Facebook is the behemoth of social networks. For businesses, it presents a unique chance to directly reach out to your audience – whether you’re a sole trader, SME or international corporation.
However, Facebook marketing is far from easy. In fact, it takes a great deal of creative thinking and effort to make your campaign a success. Is your business holding its own on Facebook?
What is success?
Before you even set up your Facebook business page, you’ll need to determine your key indicators of success. Are you looking for more engagement with your clients? Do you want to hear their opinion about new products or services? Are you looking to promote special offers and sales campaigns, or do you want to drive traffic to your company blog?
By establishing your reasons for using Facebook in the first place, you’ll be in a position to form a clear strategy – using great content, paid-for advertising or exclusive offers to achieve your goals.
The challenges of Facebook marketing
If you’ve set up a Facebook page and have achieved very little in doing so, you’re not alone. Facebook presents a great deal of marketing challenges for businesses, which can stand in the way of genuine success. If your Facebook page is failing to help you achieve your marketing goals, here’s what could be standing in your way:
- Facebook’s monetisation. Business pages must now spend money to extend their social reach – including advertising and promoting posts. If you don’t have a small budget, your influence may be limited.
- Your industry. Not every business is suited to Facebook – as a social space, it can be incredibly vain, and people only tend to like a page if they are happy for this information to be public. If you sell acne treatment, it’s unlikely that Facebook users will want to show their allegiance to your product.
- Your approach to content. Are you posting irrelevant information, or constantly blowing your own trumpet? If you’re neglecting the human side of Facebook, think again. Instead, offer genuine value to your potential clients through interesting content, special offers and relevant information; all with a friendly, personable tone.
Is your business holding its own?
By monitoring your Facebook page closely, you’ll be able to determine the success of your campaign. Look at key statistics in relation to your goals – if you want to extend your customer base, how many likes is your page gaining each month? If you want the opinions of your customers, how many comments are your posts gaining? If you want to promote special discounts, how many offer codes are being redeemed? If you’re not reaching your goals, it’s time to reassess your approach.
