS FACEBOOK MARKETING? With over 1.8 billion daily users, Facebook is the ideal platform to reach a massive audience. It helps to build an engaging relationship for small businesses that want to promote their product/services and drive sales. Over the last decade, Facebook has enabled marketers and brands to advertise their products and services online to a large audience. They also offer brands and business owners the chance to create organic posts and run paid adverts on their platform. This whole process is known as Facebook marketing. In simple terms, Facebook marketing refers to all the efforts put in place to make your product or service reach a large number of people on a global scale. There are several ways a business can market its product on Facebook, including Facebook business page, Facebook Ads, Facebook groups, Facebook, email marketing, to name a few. WHY IS FACEBOOK MARKETING IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS. From driving sales to generating leads, Facebook marketing is one crucial aspect of every business’s marketing strategy. Below, we take a look at why Facebook marketing is important for your business. Connect to a large audience: Being the most popular and visited platform in the world, Facebook can reach a massive audience, no matter who your business caters to. It boasts over 2.8 billion monthly users and about 1.8 billion users daily. This enables you to meet your desired audience and customers on a global scale. Cost effective: Facebook is one of the platforms you can leverage to promote your business with little or no budget. As a small business owner, you can easily create a business page without any cost attached and display your goods and products. Likewise, you can also create or join a group to market your product. All these are free and require no cost. In contrast, if you want to create your website, it will most likely cost you a lot of money to create and maintain it. With Facebook, you can also run ads at a friendly rate which is also very effective. Facebook offers the budget timing feature that enables users to set a limit on the amount to be spent daily – this helps to avoid overspending. Variety of Ads: Facebook allows you to run any ad type of your choice. It offers you a wide variety of Ads format to choose from, which include image ads, video ads, sponsored posts, carousel ads, collection ads and so many more. This is more effective and enables more productivity. Increase web traffic: Facebook is known to increase and drive traffic to businesses. Visitors can connect to your website via links embedded on Facebook posts. Once the links guide them to your website, you can easily market your product or your service to them. If you do not own a website, you can also send your business page link to your friends. That way, they can view your products and services on your page and receive updates on them when they like your page. They could refer their friends too! Reach out to target audience: Facebook offers you the chance to reach out to your target audience. With Facebook ads, you can target certain potential customers. You can choose to reveal your ads to certain people. For example, if you are into men's wear, you can reveal your ads to men aged from 20 to 45, likewise, if you sell teenage wear, you choose to reveal your ads to them. One of the benefits of Facebook is that you can always revisit your targeted audience and retarget them again to meet your demands thereby enabling productivity. It builds brand loyalty: Due to its ease of use and transparency, Facebook brings about loyalty to your brand. It allows you to easily interact with your customers, engage them, and understand them better. You can receive feedback, like their comments, and as well respond to their suggestions or complaints. This way you build a relationship with them which in turn makes them trust your brand. Trackable Performance: Facebook allows you to track a range of performance metrics that can help you measure the number of times your ad was shown, the number of people who saw it, and the number of times visitors go through it. Besides, you can keep a record of the number of posts, comments, shares, or likes you get. For the best result, use Google Analytics. This gives precise detail, such as the percentage of visitors and the location of visitors. Do you know that according to research: People are 53% more likely to purchase a business product via Facebook live chat. 36.8% of the world’s population uses Facebook every month. Facebook is the favorite social platform of the 35-44 demographic. 79% of monthly Facebook users are active daily. Facebook’s potential advertising reach is 2.11 billion people. Bearing all these statistics in mind, it is therefore crucial that you leverage Facebook for your business today. HOW TO CREATE A FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE To start using Facebook for marketing, you’ll need to have a Facebook business page. If you already have a personal Facebook account, you’ll just need to create a business page on the Facebook app. If you’re brand new to Facebook or you are creating a brand new account, here’s what to do: STEP 1: Download the Facebook app For Android For iOS STEP 2: Sign up Open the app. Tap Create New Account (on iOS) or Sign Up With Email or Phone Number (on Android). Enter your email or phone number and tap Next. Create your username and password. Fill out your profile info. STEP 3: Create a business page Click on the three horizontal lines at the bottom right (on iOS) or the top right (on Android) in the app. Tap pages Tap create at the top left, then tap get started Enter the name of the page (i.e. your business name) and tap next. Select a category and tap next. Fill in your address and website. Click on I don’t have it and tap next if you don’t have it. You can put a profile picture and cover photo for your business page, then tap “Done”. Viola! You have successfully created a business page on Facebook. HOW FACEBOOK CAN AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS POSITIVELY Over the past few years, Facebook has metamorphosed into a very benefitting channel for business owners other than being just a place for flaunting exuberant ways of living or achievements. In this section, I will show you four ways Facebook can help boost your business tremendously. 1. Improved engagement It is quite easy to maintain your relationship with customers through social networks like Facebook. Social media has proven to be one of the best channels through which you can engage your audience. Social media allows you to get feedback (likes and comments) from your audience. You also engage your audience with powerful content, eye-catching images, notify them about special offers, and more. Facebook is the social media platform with the highest number of users worldwide. It has about 2.9 billion active users monthly, according to Statista. So with the right content, you are likely to get more audience attention. 2. Audience growth opportunities Facebook helps you expand your business growth. In so doing, you can specifically identify those who are likely to be your audience. This opportunity readily comes on Facebook ads manager and it is valued most especially for its audience growth. Using this, you can identify the best-qualified customers considering the statistical data, interests, attitudes, and so on. It can be easily done. Moreover, the Facebook ads manager makes provision for a very sensible retargeting alternative. Targeting and retargeting together permit you to precede from other platforms lower than the narrow exchange operations. You can measure the accomplishments and progress of your ads with the Facebook analytical tool. You can monitor outreach, total campaign spending, the sequence of procurements, an estimate of procurements, revolutions, and so many more. 3. Brand strengthening Marketing on Facebook works wonders for business awareness and brand strengthening. Research shows that 83% of users confess that this social network helps them discover new products or services. However, Facebook offers the most comprehensive tools compared to other platforms. Facebook has helped over 52% of businesses around the globe to improve their digital marketing and 50% of brands have found their customers. 4. Enlarged sales You already know that Facebook is the platform with the largest audience worldwide. There are over 1 million active Facebook shops, and over 250 million people interact with them every month, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Knowing this distinction, Facebook lets businesses make the most of their platform. How? By giving users a feature that allows them to shop directly from Facebook. They include links in Facebook stories, shopping tags, ads, and more. To sum it up, Facebook marketing strengthens your brand, brings you a massive audience, and keeps them engaged with your business. Read on if you want to get maximum value from this channel. In the next part, you’ll find out how to set up a Facebook marketing strategy. BEST TIPS FOR PROMOTING YOUR BUSINESS ON FACEBOOK Having discussed what Facebook is all about and how it can benefit your business, it is time to learn how you can promote your business on Facebook and get the desired result. Here are tips that will improve your marketing and help you achieve your business goals. 1. Identify your audience For your business to be successful, you have to know your target audience. Figure out the right people you can reach on Facebook by doing some research. Carefully observe these statistics: The most active Facebook users are between the age of 24 and 36 years. Around 68% of U.S. adults use Facebook. The statistics above can help you identify your audience. You also need to identify what your customers like. 2. Optimize your Facebook profile The majority of business owners can easily set up a Facebook profile. And we’ve discussed how to create a business page somewhere in the previous section – this shouldn’t be an issue. You just simply need to fill out your contact information, have a keyword-optimized description (don’t forget emojis!), and choose an easily identifiable profile picture, like a logo. This is a wonderful start. But to get the most out of your Facebook page, you should include the following: Clickable profile links: There are various options for how to use this. A way is to set up a “link in bio” page using a tool like “Linkpop”, you can display your products and online store using just one link. If you have another profile for a different business, you can also add clickable links to the other profiles on Facebook to direct traffic there. Businesses use this feature to share their link with people and other merchants when hosting a contest. 3. Post at the right time One of the ways to get the best use of Facebook is by posting at the right time. It is not really about what you post, what matters is “when you post”. Ensure to post your content when your followers are mostly active. Setting up your Facebook account to push content automatically during engagement hours can also be of great help. Below are the best times to post on social media and Facebook. Best times to post on social media overall: Tuesdays through Thursdays at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. Best days to post on social media: Tuesdays through Thursdays Worst days to post on social media: Sundays Best times to post on Facebook: Mondays through Fridays at 3 a.m., Tuesdays at 10 a.m. and noon Best days to post on Facebook: Tuesdays through Fridays The worst days to post on Facebook: are Saturdays. Source: SproutSocial.com 4. Respond to customers in good time Successful businesses respond to customers speedily. Leaving comments unattended will drive customers away from you. You should make effort to reply to your customers as soon as possible. This fosters a better relationship and will give a sense of value and respect to your customer. You can make a schedule or better still, use a Facebook messenger chatbox for an effective result. 5. Optimize your images The way your image is projected on your follower's phone or desktop tells a lot about your brand. Learn to post clean and quality images. Consistently posting low-quality images will turn-off your customers and will do your business more harm than good. If you are experiencing a low engagement, consider adjusting the quality of your image. One of the benefits of optimizing your image size is that it enables your customers to view all important information without missing out on any of them. A follower using a smartphone should be able to view the same information the using a desktop. 6. Use analytics Analytics is very crucial to the tracking of your performance on social media. You should leverage analytics because they provide a well-detailed result on your content. They give you a clue on which content drives more engagement and which post gets the most impressions and clicks. If you are struggling with growing your audience base, Analytics can help to solve that problem. 7. Try different ads Ads are a great way to market your business on Facebook. Facebook ads are budget-friendly and very effective in driving sales. With the wide range of flexibility that Facebook ads offer, you can easily try out different ads and choose what works for you. From experience, carousel ads can be used as an interactive way to engage and market your products and services to your followers. However, there are other ads like image ads, video ads, and collection ads that you can try on Facebook. The type of ad you end up using is dependent on the sort of product or service you offer. 8. Create a Facebook business page Just like a Facebook group, you can leverage a Facebook page to promote your business. You can share content about your business, engage your audience and along build a relationship with them. You can also get feedback from your customer and respond to their complaints. A Facebook business page is free and does not require any cost. 9. Join the Facebook Market Place Facebook market allows businesses to list their products and services for potential customers. It is much more effective in reaching local buyers and allows you to relate with your audience effectively. You don't have to worry about the cost because it is free to list your product on the market. 10. Join other Facebook groups Facebook group is a great avenue to promote your business online. Joining other Facebook groups will not only increase your audience reach but will also enable you to market your product much more effectively. You can easily target certain groups that meet your requirement. Only make sure you join a Facebook group that your audience is active in whether private or public. 11. Post valuable content Everyone is interested in value; no one wants to spend their time or resource on what has no value to them. Valuable content attracts customers and people to your social media profile and pages. You must take time to create value quality posts that will add value to your customers. Make use of images, videos, and stories to promote your business and build your audience online. Delivering valuable content is akin to the development of your business online. 12. Try live streaming According to research, people are 53% likely to purchase a product online on Facebook Live. You can leverage this tool to engage your followers and also promote your business online. Try going live on Facebook to showcase your product and build a relationship with your audience. When you go live, your followers will get notified and this way, you can engage and add value to your customers. CONCLUSION Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, with over a billion users, most social media marketers now leverage this platform to sell and promote their business online. You too can utilize this opportunity by joining Facebook today, engaging your audience, leverage Facebook pages and groups, drawing traffic, and posting high-quality content consistently. Feel free to devise a Facebook marketing strategy that best suits your business for a better result. The fact still remains that Facebook is a must-use platform for every social media marketer seeking to promote their business online.