Creating a Facebook Marketing Strategy

Facebook alone has more than 1 billion registered users which is the reason why many companies are developing their own Facebook marketing strategy to reach their potential clients. What this means for your marketing efforts is that there is a valuable tool you can and should use in order to attract customers and increase conversions. The beauty of doing marketing in Facebook is that they make it very easy for you. The paid advertisements they offer can be aimed directly at your target market which is why most companies find Facebook marketing to be one of the most convenient in existence. Non-paid Facebook marketing strategies have become less and less effective as this giant social network has put many limitations to them including the amount of people they can reach as well as their visibility. Therefore, I will be talking here exclusively about a paid marketing strategy on Facebook.

Creating a Facebook Marketing Strategy

The strategy consists of four subsequent steps that when followed correctly will bear optimal results. 1. Segmenting the Market The concept of market segmentation appeared on the 1960s and revolutionized the way marketing was done. While before that time products were inefficiently marketed to the whole population, after the concept of segmentation was introduced, companies realized that they could achieve more sales using less resources. In this step, your company has to define exactly the profile of its most probable customer. To do this, you have to ask yourself following questions with regards to your current customers:

• What age range are they in?
• In what place or places are they geographically located?
• What is their marital status?
• What is their education level?
• In what income level are they in?

Basically what you want to come up with is a general and overall profile of the customer that is most likely to buy from you to aim your strategy specifically at people with those same characteristics. 2. Setting Goals What is it that you want to achieve with this strategy? Do you plan to generate leads? Increase your potential customers e-mail database? Increase sales? Create brand awareness? Create loyal customers? Be seen as the authority in your field? This is a crucial step that will define your later determine the actions you will be taking as well as the type of advertising that you will be showing on Facebook. 3. Creating your Facebook Ad Your ad should be in line with the goal or goals you set in the second stage of the marketing strategy. For instance, if you want to get leads, you may wish to give small but nevertheless valuable freebies such as E-books to people who subscribe to your mailing list. In general, the perfect Facebook ad has to have the following:

• A catchy title
• A luring picture
• Good grammar
• A call to action

4. Budget Management and Schedule Setting While Facebook wants you to spend the most amount of money possible, you should always set up a maximum bid, meaning a maximum amount you are willing to spend each day in their paid ads so as to not get unpleasant surprises such as having to pay 3 or more times the amount you had initially planned to pay. In regards to the time and dates that your ads will be showed to your target audience, you have to test with different hours to determine in what timeframes you will be getting more attention and clicks. Also check out the difference in results when posting on weekdays or weekends. 5. Monitor Results While you can try to do it manually, there are apps that track your Facebook results. The important thing is the ROI or return on investment which will be basically telling you how much money you did as compared with the money you invested in your Facebook ad strategy. With this in hand, you can dismiss those ads and strategies that give you the poorest results and stick with the ones that actually work. Example of a Facebook Marketing Strategy Babies 1 2 3 is a local company that sells baby clothing in Houston. The company wants to use Facebook to increase its sales. Here are the following steps that it has to follow: 1. Segmenting the Market After making research, the company determines that the profile of its regular customer is the following:

• Women
• Ages between 25 and 35
• Married
• Household income +$45,000
• Located in the North of Houston

With this information, when posting paid ads on Facebook, Babies 1 2 3 will select the people with exactly these characteristics so its ad will only reach them and avoid wasting resources targeting people who are not likely to buy from them. 2. Setting Goals Babies 1 2 3 has seen a decline in sales recently so it wants to increase them in 5% in the following 6 months which will be the goal of this strategy. 3. Creating the Facebook Ad The ad will have a catchy title. The image they will be using will be bought from a reputable photography company so it is destined to make an impact on the viewer. Since the goal is to increase sales, it will offer an attractive discount of 50% for the second item that the customer buys from the store. At the bottom of the ad, it will be stated in an affable manner that the person has to click the ad to make use of the discount. 4. Budget Management and Schedule Setting Babies 1 2 3 plans to spend $10 a day at first to test its campaign which will be the maximum bid they are willing to pay. Additionally, on the first week they will put the option of posting ads only of weekends to see how it goes, which will be changed as time goes by to test the results of other time frames. 5. Monitor Results Babies 1 2 3 makes use of an app that tracks their strategy’s ROI. They see that their ROI is positive and higher than expected so they plan to continue with their current strategy and increase their spending in this form of advertising. Conclusion There have been many cases in which a small investment in Facebook advertising has rendered spectacular results. In general, companies seem to like promoting their company and products in Facebook for its simplicity and the results they can achieve. Nevertheless, there must be a sound Facebook marketing strategy behind it using each and every one of the above mentioned steps to be able to achieve the goals your company wants to accomplish.