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Step-by-Step Facebook Marketing Strategy

Facebook-marketing-strategy

Facebook is a social media platform with over 2,7 billion users monthly. That is a very good reason to develop your Facebook marketing strategy. We are happy to show you how.

Decide which are your goals

Decide which are your goals

There are a lot of options when you are creating your Facebook marketing strategy. You’ve got to have at least an idea of what you want to accomplish. If you think smart from the beginning and set a path, it will give you something to start from.

If you want to get clear about your goals, you need to know what you want to achieve on Facebook. Or, to simplify it: what do you want people to do when they see your ad? There are three most common objectives:

  • Awareness – when you want to generate interest in your product/service.
  • Consideration – if you want people to remember, think about your business, and search for more information.
  • Conversions – when you want people to buy or use your product/service.

Find your target market

Find your target market

If you are a small or local business, you probably don’t target millions of people. Facebook is a wide space and you can easily get lost. There is a lot of possibilities to narrow down your target market. For example, if you are a local business location might be the right metric for you. If it better suits you, you can use gender, age, interests, and hobbies, etc.

Another way to look for inspiration for your target market is to look at your existing customer base, to check your competition, to check your audience at Facebook Insights, or to run a survey.


Decide about budget and schedule

budget and schedule

You will need to decide when do you want your ads to run, and how much are you willing to pay for each of your campaigns. Facebook provides drop-down menus that will help you. Don’t set too short campaigns (even if your budget is limited) because you may not see the right results in a short period of time.

Even most small businesses decide to run “boost post”, it depends on your goals which type you’ll choose. Maybe you need to gain likes/follows on your page, you want people to contact you by message, or simply to provide more info about your business. Whatever you decide, just leave enough space for the ad to be efficient.


Create ads

When you’ve decided about fundamental things, it is time to start creating your ads. There are some things you need to know if you want it to be approved, so it is best if you check the official Facebook video with directions. You can find it here.


Optimize

Optimize

Facebook has some great tools to help you optimize your campaigns, such as Power Editor. Optimizing usually means adapting your ads to mobile and desktop devices, and this can easily be done.

But when it comes to ad optimization on Facebook, it’s much more than that. For example, when you are creating an ad you can choose between “create new ad” or “use existing post”. If you decide to use an existing post, you will optimize your likes and shares, because you will accumulate all the campaigns’ post engagements under a single ad. If you want to create a fresh post, first publish it on your page. It’ll be worth it.

Also, you can optimize your campaign time. There are always some days and hours that do best than others. Why running it 24/7 if it makes no results? You can set this in your Facebook Ads Manager (under “Breakdown”).


Call-to-action

Call-to-action

Facebook will lead you and help you to build your marketing campaign from the start until the end. But you will need to use some traditional approaches, too, such as call-to-action (CTA).

A great CTA can significantly improve your social media posts, so it works the same for your ads. It can increase conversion rates and fulfill the purpose of your campaign. So, whatever you decided that your goals are, you need to call people to do it. It may sound easy, but our audience won’t always do what we wish.

In fact, just the opposite – it is a truly hard thing to make them do so. Especially on social media. But that doesn’t mean you just need to sit and wait for your page to be discovered, you need to do all the tricks available.

CTA can usually be found at the end of the blog post or similar content. It is present a lot on web pages. But with the development of social media marketing, it is more and more put at the end of post captions. In social media, CTA is normally used with a purpose to:

  • call people to like/subscribe/follow etc.
  • request a comment
  • enter a contest or giveaway
  • sign a petition
  • enter a poll
  • register for something, and so on…

Use the right photos/videos

Use the right photos videos

Using media will depend on your budget to some extent. Some businesses use free stock images, and those can work just fine. But if it’s possible, it is better to pay for your photos, from places like Shutterstock. That way you will not have to worry about copyright issues, and your photos will be high-quality and unique.

You should consider adding a video to your ads because is more powerful media that attracts the attention of people easily. Hours of videos are being watched on Facebook every day. No matter if you decide to choose a photo or video, make sure that you present your product/service the best you can. For example, it is always better to show your customers using something than just a sole photo of it.


Test ads performance

Test ads performance

If you want the best use of your money, you need to test your ad campaigns. You can do this with your Ads Manager. You can see if your ads are working ok in real-time. Also, you can see separate info about your audience, budget, and images, you can decide if any of those need “repairment”.


Always take time to check everything, and to know every step of the process of creating ads on Facebook. If you are not careful, you can miss something important.

But when you succeed, your ads will be the foundation of your Facebook marketing campaign. Good luck, and let us know how it went!

AlexisKestler

Written by Alexis Kestler

A female web designer and programmer - Now is a 36-year IT professional with over 15 years of experience living in NorCal. I enjoy keeping my feet wet in the world of technology through reading, working, and researching topics that pique my interest.