1. 1. More than 50 Facebook marketing tips for entrepreneurs launchgrowjoy.com/facebook-marketing-tips/ With Facebooks ever changing algorithms and rules, its even tougher to get noticed when you are trying to market your business on Facebook and connect with your audience. Did you know that less than 10% of what you post on your Facebook business page is seen by those who like your page? And, in some cases, its below 1%! Does that mean that using Facebook to grow your business is a thing of the past? (I wrote an article a little while ago about how I was changing my Facebook strategy you can read about that here). Not necessarily. While Facebook reach is declining, there are still some things you can do to get in front of your fans without having to pay for Facebook ads. We reached out to some entrepreneurs who are using Facebook to grow their business. Here are more than 50 Facebook marketing tips that they shared with us and Id love to invite you to share your Facebook marketing tips in the comments below, too. Here are more than 50 Facebook marketing tips to help you grow your business with Facebook I recommend Facebook Secret Groups. They are a great way to market to followers who want to see products and services. I recommend using the Facebook Business Page to engage a few times a week and to remind followers that if they want to ensure they see great content, get special sale offers, and learn about products to join the Secret Group. The Secret Group shows up on the left side of the page and they can easily click on the name of the group and be in the group viewing the daily special offer, inspiration or educational tip. The Secret Group is an easy way for people to still find or see the information. Many direct sales companies do not allow selling on Facebook. But, the Secret Group is a strategy that allows the direct sales rep to sell to her followers who want to hear about upcoming sales and be part of something exclusive. Jaynine Howard, Coach Jaynine We use Facebook ads to frequently. Our keys to success are knowing which type of ads and bidding strategies work best for our goal. We want to get clicks to our website. We run these ads in the desktop or mobile news feed. The less you make your ad look like an ad, the more clicks youll get. We use a cost-per-click strategy(CPC). Rasheen Carbin, nsphire.com Our site is very reliant on Facebook for reaching new readers, but we have not encountered many problems with Facebooks changes because we keep it relatively simple. By engaging directly with fans of our page, we get great return interaction. Calls-to-action like polls and open-ended questions, fans have the opportunity to contribute and feel like they are part of the experience. Pat Mallon, plarko.com We are having great success by running a Facebook remarketing campaign for our agency. This
2. 2. has resulted in one of the lowest cost per acquisitions out of any online campaigns that we are currently running. Have you ever visited the Nordstrom website and looked for a pair of jeans and ironically, the exact pair of jeans are being served to you in the form of an advertisement on Facebook? This is Facebook remarketing! How this works is if someone drops off of your website, there is a pixel placed on the backend that has the capability to follow the user around for a specified amount of time and serve ads for your company. When someone comes to our site from a PPC campaign or even a Facebook advertisement, chances are they are not likely to convert the very first time. The fact that one of our advertisements will follow the user around for a 30-day timespan with clever messaging helps with our brand awareness and converts the users that initially dropped off of our website. The beauty about Facebook remarketing is that it is extremely cost effective! All entrepreneurs should test this out as it will result in more leads or sales and will make you company seem extremely technologically savvy! Jason Parks, The Media Captain Weve had a lot of success with boosting posts celebrating the success of members of our community. These boosted posts are much less like an advertisement, and have a few benefits. Our users feel engaged with the new content, the featured user gets some exposure, prospective users see how supportive we are of our community, and general Facebook users get exposure to our site and the interesting writing that our users are producing. Weve seen engagement rates triple from this type of boosted post, as opposed to a general boosted post with information about our community. I think the success is because we are focusing on our users, and not on ourselves. Because this technique doesnt require using Facebooks Ad Manager, it is less affected by recent changes. Also, targeting the people who like our page (and their friends) insulates us a bit from the algorithms involved with Facebooks targeting feature. Laura Fredericks, Describli.com On Facebook one thing I do is host regular contests for people who like my pages. I will post Please LIKE this page and SHARE this post to be entered into our contest to win a new iPhone. The amount of new likes and free marketing this gets my businesses often ends up to generating numerous new customers. The revenue brought in from these new clients is much higher that the cost of the contest prizes, which is why I use Facebook regularly to successfully market my companies. Alfie G. Whattam, Alfie G. Whattam Ive had success using Facebook ads in various ways. The biggest tip I can provide is only use the Facebook Power Editor, not the post boost button. Facebook Power Editor is similar to Google Adwords Editor tool it gives you much more control over all aspects of your ad and allows for easy duplication and ad creation. This is a surprisingly little known feature of the Facebook Advertising manager but makes all the difference in getting the best bang for your buck. You get to it via Manage Ads from the right drop down then Power Editor on the left. Graham Onak, Gain Tap Facebook has changed my business. I use it to find real estate investors across the country. I joined 3 real estate wholesaling groups, comment regularly and now I have a huge following. When I get a request for friendship, I put the person on a list that I can send specific information to only that group. It makes my content relevant. I now have people all over the country to send leads to that pay me on a regular basis. I used to throw these leads away. My list grows every day. Todd Hutcheson, I Buy Homes At Doorstep Digital (a company offering at your home photo scanning services), we use a Facebook widget embedded in our WordPress site. It is a great way to get our recent posts and activity indexed by Search Engines. It has achieved 1st page rankings for us in Seattle for terms we target like slides scanning services or photo scanning services. We love using our Facebook page to connect w new customers and re-connect with old ones. Jack Perry, Doorstep Digital Throughout my marketing career I have used Facebook to market the businesses I represent. The
3. 3. ever changing Facebook policies and procedures can be difficult to follow, and also require lots of time and attention to stay relevant on the social platform. One of my biggest tips, and one thing that has remained consistent throughout all the Facebook updates is keeping an active audience. That requires the business owner, or small business marketer, to monitor their target audience, post relevant content, and respond to comments and inquiries. If you keep an active page with good, relevant, business content your followers will continue to interact and view your page no matter the update. Kathryn Bisson, Technology Seed, LLC We use Facebook extensively to market our business. That said, Facebook can be pretty frustrating in working with the algorithms that determine which posts will be seen by more people. What works for us in getting our posts seen, aside from boosting them, is to make shareable posts. Information that is useful for people and creates a desire to share it out. Most restaurants and coffee companies post photos of their food or their drinksand we do a lot of that too. The most successful posts (i.e., the most seen) are the ones that engage people and they are motivated to share the post out with their network of friends. John Vallas, The Swell Cafe It can feel at times that as soon as you nail down a good strategy, Facebook changes something that can be detrimental to that strategy. However, Facebook implemented an ad platform last November that makes using geo location exceedingly simple called Local Awareness Ads, and I recommend businesses take a look at it. Using ads based on geo location is when ads are pushed out to peoples mobile devices within a given radius of a business, and is a good example of how a company can use mobile technology to attract more foot traffic. Businesses can design their ad and then choose a radius around their business as small as one mile. Imagine you were looking for a gadget online. You saw one in particular you liked, but decided not to buy it. Later in the week you are walking through the mall, you sit down on a bench for a minute to look at your phone. You look at your Facebook newsfeed when you see an ad for the very same gadget you were looking at earlier, and its on sale at a store just 50 short feet from the bench youre sitting on. Why not? Ken Wisnefski, WebiMax On my NFL News website Facebook has become a major distribution channel for us. Weve found the most success interacting and posting article links into relevant Facebook groups. It really took us over the top when we were able to automate the link posting into groups, via apps like rssgraffiti.com Jacob Hutcherson, ProFootballSpot.com Regardless of the changes, Facebook is still far and away the most cost efficient platform for marketing our content. As compared to other social media platforms, people on Facebook are just more willing to engage and share content. But I see the biggest advantage of Facebook as the flexibility it offers for targeting a very specific audience. There are so many criteria to experiment with, the possibilities are endless. In our case, it required a lot of trial and error before we really began seeing good engagement. Ultimately we found the behavioral targeting option to be the most powerful criteria to use, though we also narrow it down using some basic demographics as well. For anyone who is frustrated with Facebook marketing, unless you have really taken the time to try the different targeting options, I would recommend investing the time for some in-depth experiment before moving on. Max Galka, Revaluate For the last couple of years, Ive been submitting two automated posts per day on my personal profile. The posts consist of one bullet of an article from my blog archive along with a link to the article. The posts are scheduled by my VA through Hootsuite to go through Twitter which posts to my profile. New visitors to the blog are then shown a popup optin box (via Popup Domination plugin) offering them an enticing free gift if they optin to my list. According to my annual Jetpack plugin WordPress.com report, Facebook was the leading source of hits to my blog which, as a result of this tactic, builds my list. Ive recently revised this
4. 4. process somewhat directing posts to my FB business page rather than directly to my personal profile in order to produce more of my own (vs curated) content and engagement on my page. Ill now share those posts to my FB profile. Loretta Love Huff, The Dream Leader for Business IT As most business owners have realized, with Facebooks posts having such low organic reach it makes it difficult for posts to get any exposure. One strategy that has been getting exponentially higher organic reach than images or text is video. Facebook auto-plays videos on the news feed while your followers are scrolling through & its algorithm currently favors this content type. Try uploading short video teasers for your business and include a link in the caption to convert traffic to your website. Lauren Felix, LaPetiteFashionista.com I have built my personal (Toni Henderson-Mayers) Facebook page following into readers and customers of my book and products. I include my friend list as part of my writing, publishing and touring journey by posting photos and comments of what I am doing during each part of the process. Toni Henderson- Mayers, www.WiseCourtship.com For the past five years, we have successfully utilized Facebook as a lead generation tool for new customers. We use multiple channels within Facebook for marketing but the most effective means of lead generation has been Facebook Advertising that directs a lead directly to our website. In many cases, people believe that the advertisement is an actual post from a friend or family member. Ron Holt, Two Maids & A Mop One Facebook Marketing tip that we use is promoted posts. Promoted posts provides a fantastic way to get more reach and ROI from the content entrepreneurs have invested in creating/purchased without breaking the bank. Rick Noel, eBiz ROI Grow a fan base before trying to optimize marketing spend on anything else. Most entrepreneurs are analytical people, so the treasure trove of data that is Facebook marketing can be extremely appealing. Before driving yourself crazy trying to optimize click-to-website and product based marketing campaigns, spend some time and money growing a fan base. The most effective way to do this is by creating a perpetually running ad to attract likes to the page. Spend an hour or two a week optimizing those ads and then when you get to a couple thousand fans you can effectively start using other types of marketing campaigns. James Fayal, Zest Tea I have used Facebook to boost my posts. This has proven to help me slowly introduce my BORSAbag products. For me, the most important thing to do right now is to introduce my products to as many people as I can. No one looks for a BORSAbag because they dont know it exists, nor do they understand how unique it is. BORSAbag was designed to protect valuables from moisture, dirt and sand. It can be used, and still be stored in pocket or purse after getting wet or dirty. Get It Wet and Dirty; Store It Clean and Dry. Diane E Piper, BORSAbag LLC We use Facebook as our primary social media outlet and we have considerable success doing it. If I could give your readers one tip, I would suggest making a clear strategy strictly for Facebook marketing content. Simply posting the same content across multiple social media platforms looks redundant and lazy. Choose a well-crafted combination of photos, stories, and even video clips. Dane Anderson, Zipline Gear Using our Social Networks Using it as a way to share what we do with our employees social network, which drives trusted referrals from friends and friends of friends. We encourage employees to like and share the company posts on their social networks. Colby Harder, CONTI Evolution I use several social media platforms to grow my business. Social media is how I created my
5. 5. business on a very tight budget. I used it to network with others, the media, and possible clients. From that I have received nationwide attention from various media outlets. I have used Facebook to create engagement with my audience. I believe that engagement is key when creating a brand. You want people to feel like they are a part of your business and that they can easily connect with you. Facebook is perfect for creating this. Amanda Rose, The Dating Stylist To spur engagement, promote page likes, and drive conversions we offer a discount code on our Facebook page for $5 off any order of our product, Board Blazers LED Underglow Skateboard, Longboard, and Scooter Lights. Theres no trickery: the code is posted directly on the Board Blazers page, theres no restrictions on use of the code, and you dont even have to like the page to get the discount! Then, we point all post-sales communication to our Facebook page, encouraging our existing customers to reorder using the discount. Sure, $5 is a big discount on a $24.99 product, but people appreciate our clear and honest approach to Facebook marketing. Its been a home run because of this straightforward strategy that builds brand loyalty, trust, and yes, boosts sales! Greg Rudolph, Grenada Innovations, USA Being successful with Facebook marketing for us has come down to 1 thing, targeting! At first we used Facebook with mediocre results because of the general ad buying approach, which is just targeting your ads to a specific country, for example we aim for the US and Canada only. This works to an extent but the power of Facebook ads comes down to targeted ad buys. The amount of information that Facebook collects on all of their users allows you to dial into your demographics with pinpoint accuracy. Once youve done that make sure your ad appeals specifically to those people, for example target people in say Florida, with an ad that says Attention Florida Residents or something along those lines. Dont be afraid to play around with new ideas, you never know what will work. Then when you find something that clicks start to move full speed ahead on it. David Batchelor, DialMyCalls.com One way weve attracted such a huge fan base on Facebook has been through implementing weekly contests and prize giveaways, interconnected with our content marketing strategy. We publish 1-2 articles on our blog per week, and at the bottom of each post, we ask our readers a question regarding the topic or content of the article. In order to be entered in our giveaway draw, we ask our fans to like our page (if they havent already) and comment on the relevant blog post with their answer to the question. . The more people who enter the giveaway (i.e the more comments) the higher the prize value anywhere up to a vaporizer valued at $100! Julie K, TorontoVaporizer.ca I started a Facebook ad campaign to get more likes to my page around 2 years ago. I grew the audience to about 2000 people. Back then, each post would get a lot of engagement, likes, comments. Then I started to see the X people reached label below each post a few months ago, and now my posts reach about 1-2% of my audience, which is disappointing since I did spend a decent amount of money growing that audience in the first place. I started to think about ways in which people might organically share my posts. The content had to be interesting and relevant. I interviewed interesting women I knew and tagged them in the interviews with their permission. They then shared the interviews with their friends, and those posts got 3-4x times the reach of regular posts. I also saw increased traffic to my blog and website, and it also impacted conversions. Madhavi Jagdish, Simple Bra The biggest tip I have is to be consistent and to write about things that interest you as well as give value to those who are reading. You have to enjoy it and treat it like an ongoing conversation with your favorite friends. With Facebook Ads you have to just really know your customer and to target effectively, FB makes that pretty easy for the most part. Tanja Diamond, www.learningtantra.com & www.tantraforbusiness.com With Facebooks never-ending changes and decreasing organic reach, we decided we had to take
6. 6. a different approach to the platform. We had to change our strategy. We dont have a huge amount of Likes (ski racing is a pretty niche market, after all), but that is not our KPI. We really havent had a ton of success with paid advertising on Facebook, either. We use Facebook as an integrated platform and as a way for our fans to further engage with us. We only use crowdsourced content, which has been very popular in engaging our core customer base as well as creating awareness with their networks. We get constant email, Facebook, and Instagram requests for us to share photos of fans wearing Arctica. Not only does this mean we spend less time and money sourcing content, but we make our customers feel proud and engaged with the Arctica brand. Alex Birkett, Arctica Race Make sure you link to your Facebook page and consider including the Facepile plugin on your blog which shows faces of people who have liked your page. Invite your personal Facebook connections who may be interested in your business content to like your page. Theres a function in Facebook to do that from your page. Share daily to your page. You can share your own content as well as other peoples content. Make sure you share what your target audience would find interesting. Tom Treanor, Wrike I get the best traction when I link a recent blog post asking a question. eg. What was your biggest win? Overall I have told clients to focus on capturing emails and relying on blog posts, as not only is Facebook changing, but Google is too. Carolyn William, Idea Majesty Ive had great success with Facebook ads, both promoted posts and ads, just by doing two important things. First, use visuals every time. Visuals are processed 60,000 times *faster than* text by the human brain and also evokes emotion. Second, target your ads and posts. Everything from demographics and age to detailed interests of your potential viewers should be considered before you run your ad. Facebook also allows look alike targeting. If you already have a list of email addresses (possibly a previous customer or lead), you can enter them into Facebook and theyll target people very similar. These small (but important) changes have made a world of difference with my ad results in just the last 2 months and Im seeing it continue with new ads. Melissa Kauffold, MelJoy Creations Jewelry The marketing tip that I use for Facebook which has worked and continues to work for me is the posts of media hits that I secure for my clients. I continually post the media hits as they come in and then I follow up by engaging the clients business through photos and the link to their website. Once people start to like my posts, I send them a request to like my clients business page and then I engage them with discounts, offerings and invitations to events all of which has been successful. MJ Pedone, www.indrapr.com We use Facebook page every day to promote their amazing events, other amazing opportunities for moms everywhere as well as daily mantras to inspire other moms. We think its very important to engage on all social media platforms. So many moms are on Facebook all day and night and this is the perfect way for us to connect with our community. Lyss Stern, DivaLysscious Moms Weve seen significant success in engaging our audience through Facebook with FilterGrade.Our keys to success so far have been: amazing visual content with a unique caption, tagging other pages and people to gain some initial traction, partnering with other small blogs and sites to share audiences, paying small amounts to boost posts. At the end of the day being authentic and understanding your audience is the best way to keep people coming back to your page. Mike Moloney, Filter Grade While Facebook will continue to make changes that cause frustration and take time to adapt to, one thing that is working well for me lately is posting too much. Way more than you think is appropriate. Im currently posting about 5 times a day, sometimes as much as 8 or 10 times. Ive been doing this for around 6 months or so now and havent had a single person tell me they see too many of my posts in their feed. But
7. 7. more importantly, my engagement is soaring since I started posting so often. Sure, 3 out of the 5 posts on average on a given day will get no attention, but the other 2 get comments, likes, and shares. Laura C George, http://www.lauracgeorge.com Our one marketing tip/strategy is to make sure to really nail down and use custom audiences. The message is important but context is way more relevant. We make sure to vet who we advertise to so that it will reach a relevant audience. Dexter Sandoval, Sprayable Energy We use Facebook to engage our consumers and fans. We primarily post photos or commentary and boost it using facebook advertising. We also advertise our website to drive traffic. However, the Facebook store is probably the biggest disappointment because no consumers purchase on FB. Joseph Hwang, Barring Eyewear LLC One thing to remember with all social media is dont build your company on rented land. If you post to social media be sure of two things. One, that the site doesnt own the rights to your work. And two, link back to your website or blog in every post. The goal is to use their popularity to drive traffic to you and your business. I get much better results out of posting to groups. I am member of many some for selling amusement equipment, some for blindness related issues, and others for blogging podcasting and online marketing. However, I do know some people who have become so disillusioned with Facebook that they are thinking of leaving it for good. And one person, Gill Andews of True Stories with Gill, actually closed her account over a year ago over concerns about Facebooks ever-changing terms of use. Max Ivey, www.theblindblogger.net Sponsored posts on Facebook have been the single largest source of driving traffic to giveaway pages and squeeze pages that have added thousands upon thousands of new subscribers in the past year. Brent, VOSA.com Organic, one-on-one invites have been the best source of attention and growth though it is INCREDIBLY time consuming! One must also post something of value DAILY. Content is king! There is nothing quite like having real rather than fake profiles and people who are truly helped by the knowledge as well as plant itself. Really, when was the last time you had someones grandmother contact you with information about the results from their latest cancer trial, (Cancer Free!) thanking you for helping them heal instead of passing away as so many others? FB is one of our largest audiences. It is the newspaper for the real world. S. Rowan Wilson, MaryJanesWorld.com I make sure I create a very specific audience that I want to see my post. That way every dollar that I spend goes directly to who Im marketing to. For example if Im promoting a ladies night event at my store I will make sure Im advertising to women in the Montclair area that attend spas, shops at body care shops etc. Corin Wright, Style Haven, Inc. What you need to do is focus on building a community. Think about what interests your target customers. Look into demographics reports in Google Analytics for your website to understand their interests. Then create a community on Facebook around the interest. Dont even talk about your product, company or service. It will take 3-6 months to build a decent community with some advertising and promotion on Facebook and a lot of good content pictures / videos and posts. Dont do it all by yourself share stuff from other places on the net like YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and other sites. Once you reach a critical size, where every post starts getting a couple of dozen likes, you are ready to sell. Dont over do the sales pitches though. Keep it to 1-2 sales posts a week. Vishal, www.trainedge.co.in Post content that your target audience is interested in and would share with their friends. If your posts are
8. 8. understood by an average eight year old, then youve done your job right. When devising your content strategy, consistently focus on quality and creativity. And once you know what to post, make the most of the recently introduced interest targeting for your organic posts. And finally, the entrepreneurs need to get practical about their pages organic reach. Accept that the average organic reach on the platform has declined and positively embrace paid Facebook advertising. But, remember to have SMART campaign goals before you start using their different ad products. Vaibhav Diwanji, e-intelligence Use Website Custom Audiences: As Facebook moves into a pay-to-play model, marketers are going to have to find better ways to reach fans. While you can run Facebook ads targeted at specific fans on Facebook, one of my favorite Facebook marketing tips is to use Website Custom Audiences instead. With Website Custom Audiences, you can still run Facebook ads through Power Editor; however, this time you can target people whove visited your website (or even a specific page on your website) when they head back to Facebook. Juan Velasquez, Do It Wiser One tip I could offer that we found helpful was that we used custom audiences and created lookalike audiences which let us reach new potential customers who would likely be interested in our services because theyre similar to a customer list we currently have. This tactic showed tremendous growth and increased conversions by 25%. Ashley, MyClean My biggest tip is to have a split marketing strategy. One side of the split should be focused on driving new customers ( who are not linked to your page in any way ) to liking my page, which expands my reach, and introduces you to new customers who might not have heard of the Hymn Drop Shoppe before. I do this by using the Promote my page link. I dedicate 1/3 of my marketing budget to promoting the Hymn Drop Shoppe Facebook page. Brooke Wright, Hymn Drop Shoppe My tip is to stay consistent in what you post and in how much you post. My brand is encouragement so I post a segment entitled The DAILY Message each week day so people come to me when they are looking to be inspired. This is a great way for people to get to know you without you having to track down business. Derrick Hayes, www.derrickhayes.com If you want to promote your brand on Facebook, post a native ad with a powerful photo of a person. A native ad is one that doesnt look like an ad, and is more topical. If you dont paid to promote your post, the content will get seen by almost no one. In contrast, if you spend $1.00 per day to promote the post, it will make a HUGE difference! Many dont realize that Facebooks minimum is $1.00 per post, and $30/day is worth it to reach your fans.. My other advice is use Twitter, YouTube and Instagram instead, which we use more to promote the Goody Awards for social good. Liz H Kelly, Goody PR I engage with groups and leverage/target people with greater reach. Im a certified digital marketing professional and I was taught by many of the thought leaders in social media including Mark Schaefer, Glen Gilmore and Mike Moran. At times, when promoting a new offering or something that needs greater visibility like my personal branding course, I will enlist people like Ted Rubin and Lisa Leiberman-Wang. I rely on analytics to guide my activity. Facebooks algorithm has hit small businesses hard. However, old school methods like monitoring analytics is helpful to capture your audience when they are most likely to be on Facebook and viewing content. Chrishan Wright, Propel Media Group, LLC Dish out tons of cool info, articles, stats, pictures, videos, etc. that are related to your field in order to keep the guests happy, but only sporadically toss out your own work. After all, who wants to hear a host talk about him/herself all night? For us, weve found that keeping 20% of our Facebook content geared towards our website has significantly increased our marketing effectiveness, driving more consistent like growth, more robust user engagement numbers, and a much higher link-click percentage. Is this going to replace good old dollars and cents? No. However, where
9. 9. branding is concerned, being the host whose parties attract the most loyal followers has proven to be, you know, priceless. Brett Decolyse, Embark.org Facebook marketing images are everything: 1.) These days, you cant get good engagement on Facebook (even from your own audience) without very compelling images 2.) If you are selling products on your Facebook page, you should typically trade off between one post highlighting your services and two posts that are informational/engaging for the audience. This keeps the audience regularly engaging with your brand, which Facebooks algorithm will reward. Kenny Kline, Slumber Sage Do you have a Facebook marketing tip that youd like to share? If so, leave a comment below!