And how you can use it to get more leads and sales
As a small business owner, you may be wondering if Facebook still works for small businesses, especially those that don’t have massive advertising budgets.
The answer is yes, and in this blog, we share 8 reasons why Facebook is a force to be reckoned when it comes to growing an audience, creating brand awareness and generating new leads for your business.
Our experience with Facebook marketing
As a Digital Marketing Agency, we consistently achieve positive ROI (Return on Investment) for our clients using Facebook marketing. We have clients from all sorts of industries such as coaching, real estate, online training, e-commerce and gyms, to name a few.
And guess what?
Facebook works for all of them.
Facebook is increasingly a pay-to-play platform, which is why we offer our marketing expertise to businesses who are serious about using online marketing to grow their profits.
To find out if your business could benefit from our services, click here.
But even for those who aren’t quite there yet in terms of marketing objectives, there are plenty of ways to build your network, audience and business utilizing the free options on Facebook.
8 Benefits of Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses
Take a look at these eight reasons why you should be investing time, energy and money into Facebook marketing.
1. It’s FREE and easy to use
Facebook has over 2 Billion active users. That means your ideal customer is online and out there, right now, waiting for the right offer to appear on their phones.
It goes to show that your viewers don’t have to be strapped in front of their computer to be able to log into their Facebook account. Instead, they can use their smartphone check out what’s new and happening no matter where they are in the world.
Since so many people are using the platform to communicate with each other, what better way than to use it to promote your business? After all, they are your potential customers.
2. Relatively cheap
Did we mention that this is an excellent option if you’re tight on cash?
Unlike expensive traditional marketing, it’s really inexpensive to get started with Facebook ads. The platform has advanced to such an extent that they make it easy to set up image, video, carousel and slideshow ads.
They also have numerous tutorials showing you how to optimize your ads.
3. Informative Data
Another reason why Facebook marketing for small businesses is a great option is all the data they give you. You’ll get stats on how much it cost to get a click on your ad, how many conversions you got (if that’s your ad objective) or how many people viewed your post, to name a few.
You can use this information to assess which ad campaigns brought you the best leads, or the most sales over time. You can experiment with different creative like images or headlines to test which one gets the best results.
The key is not to get sucked into vanity metrics, but to use data and statistics to further optimize your marketing efforts.
4. Repeated sales and new sales
When you use Facebook for marketing, you can potentially increase your sales, and use retargeting ads to get repeat sales on products and services. Since so many folks are using the network, it’s clear that they will go back and buy or use the service again. This is especially true after they have familiarised themselves with your brand and trust your business.
While repeated sales are possible because sometimes customers are loyal to the brands that they love, new sales are entirely within the realm of possibility, provided you have a sold marketing campaign planned.
Use Facebook’s free features to your advantage.
4. Build your audience
People are spending more time on social media than ever before, which gives you the perfect opportunity to engage with them
You might have heard this word “engage” before, but what does it mean in marketing terms?
Simply put, it’s the effort you put in to communicate with other people online.
This is done in several ways:
- reacting to, commenting on and sharing other people’s content (when it aligns with your message)
- replying to comments on your ads and/or posts (even if you’re just giving them a like)
- answering questions posed during Facebook Lives
Even though we run businesses, people want to get a sense of real connection while they are online, so take the time to interact with people and build that know, like and trust factor from a place of authenticity.
6. Get more website traffic
Unlike Instagram, Facebook allows you to include clickable links in your post captions. This means you can direct traffic to your website – for free!
It would be even smarter to use Facebook to direct traffic to your lead magnet and in that way, start growing your email list.
7. Grow your Group
Facebook groups are the place where it’s all happening! There are no ads (yet) and it’s a place to build a rock-solid foundation of loyal fans. We wrote a blog on how to set up your Facebook group, check it out here.
8. Sell your online course
Are you considering selling your information and training in the form of an online course? It’s a great way to make some extra money!
There are plenty of fancy course-hosting software solutions out there, but they are pretty much all priced in dollars which means for us South Africans, they cost an absolute fortune.
Plus, you have to be a technical ninja to set them up properly.
If the word “integrations” gives you the chills, it’s because you know how challenging it can be to set up new software for your business.
And online course creation can get pretty complicated, despite what the software sales pages might tell you.
Want to know how to set up your course online for paying customers quickly and for free?
We’ve done it using JUST Facebook and we can show you how.
For more information, click here.
The takeaway on Facebook marketing for small businesses
Without a doubt, Facebook is still the main player in the world of social media marketing. The platform boasts an impressive suite of online tools to help you grow your fan base, reach your customers via online Live videos or Premiers, get more leads and ultimately, make more sales.
We pride ourselves on sharing information that we personally know to be true, which is why we can confirm that we use Facebook to successfully generate business for our clients and ourselves.
So, we encourage you to consider diving into Facebook marketing for your business, if you haven’t done so yet.
