Social media marketing on Facebook is on the rise. Despite pretty much being the birthplace of social media marketing, Facebook has retained its spot as a top contender, with more daily visitors than any other social media platform.
With over two billion active users, every type of audience is present on Facebook. And any business owner would be foolish not to take advantage of the great marketing opportunities the platform provides.
Are you ready to dominate in 2020? Keep reading for five tips to kill it with social media marketing on Facebook next year!
1. Match your marketing strategy to your overarching business goals
The possibilities are endless when it comes to social media marketing on Facebook. It can be easy to get lost or overwhelmed. So the best way to start when forming your social media marketing strategy is to align it with your business goals.
It’s best to keep your goals as specific as possible. Here are a couple of examples on how to effectively match your business goals with Facebook marketing strategies:
- If your goal is to promote attendance at a specific event, consider boosting a Facebook event page. Maintain a specific goal for how many attendees you would like and how much you are willing to pay in advertising for each new attendee.
If you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you want a short term or long term strategy?
- How can you improve your business from where it was last year?
- What can you do to make your business more attractive than your competitors?
The answers to these questions can help you determine your call to action and form relevant goals for social media marketing on Facebook.
2. Invest wisely
Anyone with a Facebook business page has probably noticed the steady decline in organic reach over the past couple of years. Currently, posts from Facebook business pages are often only seen by 1-2% of their followers unless they are boosted.
There’s no point in putting all your hard work into killer Facebook posts if no one will even see them.
As Facebook becomes increasingly more of a “pay to play” platform, it is becoming more and more necessary to invest your money wisely if you want your business to succeed.
An advertising budget is a necessity to succeed with social media marketing on Facebook. But you could be wasting a lot of money if you’re not careful about how you use your Facebook budget.
For example, there is no sense in spending $10 to boost every post you make to an audience of 100 followers. It is wise to grow your followers through the use of page like ads and posts boosted to external audiences before you begin putting money behind posts boosted towards your followers.
Generating followers with page like ads and engagement with boosted posts can be done with a relatively low budget. However, ads geared towards generating sales and leads tend to require more money to be effective, especially in highly competitive industries.
When it comes to conversion ads, you have to be willing to spend money to make money.
Of course the end goal is to ensure the profits outweigh the costs to get a positive return on ad spend. But sometimes new campaigns have to start off in the red during the initial stages of the optimization process. Then work towards the break even point, and ultimately, profit.
Don’t worry if positive ROI does not happen immediately in the Facebook advertising process. Sometimes it takes months of A/B split testing to find the right message and the right audience! But once your campaign has been fully optimized, Facebook can be an amazing resource for generating sales at a relatively low cost!
If your Facebook ads are not performing as well as you would like them to, it may be time to call in an expert. Our experienced advertising specialists have the knowledge and skill it takes to execute an effective, results-driven Facebook advertising plan.
3. Use analytics and learn from them
It can be easy to get lost when it comes to social media marketing on Facebook. The good news is, there are a lot of built-in road maps to help you succeed!
There are a lot of generic statistics out there making broad claims like Wednesday and Thursday being the best days to post on Facebook. These stats can be a great starting place. But every business is different, and falling for generic rules of thumb can be detrimental.
Using social analytics to your favor can ensure that you optimize your social media marketing strategy based on what is best for your particular business.
For example, it’s commonly known that the best times of day to post for maximize engagement are:
- Mornings when people first wake up
- Afternoons when people take their lunch breaks
- Evenings when people get off work
That being said, that rule does not work for all businesses. What if you are located in the U.S. but the majority of your followers and customers are in Asia? You would have to adapt your posting strategy to account for the times when your specific target audience is most likely to be active online.
Similarly, if your target audience is retail workers or security guards, they might have a totally different workday from the average office worker.
By testing out many different posting times and days and analyzing which posts receive the most engagement, you can get a better idea of what posting schedule works best for your business.
This goes for more than just days and times to post. You should also pay attention to the types of posts your followers interact with the most.
Do they respond well to posts that ask open-ended questions?
What about article shares or giveaways?
Pay attention to every detail of the posts that receive the most engagement and see how you can adapt future posts accordingly.
For example, if posts with images of people in them outperform posts with landscapes, focus on more lifestyle photos with people. Likewise, if you notice article shares from certain websites get a lot of likes and comments, consider sharing more content from the same source in the future.
Facebook ads should also be optimized based on analytics. Facebook Ads Manager makes it easy to track data and adjust your ads accordingly. Some important metrics to look at include cost per conversion, relevancy scores, and cost per click.
You should also pay close attention to the difference between an ad’s reach and number of impressions. If the impressions become over three times the reach, it may be time to refresh your ads or expand your audience.
Facebook ads manager also offers much more in-depth analytics to help you optimize your Facebook ads based on the demographics most of your results come from. These demographics include everything from age groups and genders to the devices and operating systems people who engage with your ads are clicking from.
If you aren’t sure where to start with your social media marketing on Facebook, don’t be afraid to split test multiple different options and adjust your strategy based on the results.
Even if you do have a stable marketing plan, there is always something new that can be tested or adjusted. If you notice even a slight drop in engagement or increase in your average cost per lead, pay attention to what might have caused the shift.
Those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
Facebook has its own analytics, which can help you make informed decisions about the future of your marketing strategy. However, many marketing companies, like LYFE Marketing, can offer you more advanced analytics. They can also help you understand the data and adapt your plan accordingly.
4. Utilize videos
Studies suggest that by 2020, video will account for 85% of total Internet traffic. If your Facebook marketing strategy doesn’t include video content, you may want to reconsider.
Eye catching images are no longer enough when it comes to social media marketing on Facebook. If a picture tells 1,000 words than a video tells 1,000,000 words!
When it comes to both ads and Facebook posts, video currently reigns supreme. 82% of business owners report that video marketing is an important part of their overall marketing strategy. If your Facebook strategy does not include video content, you are already falling behind your competitors.
Video outperforms still images on social media in terms of engagement. And some believe that Facebook videos have higher organic reach than posts with just text or images alone.
Videos also serve to build trust in your business. 57% of consumers report that videos give them more confidence to purchase items online. Videos are particularly effective for explaining complex concepts in ways that still images simply cannot.
Think about it: if you have an innovative, new product, consumers may not be able to understand how it works simply by looking at a photo of it. A video can quickly and easily show people how to use your product, increasing the likelihood that they will want to buy it.
Video ads prove to be top performers time and time again, with average click through rates higher than all other ad formats.
Engagement rates for video ads tend to be an astounding 3x higher than engagement for non-video ads!
Video Length
If your social media marketing strategy includes Facebook video ads, be sure to keep your videos short.
Typically speaking, video ads that are between 15 and 30 seconds long tend to be best. Having a shorter video means that more of your viewers will be likely to watch the video to completion.
If your video ads are too long, you may not be able to get your full message across.
On the same note, it’s best to keep the call to action in the middle of your video ads. This way you can catch engaged viewers’ attention before it drops off and they continue scrolling down their newsfeed. Having the CTA at the end of the video runs the risk of many viewers never getting to it.
Thumbnails
Pay special attention to thumbnails. Facebook does auto-play videos, but many users turn this feature off. For those users, a boring thumbnail means they likely won’t ever watch your video at all even if it does appear in their newsfeed.
In fact, studies have shown that most users base their decision whether to watch your video or not on the thumbnail image. So, you need to pick an enticing and eye catching image. It needs to be click worthy. Otherwise, users will simply scroll past down your video no matter how great you think it is.
Use a relevant but engaging thumbnail to convince consumers to watch your video. Just make sure that the thumbnail doesn’t contain too much text!
Sometimes this can be difficult if you are using subtitles. But thumbnails for Facebook video ads are subject to the same rules as Facebook image ads. Ads featuring more than 20% text are subject to decreased reach or even run the risk of being rejected altogether.
If you are using videos for your social media marketing on Facebook, there are a few more tips you should know about.
Sound & Subtitles
85% of social media videos are actually watched with the sound off!
This means that in order to be effective, your Facebook videos should be able to convey a message without relying on the use of sound. Subtitles may be necessary to accomplish this. And can make your videos more accessible for those with auditory processing disabilities.
If your video doesn’t make sense without the use of sound, it’s highly likely only a small percentage of viewers will even comprehend it.
Also, many videos are not watched to completion. Consider the traditional “pyramid style” of writing when it comes to your video script. The most important and attention-grabbing information should come first since it is highly likely that most viewers will not watch to the end of even a short video.
Video Format
One last tip is to play close attention to the formatting of your Facebook videos. Square videos tend to perform best, especially on mobile platforms. If a square video simply isn’t possible, opt for a vertical format rather than horizontal.
So what types of videos should you post on your Facebook?
Some great ideas for videos are:
- explain the product or service your company offers
- behind the scenes videos from your employees
- testimonial videos from satisfied customers
- promotional video if you’re a B2B company
While quality video production may not always come cheap, it pays off in the long run!
That being said, video production is becoming easier and more affordable as smartphone technology improves and increasing numbers of video editing and animation creation software arise.
5. Hire a marketing company
Our last, and most important, tip for succeeding with social media marketing on Facebook is to hire a marketing company! Facebook is constantly evolving and shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
Keeping up with the platform’s ever-changing policies and features can be a full time job. You’re busy running your business. We get it.
So why not leave the social media marketing to someone whose job actually is to keep up with Facebook’s constant evolution and adapt your company’s marketing strategy accordingly?
As previously mentioned, social media marketing agencies have access to extra analytics that go far beyond the information you can learn from Facebook insights alone. A seasoned expert can also help you adapt your strategy using data that can otherwise become very overwhelming or confusing.
In addition to improving your Facebook marketing with quality analytics, social media marketing agencies also save you time and money!
They save time by taking care of time-consuming activities like replying to comments and messages, curating social media posts, setting up Facebook ad campaigns, and posting content at optimal times.
They can also save you money by making your advertising campaigns more effective and efficient, thus boosting your ROI. And also by eliminating the need to hire full-time employees to take care of your business’s marketing needs.
Hiring an agency to handle your social media marketing on Facebook means you’ll have more time to focus on what you’re best at: running your business!
How do you plan to incorporate these tips into your 2020 strategy for social media marketing on Facebook? Let us know in the comments!
