Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

The Asia Pacific region has the largest number of Facebook monthly active users with over 1.1 billion visiting the platform every month. The importance of Facebook for marketing your business is undisputed. Yet, in reality, it can be difficult for SMEs to reach a large audience organically.    

As a small business, your budget may not compete with larger companies, but there are powerful and budget-friendly strategies available to you. Without further ado, here are our top 10 tips for success on Facebook

1. Complete Your Facebook Profile

A simple but effective tactic, often overlooked. It doesn't take long to fill in all the sections of your profile. You are likely to have all the information at hand to do so. Customers use Facebook to check reviews, look up addresses or find a phone number. They should never struggle to find that information on your page.

2. Humanise Your Brand

Gone are the days of being a faceless organisation; people respond to people. Your audience wants to get to know your brand and the people behind it, helping them understand your 'why'. Especially in recent times with the push to support local businesses. By humanising your business, you build trust with your customers using your products, ideas and values too.

3. Create Content That Offers Value

You can't throw content on Facebook and hope for the best. You need to post with a purpose. Your content should aim to entertain, inspire, converse, educate or convince.

A great rule to follow is the 70-20-10 rule.

• 70% of the time post content that supports building your brand
• 20% of Facebook posts should be content from other sources; relevant business news or interesting articles.
• 10% should be self-promotional content.

Think about the action that you want someone to take when you post. This will help write your caption and steer the audience to your desired outcome.

4. Create Content That Offers Value

It is best to plan your posts unless you are jumping on a trending topic. Deciding what and when to post should be part of your social media strategy. Posting should complement your other sales and marketing activities.

Devising a content calendar and scheduling your posts in advance will save you time. You can use the calendar to track company communications, social media holidays and sale announcements.

5. Track Useful Metrics

It is easy to get caught up looking at metrics that make you feel good, e.g. likes or followers. You want to focus on things that make a difference to your bottom line. Some vanity metrics are useful to track, engagement, for example; high engagement rate is a sign your audience enjoys your content.

Depending on your business, metrics such as click-through rates, and direct messages received are more meaningful metrics to track.

6. Consistency Is Key

To build a recognisable brand, consistency is key. From colours you use to the tone of voice. To gain traction with your audience, you should be consistent in everything you do.

Consistency extends from the aesthetics of your brand to the amount you post. Not only does your audience like to know when they can expect content from you, but the algorithm does too. Maintaining a predictable posting schedule helps you stay top of people's news feed. When you decrease your posting, Facebook decreases your views. Post regularly, and you get more exposure.

7. Post When Your Fans Are Online

A quick and easy win to maximise your reach. You can find this data in your page insights under the 'posts' tab. This graph tells you the days and hours when your fans are online. Post when your audience is most active.

8. Build Relationships With Your Audience

Use social media as a tool, not only to make sales but build relationships too. Don't feel shy about being social. Genuine engagement with others encourages brand trust and supports humanising your business.

Build relationships with other accounts for mutually beneficial growth; new and potential customers, influencers and industry experts.

9. Use All The Facebook Features Available

Use every Facebook tool to promote your business, providing they are relevant.

Facebook Live is a fantastic way to engage your audience in real-time. Your followers will receive a notification when you are live; they can then click to watch. You can host a Q&A or showcase a new product.

Video consumption is a growing and in-demand media type. By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. Focus on uploading video content to Facebook.

Facebook stories are another great tool to increase your organic reach. A story will expire after 24 hours; it's another way to humanise your brand by showing behind the scenes footage or giving an announcement in real-time.

10. Consider Running Targeted Facebook Ads

If you aren't getting the reach you want organically, try Facebook ads. Quickly and effectively target your ideal audience using Facebook's detailed targeting. Due to the data Facebook collects on users, you can target people by location, age, gender and interests. You can also reach people whom Facebook think are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your existing customers.

Fund your Facebook ads with Jenfi. Access fund to get your business in front of the right audience in as little as 24 hours.