If you’re looking for a way to get attention for your small business and bring in new clients, then it’s hard to do better than Facebook. Right now, “roughly 37.2% of all the people on Earth use Facebook today,” and as of April 2023, there were 2.989 billion monthly active users on the platform, with 186.4 million active Facebook users in the US alone, according to Datareportal.
No matter what products or services your small business provides, chances are you can find an audience on Facebook and achieve your marketing goals.
While most of us are probably familiar with using Facebook for personal use, there can be a lot to learn if you want to use it to promote your small business and bring in new leads.
Get a head start and learn what you need to know for success with our Facebook tips for small businesses.
Helpful tips and tricks when setting up a Facebook Business Page for success
If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, then use these tips as a refresher to make sure you have everything set up for the best results. If you don’t have a Facebook Page for your small business, don’t worry. If you follow our tips, you’ll start off the right way from the beginning and save yourself from making some mistakes.
1) Check your target market is on Facebook
It sounds obvious but, seriously, you don’t want to be marketing with great passion on Facebook, only to discover that most of your audience prefers TikTok or Threads. Small businesses don’t have the time or the money to waste on marketing that doesn’t work.
Before you set up your Facebook Business Page, do a little research. Ask your existing customers which social media platforms they use regularly. You could send them a short survey via your newsletter, post polls and questions on your current social platforms, or simply ask customers when you see them if you deal with your customers face to face.
If you’re new and you don’t yet have existing customers, then ensure you know exactly who your target audience is. You need to know as much as you can about them, including their location, age range, why they need your solution in particular, what they do, their interests, when they use Facebook, and more. Set up some thoroughly researched buyer personas to help you work out where your target audience likes to hang out and what content they want to see.
Your next step is to check out your competitors and find out if they are already on Facebook. Chances are good that if they are, you should be too. You can also do a little digging here and see how much of a success they are making of their own Facebook marketing. Look at how they post and how often, and the types of posts that get the most engagement from their followers. You’re not there to copy them but to get inspired by what they’re doing and figure out how you can do it better.
2) Set your marketing goals
What you’re doing on Facebook should add to your overall marketing plan, not be something completely separate. Ensure you set some clear goals for what you want to achieve with your Facebook marketing before you start.
You’ll post differently if you’re trying to build your brand, for example, than you will if you’re aiming to bring qualified leads into your sales funnel and send traffic to your website.
Be clear about what you want to accomplish and how you’re going to do it, and set targets that you can measure your success against, like X leads per month and your engagement rate.
3) Thoroughly optimize your Facebook Page
Some potential customers will find you first via Facebook. They won’t have seen your website or your Google Business Profile. They won’t have anything to persuade them to stick around except for the information on your Facebook Page, so make it good.
Fill in every possible section with interesting and engaging copy, just as you would on your website. SEO still matters even with social media marketing. For that reason, and obviously, because people need to know where you are if you have a physical location, add your full contact details, including your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number). This gives you another citation online (a list of your NAP information on a site other than your own) which helps you establish yourself as a genuine business with your audience and Google.
Ensure you choose the right category for your business and the right Facebook template.
Always keep in mind what your audience would want to see. What will attract them to read your information and Like and follow your page? What will keep them coming back? What will convince them to sign up for your newsletter or visit your website? No matter what you do on Facebook, you have to keep that at the forefront of your mind.
You can set up a call-to-action button on your page, such as Book an Appointment or Get A Quote. Choose the most effective option for your business and the one that makes it easiest for your potential customers.
Use your logo as your profile pic, unless you are well-known in your field and already have a big personal reputation online. Then choose a quality graphic or image for your cover photo that reflects your business and also tells visitors more about you and what you do. You could change this out regularly to talk about new products or new sales, and you can also pin a post at the top of your page feed to show the latest news, discounts, products, and more.
When you first set up your page, the page address will look something like this: https://facebook.com/9801783996562235. Obviously, you can’t expect your customers to remember that, and it’s much easier for them and for your marketing if you change your page URL to a vanity link. Once you do that, your page address will be much easier to remember: https://facebook.com/mybusinessname.
Tips for using your Facebook page to engage and attract existing and new customers
Now you’re all set up and ready to go, it’s time to make sure your page is working to engage and attract the people you want as customers.
1) Create a content plan
Can’t you just wing it and post what you like? Well, you can, and it’ll probably work for a while to a certain extent, and then maybe you’ll find that you don’t know what to post one time and decide you’ll leave it until tomorrow. And tomorrow becomes a week, and before you know it, you haven’t posted for a month or more.
You can’t do that with Facebook or any other social media platform. The major key to success with these platforms is consistency. You have to post consistently and be there to engage with your followers and answer their questions. You can’t build an audience or a community, or even any kind of engagement without consistently posting and joining in on the conversations.
And yes, that is a lot of work, but with a content plan, you can plan well ahead, create your content in advance and schedule it, so you don’t have to be on guard over your Facebook page 24/7. You still have to be there some of the time to respond and engage with people, but it frees you up to do other things in your business if your content is already done, scheduled, and ready to go. The other advantage is that you’re never stuck for what to post next as it’s right there on your content calendar and that’s another great time saver.
Surefire Local’s all-in-one local marketing software allows you to plan and schedule your social media content without leaving our platform. And you can manage all the other major aspects of your marketing too, all in one place.
Create a plan that covers around 90 days initially. That gives you a good length of time to be able to plan and prepare ahead but also gives you the chance to change and adapt your content in the next quarter as you start to examine your statistics and see what people are actually responding to. You’ll also be able to see your most popular content types and most popular posts so that you can do more of what is working.
2) Be prepared to adapt and learn
Helmuth von Moltke was a Prussian military commander in the 19th century, and it was he that said, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” While, of course, your Facebook followers aren’t your enemies, no marketing plan ever survives real-life contact with your audience either.
You’ll begin to learn more about your audience and what they like and dislike over time, including content topics, content types, length of posts and videos, and more.
Use this knowledge to regularly rework and adapt your content plan so it always reflects what your audience wants. You’ll stay up-to-date and relevant and your audience will feel like you really understand them.
3) Be genuine and relatable
You can’t go on Facebook and post anything but “buy my stuff” posts. You will very quickly find you don’t have an audience.
A good rule of thumb is to post 20% sales and promo posts and the other 80% should be educational and entertaining posts.
You can’t be too “salesy” on Facebook. It just won’t work. Instead, it’s important to be yourself and to provide quality content that you know your customers will love.
4) Look at what else you can do on Facebook
If it doesn’t take up too much time, and it will have benefits for your business, you could start a Facebook group for your “raving fans.” Think carefully before you do this as it’s another added task, but it can be a great way to build a community and keep your biggest fans in the loop with news, special discounts, and other incentives that people on your page don’t get.
Try running Facebook ads if you have the budget. Facebook ads also take some time to learn, and you will have to split test them and keep your eye on which ads are working and which are not, but many businesses grow their income and their leads greatly with paid ads.
As a local business, you can try using Facebook Marketplace to sell your goods and services to a local audience. It’s a great way to reach people that you might not reach otherwise, and it’s free to create a listing, so it’s budget-friendly too.
5) Don’t be afraid to experiment
Facebook has a variety of different posts you can use, including Stories, video, Facebook Live, text posts, photo posts, link posts, and more.
Again, you’ve got to please your audience and give them what they want, but there’s no harm in trying out different types of posts and ways of using Facebook to see if you can improve your results.
6) Keep your mind on your goals and your eye on your stats
You’re not just on Facebook for fun. You set some marketing goals right at the beginning and you need to know that you’re hitting them and that you’re getting what you need from all this work.
Check your stats regularly. Facebook Insights is excellent and you can see a lot of information here, including which are your best-performing posts and content types, when are the best times to post, and more.
Use Surefire’s professional marketing software and you’ll also have access to a whole range of statistics and reports to tell you how well your Facebook marketing is doing and how it’s fitting in with and adding to your marketing plan.
Use your data to inform your next quarter’s marketing and content plan and to ensure you’re not just hitting those goals but knocking them out of the park.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo
We’ve talked a little about Surefire Local’s professional business intelligence marketing software already and as a small business owner, you know just how much time you can spend on all of your marketing activities, and not just Facebook. Rather than try to manage everything individually with separate pieces of software, why not let us help with a whole suite of marketing tools that can help you manage your social media *and* the rest of your marketing in one place.
With one single login, you can create content, jot down ideas, schedule blog posts, schedule email marketing campaigns, update your Google Business Profile and over 80 business directories at once, manage, request, and reply to your reviews, and so much more.
Time is always at a premium when running a small business. Every decision counts, every part of your budget matters, and every minute of the day could be taken up with marketing instead of doing what you were meant to do. But with our professional marketing platform, you can save time and money by managing everything efficiently in one place.
Optimize your lead generation, reduce your cost-per-lead, and generate more revenue for your business using Surefire Local’s all-in-one marketing platform.
Why not book a demo and see how we can help?