4 Ways to Ensure Facebook Inbound Marketing Works for Your Company With Facebook being a huge player in the online world, you better have your marketing strategy down pat. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.
By Nick Unsworth Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Marketing without a clear Facebook strategy is like driving a car with a newspaper on the windshield: You're not going to end up where you want to go. Facebook's the world's biggest social media network, with approximately 1.35 billion users. That means if you don't have a plan or an outcome in mind, you're going to lose money and overlook several audiences who could be key to your success.
In fact, marketers without a strategy often target too broadly on Facebook. You need to know more than just basic demographics. You need to drill down, going from broad all the way to narrow. This way, you can focus your campaign on one specific customer group. Beyond failure to target, some companies are too "salesy" too fast, fail to track what works in their campaigns and have poor ads or landing pages.
Here are four tips that will take your own Facebook marketing to the next level:
1. Focus on one funnel at a time.
Put your energy into one funnel that focuses on a specific segment in an ideal target market. This campaign should ask, "What's my target market's No. 1 problem?" Choose one product that solves the problem and sell it to your ideal campaign customer. From there, you can optimize the ads, emails and follow-ups.
For instance, McDonald's segments its audience outreach by demographics like age. Its advertising is designed to reach specific segments according to their needs -- ads featuring Ronald McDonald, for instance, are aimed at children alongside products meant for younger audiences. Breakfast ads, on the other hand, are geared toward busy adults. A brand wanting to use Facebook for this kind of advertising could target these segments by generation, work or education, to name a few.
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2. Start with the end product first.
Using a strong lead magnet, or anything that could be offered in exchange for a person's email address, should be the backbone of your strategy. Free content, such as webinars or video series, attracts new customers and helps you build the rapport you need in order to sell.
To create the most effective lead magnet, you need to start with the end product in mind. Determine what you're selling and the problem your product solves. Use the challenges and frustrations of your potential customers to create a lead magnet that fixes their problems. Then, you can work backward to determine the most appealing ad for customers.
3. Follow up.
The sales cycle on Facebook marketing and advertising isn't typically upfront. Most businesses make sales within 30, 60 and even 90 days. If you don't adequately follow up, you're not going to make money.
After potential customers access your lead magnet, follow up with a series of emails. The most effective way to collect email addresses is by utilizing landing pages or asking visitors to subscribe to a newsletter or email updates – the best choice is dependent upon your product or service.
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Keep following up; if they don't convert, send a survey asking why they chose not to make a purchase. Answer their objections with case studies or articles that explain why your product or service could provide value, or ask what you could help them with. Perhaps your product is able to address their problems, but you're positioning it incorrectly – and that's valuable information to gather during your follow-up process so you can close the current sale and capitalize on future sales opportunities.
4. Rise, repeat and optimize.
Once you've got one optimized, focused funnel, you can duplicate the same success on multiple campaigns. Make sure to track your results to ensure you know which ads, content and lead magnets are the most effective.
The clearest path to success on Facebook involves developing a sound strategy with a predefined endgame. Marketing on Facebook is like asking for a favor: Only after you've given something and built trust should you even consider asking.
Related: 4 Tips to Create and Groom a Viral Facebook Video Ad
