7 Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

With over 1.73 billion daily active users, Facebook is a titan of the social media world, and a rich source of leads for small businesses. Fully two thirds of Facebook users visit the page of a local business at least once a week, according to the platform’s own analytics.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough for a small business owner to simply create a page and hope to be among those pages most-visited. The following seven Facebook marketing tips will ensure your page not only draws a crowd, but also becomes a bountiful source of paying customers.

1. Optimize your Facebook page

Make sure your page is visually engaging. Put up a compelling cover image. Better yet, use a cover video. This is a feature still rarely used by small businesses, so a stunning or charming video that leaps to life when someone visits is more likely to grasp attention. Over time, test different videos and images to see what works best for your brand.

It’s also important to have a strong call to action button on your business page. Make it clear how to get in touch with you, for those who require your immediate services. To increase the effectiveness of your call to action, encourage people to leave a review on your page. Few things do more to improve your conversions than positive reviews.

2. Use automation

Set up a warm welcome message to promptly respond when someone comments on your page or sends you a message. You can also use Facebook’s Comment Guard to respond to comments on posts.

This swift automation engages people, retaining their attention, and saves you the need to constantly monitor posts. A similar time-saving strategy is to always save your best replies to common comments and queries.

3. Post with clear purpose

Before you begin posting, decide upon your desired goal for the post. Some business owners seek engagement and interaction, but most want to convert users to paying customers. Assuming you desire the latter, design your posts to achieve this outcome.

It’s good strategy to be aware of the demographics of your audience, and their interests. Tailor and target your posts to the groups you most wish to become customers. Use solid copywriting fundamentals in your posts. A strong headline with standout visuals is essential for grasping attention and arousing interest.

Once again, a strong call to action is a key component. Use one in all of your posts. Think up irresistible incentives to entice your audience to take action, whether that means subscribing to your newsletter, visiting your website, or simply commenting and sharing the post.

4. Use visuals and video

The written words you use matter, but when it comes to Facebook posts, powerful visuals do more to initially grasp and retain attention. So, experiment with interesting, creative images. Infographics are a powerful visual, which can often be repurposed from your popular blog posts.

Above all, find a way to utilize video. There’s no better way to bring your brand to life, boost user engagement, and build a connection with your audience.

You could publish tutorial videos for your products or services, solution videos for common problems, behind-the-scenes footage, or regular podcast-style videos with industry commentary, discussion, and guests.

The ultimate Facebook videos are live videos. These live broadcasts stimulate far more interaction with your audience, which bumps up your position in the news feed. They’re ideal for Q&A sessions, product launches, and contests and giveaways.

With more people than ever before using their mobile phones to browse Facebook, it’s important to be aware that longer-form copy can be harder to read on the smaller screens. Images are great for phones, if a little limited in how much information they can convey. Video is the ideal medium for mobile.

5. Leverage trending topics

Pay close attention to whatever your audience is discussing at any given time. This might include upcoming seasons and festivals. Try to relate your posts to these trends, if it’s suitable for your brand to do so.

We’ve already spoken about the importance of knowing your audience well. Find out what games, sports, and hobbies they enjoy. Understand their interests and then follow trends, events, and news related to those interests. Relate your posts and brand to their passions and the audience will relate to you.

6. Use Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories are images or videos that only exist on the platform for 24 hours, before disappearing. Over 500 million Facebook users watch stories every day.

The fleeting nature of these posts only adds to their appeal. They present a likable, personable sense of character. As such, they’re a wonderful tool for humanizing your brand.

Facebook Stories don’t need to be well-made and polished to perfection. In fact, the audience often prefers something quick and easy to understand. You might use these posts to deliver tips and advice for your products and services, or for any of the video ideas previously mentioned.

7. Use scheduling to optimize engagement

As with any online marketing endeavor, test and tweak in all that you do. Facebook analytics will tell you which days of the week and times of the day your posts receive the most engagement and interaction. Try to have posts published at these optimal times.

You can use Facebook’s scheduling feature to have them come out at just the right moment. This also helps you to stay consistent with your posting. Scheduling gives you a chance to take a break. You can prepare many posts in advance and have them scheduled to publish over the coming week or two.

According to Sproutsocial, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday are the best days for user engagement, between the hours of 9pm and 1am. But this may vary significantly depending on the demographics of your ideal customer. Study your target audience to learn what works best for them.

Facebook offers small business owners a superb opportunity to grow their visibility and customer base. If you put these seven tips into action, you’ll go a long way toward maximizing your visitors, audience-engagement, and conversions to paying customers.