Facebook Marketing: A Guide

Facebook is the largest social network in the world with 2.94 billion monthly users (2022). Almost 80% of companies in the B2B and B2C sectors now use Facebook as a marketing platform, making a Facebook presence indispensable for companies. In this article, you will learn what opportunities the platform offers for companies and how you can generate more likes and Facebook fans.

The basics of Facebook marketing

Essential component for effective Facebook marketing is (free of charge) creation of your own Facebook page for your business. Such a Facebook company page offers you a great opportunity to bring potential customers to the website via the Facebook profile. The prerequisite for this is a private Facebook profile, which you need to link to the company page. After you have edited the most important settings (profile picture, title picture, page name), you can turn your attention to the first posts on Facebook.

We’ll show you how to create and manage your own Facebook business page in just a few steps

Organic posts: what types of posts are there on Facebook?

A first step for more reach are organic posts. Here, you can use different types of posts to provide your target audience with high-quality content. You can use a mix of the following post types:

• Facebook images:
  Facebook images allow you to post photo content. In addition to photos, infographics or illustrations are also suitable for reaching your target audience and increasing engagement. To be successful, companies should make sure that the images have a consistent style.
• Facebook video:
  A Facebook video is a pre-produced video sequence that plays automatically in users’ newsfeed. This is particularly suitable for telling stories on Facebook and making short announcements via video. Videos on Facebook have the advantage over images in that they have a higher engagement rate.
• Facebook Live:
  Unlike Facebook videos, the format is a livestream broadcast and not a pre-produced video. Facebook Live offers companies the opportunity to engage with their followers in real time (e.g. via Q&A) and thus build an authentic relationship with them.
• Facebook Instant Articles:
  This format allows publishers to publish text- and image-based content directly on Facebook. Instant Articles have the advantage of loading faster on mobile devices and can lead to lower bounce rates and a better user experience.

Paid advertising on Facebook: What are Facebook Ads?

In addition to organic posts, paid ads can also be used on Facebook to increase reach. These paid ads are called Facebook Ads. There are different ad formats (e.g. Image Ads, Video Ads, Story Ads) that companies can use for the advertising campaign. To make your ads successful, you should use specific targeting and retargeting to reach the right audience. Meta Ads Manager helps you to run and manage ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. However, how much Facebook Ads cost depends on the budget and the ad format.

Want to know more about Facebook Ads? We’ll show you which ad formats you can use for your advertising on Facebook

How to generate Facebook likes and fans? – 4 tips

In order for users to see posts from your business page in the newsfeed, they must first “Like” the page and get new followers. The following 4 tips will help you generate more Facebook likes and fans:

1. Optimize your Facebook profile

To generate as many likes as possible, your Facebook page should be attractive and complete. It should provide the most important information about your company (company description, contact details, profile picture, link to the website). Incomplete company pages, on the other hand, look unprofessional, resulting in fewer users clicking “Like”.

2. Promote the Facebook page on your website

By promoting your Facebook page on the company website, users will more easily become aware of your Facebook profile. This can include using follow buttons on blog posts, for example, to help your target audience interact with content on Facebook more quickly.

3. Promote the Facebook page to customers

Other promotional methods can also help increase Facebook fans. For example, sent emails can include a link to the Facebook page, or checkout slips can be printed with a Facebook URL. Incentive schemes (e.g., customer discounts for liking the Facebook page) can also increase the number of likes and fans.

4. Choose the optimal time to post Facebook posts

There is no clear answer to the question of the optimal time to publish a Facebook post. In this regard, mornings at 9 a.m., between 1 and 3 p.m., and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. are attractive times when user browsing activity is particularly high. At the weekend, the period from 12-13 p.m. is the most attractive. In general, however, quality is more important than quantity and particular attention should be paid to consistent, regular content.

Other Facebook tools: Chatbot and Facebook Groups

Other tools you should know about for effective Facebook marketing are Facebook Chatbots and Facebook Groups.

• Facebook chatbots (also called Facebook Messenger bots) are tools that enable quick, automated responses to customer questions. Through chatbots, businesses can help their customers with questions 24/7 via chat, making the purchasing process smoother for users.
• Facebook groups are online platforms where the target audience can share information and knowledge with each other. Groups can be created either by businesses or by Facebook fans. Facebook groups are perfect for building long-term customer loyalty and driving engagement.

How is success measured on Facebook?

An important aspect of Facebook marketing is constantly measuring success. As with other social media channels, it is important for companies to analyze certain key performance indicators (so-called KPIs) on Facebook. Important key figures on Facebook are, for example:

• Reach (number of people who viewed your post).
• Impressions (how often an ad was played)
• Interactions (number of users who shared, liked or commented on your content)
• CPC (average cost per click)

Learn more about the most important metrics in social media marketing and how you can measure these KPIs.

Facebook marketing as an important success driver for businesses

Facebook is still the world’s largest social network, making it an important channel for businesses to use for marketing. Organic posts on the platform (e.g. Facebook images, Facebook videos, Facebook Live) and paid Facebook Ads can significantly increase the reach of your business. It’s important in Facebook marketing, above all, to stand out from the crowd and offer added value to your user base. If you succeed in this, nothing will stand in the way of your successful marketing on Facebook!