Facebook can help you to reach all of the people who matter most to your business

culled from:facebook.com
If you’re looking for a general overview of how to use Facebook to help your business grow, these fundamentals will set you up for success. You can also focus your activity on Facebook to meet specific business goals.

1. Set up your page

Create the hub for your business on Facebook

Your Facebook Page makes your business:

• Discoverable: When people search for you on Facebook, they’ll be able to find you.
• Connected: Have one-on-one conversations with your customers, who can like your Page, read your posts and share them with friends, and check in when they visit.
• Timely: Your Page can help you to reach large groups of people frequently, with messages tailored to their needs and interests.
• Insightful: Analytics on your Page will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and your marketing activities.

When you set up your Page, you can request a web address such as facebook.com/yourgreatcompany, which makes it easy to find. To maximise the impact, include this address on your business card, website and other marketing materials.

Remember: your Page is an extension of your business. It’s an easy way to share updates and more with the people who matter most. It’s ready to help you engage your customers on desktop and on mobile.

Create a Page now and follow the step-by-step instructions in the Help Centre.

Create Page

2. Identify your audience

Think about who you’d like to meet, and introduce yourself

Not only can you reach more people through Facebook, you can reach the specific people who are most likely to become your customers.

To help you connect, consider:

• What do your ideal customers have in common?
• How old are they and where do they live?
• How can your business help them?
• Would one group be more interested in specific messages, products or services? A sale or a timely offer?

To build your audience, encourage your current customers and supporters to like your Page. They’re the people who are most likely to see your posts in their News Feed. Also, explore the options under the Build Audience button:

• Invite your friends: Let the people in your life know about your Page so they can support you by liking it. This initial audience helps you to establish credibility and spread the word straight away.
• Share your Page – and make sure you like it yourself. Be a spokesperson for your business.
• Invite your businesses contacts: Upload a list to send people an email so they know about your new Page.

Remember: it’s not about the number of likes. It’s more important that you genuinely connect with the people you engage with on Facebook. If you do, they’ll help tell your story.

3. Create compelling content

Make your business come alive on Facebook

As you post updates, photos and more, think about what your customers find interesting and inspiring. How will you talk to them? What do you want to consistently communicate about your business?

Experiment with different kinds of posts. Does your audience love photos or prefer it when you share useful links? You’ll find out quickly. Then use Page Insights to see which posts are performing the best.

• Be authentic: Share what you’re genuinely excited about and your customers will be excited too.
• Be responsive: When people comment on your posts, show that your business is listening and that you care. If you need more time to answer a question, let them know that you’re looking into it.
• Be consistent: The more regularly you post, the greater an opportunity you have for connecting with people and building trust. Setting a schedule for your posts can also help to maximise your team’s time.
• Do what works: Replicate your success on posts that get more engagement.
• Make successful posts into successful promotions: When you notice that a post is getting a lot of engagement, promote it to reach even more people. When people like, comment on or share your posts, their friends are also eligible to see those posts in News Feed.

Remember: Your recipe for success is to create Page posts and adverts that are interesting and valuable to your customers – and to target your messages so that the right people see them.

4. Advertise

Reach more of the people who matter most to you

Once you’ve started connecting with your customers on Facebook, you’ll want to find other people who are likely to be interested in your product or service. You can use Facebook adverts to send the right message to the right people, just when they’re most open to discovering your business.

Create Advert

Creating Adverts

• You can create an advert directly from the admin panel of your Page to engage more people, or you can use the advert create tool.
• Once you’ve built a community around your Page, use the advert create tool to target your adverts to reach the friends of the people who already like you. It’s a way to naturally grow your customer base through word of mouth.
• Be specific about the audiences for different adverts. You can create sets of adverts to connect with different target audiences. People are more likely to respond to a message crafted just for them.
• To make sure that your adverts look great wherever they’re seen on Facebook, you can see our adverts guide for detailed specifications such as image dimensions.

Fine-tuned Targeting

• Add a private list of your current customers to Facebook using custom audiences and then use lookalike audiences in the Advert Create tool to find other people who are similar to them.
• When you create an advert using the advert create tool, use “interest targeting” to reach people who already like or have a connection to other things on Facebook that are similar to what you’re offering.
• When you use interest targeting in the advert create tool, you can use partner category targeting to help show your adverts to people using information that’s available outside Facebook. For example, people who purchase premium pet food as part of a supermarket loyalty programme may welcome news about other pet products.

Remember: you can maximise the return on your investment by creating adverts for specific audiences.

5. Measure and adjust

Find out what’s working well so you can maximise the impact of every post and advert

Facebook has a lot of different tools to help you measure how you’re doing.

• Visit Page Insights regularly and look for trends so you can develop more of the best-performing content.
• Use Page Insights to understand who responds to your messages. Make sure that you look at the gender, age and location of the people who are the most engaged with your business so you can continue to engage them through targeted adverts and promoted posts.
• When you create your adverts, try out different images and headlines to see what works. Facebook will automatically optimise your campaign so that more of your budget goes to the advert that’s performing the best.
• Ask how people heard about you – at the end of a call, in a survey or at the point of sale – and keep track of what they say. It will supplement the data Facebook’s tools provide.

Remember: marketing your business is all about helping you to achieve your goals.

Learn about how to achieve specific goals, such as increasing online sales or bringing more customers into your shop, in the “Business Goals” section.