Analyzing Facebook Marketing Strategies
In this article, I will cover general concepts about the platform, including key terminology and platform features that are most valuable to marketers. We’ll then walk you through how to set up your Facebook presence and customize it to your business needs. And lastly, we’ll discuss all the different types of pages posts and show you how to publish content. I want to talk about all that you need to know about Facebook marketing strategies generally.
Now let’s dive into each platform in detail. Facebook, the largest social platform, enables people to share information and content with others who work, study and live around them all around the world. Additionally, Facebook is a platform for brands and businesses to connect and build relationships with their consumers.
Each platform has its own terms, let’s talk through the key terms for marketing on Facebook:
News Feed
A list of stories determined by a proprietary Facebook algorithm that are constantly being updated based on the people and Pages your audience follows on Facebook.
Desktop Right Column
An ad placement option (only available for desktop placement) that appears in the right-hand column on a user’s Facebook timeline but does not appear in News Feed.
Facebook Page
Similar to a personal Facebook profile, except they are used by businesses, brands and organizations to share their stories and connect with people.
Facebook Ads
Targeted advertisements used to reach different audiences with the purpose of meeting your business goal. Facebook Ads are comprised of: creative (image, video, and/or text), a target audience and a bid.
Business Manager
A platform that lets businesses more securely share and control access to their ad accounts, Pages, and other assets on Facebook.
Ad Type
The format of your chosen ad and an Ad Set is a group of ads that represents a specific part of your audience that you want to reach and includes one or more ads, a budget, and a schedule. Facebook Ad Sets can be created for each audience segment by making the ads target the same audience within that ad set.
Ad Placement
The location you would like your ads shown. Multiple placements can be chosen for each ad.
Objectives
The goals you want to achieve with your Facebook ads, such as clicks to website, brand awareness, mobile app installs, etc.
Its important to note that a Facebook campaign revolves around the advertising objective you choose and that each campaign can have one or more ad sets, and each ad set can have one or more ads.
Facebook also has a few features that are for marketing use:
360
A panoramic, immersive and interactive content form which gives viewers a 360-degree field of vision using their mouse, keyboard, fingers or device.
Facebook Events
A calendar-based resource which can be used to notify users of upcoming events or occasions to reach a large number of people in a short amount of time.
Milestones
A type of Page post that lets you highlight key moments on your Page’s timeline. You can use Milestones to share important events that tell the story of what your Page is about.
Facebook Live
It allows people, public figures and Pages stream and share live video with their followers and friends.
Branded Content
Any form of content – including text, photos, videos, instant articles, links, 360 videos and Live videos – from Facebook Page owners that features third party products, brands, or sponsor.
Facebook Messenger
A communication tool that can be used by marketers to engage with customers via private message.
There are two ways you can engage and share information on Facebook – through a Profile or a Page.
Profiles
They are for non-commercial use and represent individual people. Through your Profile, you can amass friends and you can also follow profiles to see public updates from people you’re interested in but aren’t friends with.
Pages
look similar to personal profiles, but offer unique tools for businesses, brands and organizations and are managed by people who have personal profiles. You can ’like’ a Page to see updates from that business in your News Feed.
As a business, it’s important to set up and maintain a Facebook Page as a means to connect with your audience and deliver your business objectives. One needs to first have a Personal Profile on Facebook in order to be able to create and manage a Facebook Page.
When creating a Facebook Page for your business, it’s important to customize the Page in a way that conveys your brand identity and will engage the target audience.
Your Page name should be the name of your brand or business. Similarly, the Page’s URL should also be the brand’s name but should be regional, if applicable.
For the About Section, consider optimizing with a general description, a mission, company information, or your story – the copy should be brief, yet descriptive. By doing so, your audience can get a sense of what your Page represents before they decide to Like it. Also be sure to include a link to your company website.
Profile photos display at 170×170 pixels on your Page on computers, 128×128 pixels on smartphones and 36×36 pixels on most feature phones. Your Page’s profile picture will be cropped to a circular shape in ads and posts, but will remain the same square shape when people visit your Page List Item.
Cover photos display at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on your Page on computers and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones. They do not display on feature phones. Cover photos load fastest as an sRGB JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes. For profile pictures and cover photos with your logo or text, you may get a better result by using a PNG file.
Page admins can select from a group of call-to-action buttons to add to the top of their Page. The seven call-to-actions available are: Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up, Watch Video.
If your company has brick-and-mortar locations, make sure to list them under the locations section.
After you create your page you can continue to edit your Page’s details by clicking “Settings” on the top right of your Page. It’s important to ensure that all of your Page details are accurate. Your company’s description in the About section should be full of SEO-friendly keywords relevant to your business.
Having a trackable link back to your company’s website is important to be able to better understand the efficacy of your Facebook Page in driving interest and traffic to your business.
You should select a profile photo that is easily recognizable – like your company’s logo. Think of your cover photo as the portion of your Page that’s “above the fold.” If it’s distracting or poor quality, people will be more likely to click off the page.
Many of the best Facebook marketing cover photos include a single subject as the focal point. They also use negative white (i.e., empty space) as an advantage to make the subject, any copy on there, and other elements unique to Facebook (like the CTA button on Facebook business Pages) stand out even more. Be careful not to hide content behind your Profile photo or on the bottom of the photo where your Page name and CTA button are located.
Do also add your business’ location with a map link to make it easier for customers to see where you are.
Customize the tabs that appear to visitors in the left column of your Page, and sections appear in the middle of your Page to make it more user-friendly to your desired customer. Keep in mind that some tabs and sections can’t be removed (such as Home, About, Likes, Posts, Photos and Videos), and others can’t be reordered (such as Home). You can only remove the following tabs and sections: Events, Groups, Notes, Services, Shop, Jobs, Offers and Reviews.
When you reorder the tabs on the left side of your Page, the sections in the middle of your Page will also change to be in the same order. For example, if you reorder your Page’s tabs to make the Photos tab appear first, the Photos section in the middle of your Page will also appear first.
Lastly, take a look at the Partner Apps and Services section to see which apps are relevant and can help your business.
Facebook Page posts are a way to generate engagement with fans and target audiences. Through Page posts, you can share company news, product announcements, tips, contests, events, stories and more.
Published Page Posts as part of Facebook marketing can be strategically targeted both organically through the post composer and via Facebook ads to gain greater distribution. Organic posts are published to your Page for free and are only visible to a fraction of those that have liked or subscribed to your Page updates.
If you desire more reach and engagement when carrying out facebook marketing, you can give your post a boost – the Boost Post button allows you to quickly create a Facebook ad using your published post. This ad can appear in different places on Facebook, and you can show it to an audience of people you define.
Boosted Post in Facebook marketing
Boosted posts are also a way to reach new people who are likely interested in your content but don’t currently follow you on Facebook. Your boosted post can include a call-to-action button so that you can drive people to take other actions you care about, like booking an appointment, signing up for a newsletter, getting in touch with your business and more.
Targeted boosted posts can be shown to the audience of your choosing. You can define a new audience based on things like location, interests and more. You can also create a custom audience based on contacts you already have or a lookalike audience based on people who’ve already shown interest in your business Page.
Boosted posts can be placed on the Desktop NewsFeed, Mobile NewsFeed and Instagram. The Audience Network placement is available for boosted posts that use video in the creative.
The budget for boosted posts in facebook marketing is customizable. The boosting fee depends on how many people you want the post to reach as the payment depends on the number of impressions the post gets with time. You can select a pre-populated budget or set a custom amount. Boosted posts require a minimum budget of $1 a day.
The ad you create will look just like the Page post it’s based on. The only difference is that your ad will appear with a ‘Sponsored’ label in the top-left corner and will have a CTA button in the bottom-right corner, if you choose to add one.
So now that you know all of the Facebook Page post types, you might be wondering what an optimal post looks like. Highly engaged Facebook posts typically are succinct. Attention spans are shorter than ever, so it’s important to make your point and make it quickly.
Additionally, being topical and relevant is key to engaging your audience in the most impactful way. You also need to make it clear what you want them to do with the information you’re sharing, so be sure to include an explicit call-to-action (CTA) to get the most out of your post.
Lastly, including rich media in your post is imperative in order to catch one’s eye in the cluttered News Feed environment. Posts devoid of photo or video can easily get lost in a scroll and Facebook’s algorithm is also optimized to showcase posts that include native photo and video content.
There are 5 considerations to take note of when trying to enhance your brand awareness activity on Facebook (and Instagram).
#1 In Facebook marketing, you need to capture Attention Quickly
Across all mediums, but especially on mobile, people make fast decisions around what content they want to engage with. Capturing people’s attention from the first 3 seconds is key to keeping their attention to communicate your message.
#2 Design your Facebook marketing for sound off
Knowing that most people will consume video content in mobile feed without sound, design your video to communicate clearly in this environment. Think about the person watching video in line in a busy coffee shop, they aren’t likely to want to have sound on, and even if they did turn on sound it would be hard to hear. Use text overlays and captions to illustrate the key points of your video’s story.
#3 Frame your visual story when performing Facebook marketing
People watch videos on mobile just inches from their face and often in vertical orientation rather than turning their phone to landscape. The way you tell a story visually matters.
#4 Play more as part of facebook marketing
This is the most important consideration. We are still learning what video content works well in mobile feed and the tactics that make each piece of content successful may be different. Implement a test-and-learn approach and remain open to optimization always.
#5 Edit TVCs when carrying out Facebook marketing
Advertisers should also take note of these when they are using their TV Commercials (TVCs) for brand awareness on mobile feeds. TV commercials don’t adapt well to mobile, so these 5 considerations are crucial.
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