So you’ve created a Facebook Page for your business, and now what? You might be thinking, how does this translate into getting more sales on my website? What do I do with this page? How can I get more “likes” and more engagement with my “fans”?
Facebook offers some great tools to help you get more out of your page. By just putting a fraction of your marketing budget towards the following actions, you should see some exciting results. Let’s take a quick look.
1. Boost Your Posts
When you post something on your page, not all your Facebook Page fans are going to see it every time. You can see this in the notification you get under the post, with regards to how many people were reached. You need to “boost” your post to ensure that it reaches all your fans. The good news is that this also exposes your post to the friends of your fans, who are likely to become your new fans, given that friends often have many shared interests.
So, how to Boost your Facebook Page Posts?
- Every time you post an update on your Facebook Page, you’ll see the option ‘Boost Post’ under the post.
- Clicking this button will allow you to choose the amount of money and the number of days you want to boost your post for.
- The number of people who will see your boosted post will depend upon your chosen budget. The approximate number of viewers is provided to you when you select the budget.
2. Promote Your Page
Given the very social and casual atmosphere of Facebook, many brands (depending upon the products they sell) try to first attract their target audience to their Facebook Page to give them a taste of the culture their brand promotes. Instead of directly trying to sell products while people are busy socializing, brands often attempt to create desirability of the brand and products before attempting to get them to go to their website to make a purchase.
So, how do you get your target audience to your Facebook Page? By Using ‘Promote Page’ option! Here’s how:
- At the top right corner of your Page, you will see a drop down menu under Build Audience. One of the options is “Promote Page”.
- When you click on “Promote Page”, a dialogue box opens which allows you to choose the defining characteristics of your target audience like: Target country, Interests, Age, Gender, etc.
- Choose these options based on the profile of your target audience as well as the reach of your brand. For example: If you sell formal women’s clothing in India, you will choose “India” as target country, gender as “women”, age as “22+” and interests such as “fashion”, “clothing”, “formal wear”, etc.
3. Advertise on Facebook
Facebook also offers an advertising platform called “Ads Manager”. This feature provides you with far more detailed targeting options.
Here’s how to use Facebook’s Ads Manager:
- At the top right corner of your Page, you will see a drop down menu under “Build Audience”. One of the options is “Use Ads Manager”.
- Start a new ad campaign by clicking on “Create Ad”.
- You will get a variety of campaign type options to choose from, eg: Page Likes, Clicks to Website, Website Conversion, etc. Make your choices based on the results you wish your campaign to produce. If this is your first Facebook ad campaign and you don’t have too many “likes” on your page yet, we recommend starting off with “Page Likes” option. This will help attract more people to your brand and help make your Page more vibrant and dynamic.
- After this, you will get the opportunity to add photos, add a tag line to the image as well as write an ad text.
- Once you have created your ad, you will get detailed targeting options including country, age, education, preference, etc. of your target audience. Make your choices based on the kind of people you think are most likely to be interested in buying your products. We recommend you limit your geographic focus to India, so that you can get more with your budget.
- Finally, choose the budget as well as the duration of your ad campaign.
- Then click “Submit” and your campaign will start!
- To follow the performance of your campaign once it starts, go to the Ads Manager and click on the campaign name.
So there! Now you know all the techniques required to promote your brand on Facebook! So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and try these techniques to attract your target audience to your brand and watch your sales grow!
In an upcoming post, we will offer tips on what kind of content to post on your Facebook Page and how to keep your audience engaged. Be sure to look out for that blog post coming soon!
UPDATE 8/8/2014: Our post on creating the right kind of content for your Facebook Page is now up, read it here!
