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What Is Facebook Marketing?
We’ve all read about how Facebook can be a great marketing tool for business. But what exactly is Facebook marketing, and how do you go about doing it?
Facebook Marketing Is a Way to Drive Traffic to Your Website or Business
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t actually sell anything on Facebook (although you may be able to soon—but that’s another topic for another time). That’s not what Facebook marketing is. Facebook marketing is a way to spread the word about your business to a potentially large group of people at a relatively low cost.
The Benefits of Marketing on Facebook
There are several ways in which Facebook marketing has advantages over traditional marketing. These include:
- A huge potential audience – There are over 750 million Facebook users, and 50% are active every day.
- It’s cheap – Many people will say it’s free, but it’s not. To get the most out of it takes time, and time is, of course, anything but free. Still, other forms of marketing also take time while simultaneously having out-of-pocket costs. So Facebook marketing is a great value.
- You can engage with customers or potential customers – Facebook is a tremendously easy place to interact with people. If they have questions or comments about your business, or even problems or complaints, you can deal with them directly. By allowing quick and easy responses, Facebook can make people feel connected to your business—and emotional connections like that are a huge part of the psychology of buying. Having connected customers also makes it likely that they will recommend your business to friends, and the word of friends is far more trustworthy than any sort of advertising campaign.
- Targetability – Facebook users generally give out a lot of information about themselves – their age, where they live, what their interests are, their education level, and so on. Just as with search engine marketing, Facebook makes it easy to use this information to target your page to specific demographics.
How to Market your Business on Facebook
It’s not enough to just set up a profile and wait for things to happen. You’ll get as much out of Facebook as you put into it. Here are some strategies for effective use of Facebook as a marketing tool:
- Engage – If someone makes a comment or asks a question, respond to it in a timely manner. And visit some of your fans’ pages once in a while. Look at what they are posting, and make a comment where appropriate. If they feel like you care about them (and you should care), it will only increase the level of emotional attachment they have to your business.
- Don’t pitch – Make your posts entertaining and informative, but don’t make them about your business or even your industry all the time. You want people to enjoy your Facebook page, and not to feel like they have stumbled into an interactive advertisement. It’s ok to post the occasional special offer or talk about a new product, but do it very sparingly.
- Don’t post too often – Most people have a lot of friends on Facebook. The average is 130, in fact. This means they are seeing a lot of content, and the last thing they want is 10 or 15 posts a day from your business. Post no more than 2 or 3 times over the course of a day.
- Adapt – Carefully watch which of your posts get a lot of interaction, and which do not. See what is working for you and do more of it, while doing less of what doesn’t work.
- Have personality – You as a person have a personality. Each of your employees does as well. And your business has a distinct personality as well. Put any and all of these personalities to work for your Facebook page. You want to be the opposite of bland when using social media—but at the same time, there’s no magic formula. Just be yourself.
Remember, above all, the goal is to get people to your website or business where they can actually buy things from you. Be engaged, be entertaining, be informative, give people a reason to visit and to share your page with their friends, and you’ll see results. That’s Facebook marketing in a nutshell.
If you’re unsure if you have the time or desire to use Facebook, give SonicSEO.com a call. We offer a comprehensive social media management service that takes the burden out of your hands. Talk to us today to see how we can help your business gain new exposure through the power of social media.
Call 888-437-3737 to learn how SonicSEO.com can help you maximize your Facebook presence today!