Facebook Marketing: Tips for Success

Here's an introduction to Facebook marketing.

"People influence people. Nothing more than a trusted friend. A trusted referral influential people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising. "- Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook is no longer a foreign word for most people. But what exactly is Facebook and what opportunities does Facebook offer in terms of marketing?

First Facebook General

Facebook is a social network developed in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg. Initially, it was only accessible as an online platform for Harvard University students.

But just a year later, Facebook was also made accessible to non-students. Meanwhile, Facebook has become a social network, as we know it today.

This year Facebook has counted around 2 billion active users worldwide.

Of these, 30 million are active users from Germany, which corresponds to around one third of the total population in Germany.

Statista's graph below shows how the 2 billion active Facebook users break down by type of access. You can see that the number of mobile Facebook users has increased very much in recent years.

An active user is a user who uses Facebook at least once a month.

With this large number of active Facebook users, Facebook is the largest social network worldwide. It is a platform for users to share and share information, experiences and events, whether among friends or strangers.

Especially for companies, Facebook has become the most important social media platform worldwide. Facebook marketing therefore plays an important role in marketing.

Here you get the most important online marketing tips including Facebook marketing.

1. What exactly is Facebook marketing?

Facebook marketing has become an important tool of online marketing.
With Facebook marketing companies, organizations or private individuals have the opportunity to present themselves, their products or their services on Facebook attractive to users.

Significant is also the viral effect that can take place on Facebook. Good contributions, such as good product placement or products that are highlighted, are quickly disseminated by users.

Example how a viral effect can be generated.

For example, CookatTV is a Facebook page that posts daily video tutorials on delicious international dishes.

The detailed and focused presentation of the court greatly exploits and potentially manipulates the user's senses. This creates a sense of hunger in the viewer and motivates him to cook the dish himself or let it boil.

Sharing the video informs friends, who in turn inform their circle of friends. This creates a viral effect, and the company has thereby gained a rapid increase in customers.

As many users share personal information in Facebook, it enables companies to take targeted marketing action.

2. Goals of Facebook Marketing

Every strategy hides one or more goals. Here are a few goals that can be generated with good Facebook marketing:

To bring many users to their own page

The goal of a site is to gain new users as quickly and effectively as possible. Regular posts can cover a relatively broad mass of potential users.

All the more important it depends on the content of the post. The content and the right time are therefore important factors in attracting users and, ultimately, customers.

Increase the reach of the page

One page lives through their postings. Depending on the content, users can like and share these posts, which will then be visible in their timeline and eventually appear in the newsfeed of other users.

Quality plays a central role, so it is important to make sure that the user is offered a qualitative post.

Increase awareness of the company and improve its own image

The first impression counts. This also applies to companies that have been newly established or have existed for some time. A Facebook page must therefore be inviting to the user.

Aggressive or challenging posts and advertising are mostly negative aspects that put the user off. A good product placement and a recommendation from the user are decisive arguments to make the own company better known.

Increase customer acquisition and increase sales

The more users are informed about their own products and offers through targeted advertising or chronicle entries, the higher the likelihood that a customer recommends the product and ultimately buys the product.

This type of strategy comes from the field of e-commerce and is called 'Impression'. You can read more about this here.

Increase customer loyalty

Loyal customers are essential for a successful business. In order to be able to bind customers to the company as long-term as possible, they must be regularly and actively involved, such as through exclusive offers or vouchers.

3. Facebook and its possibilities

There are generally three different ways in which marketing can be run on Facebook.

Marketing with Facebook pages

Facebook offers the user a kind of profile page for a public person to create the product, company or service.

These are usually publicly available and can be leaked and subscribed at any time.

The site is free and unlike a normal private profile page has no limit to friends and users.

This form is generally the first clue for users with questions and problems. Prerequisite for a successful profile page is therefore its content, quality and the response time of the site operator.

These requirements also make the goals of Facebook Marketing possible. Through interesting content, you can win fans who interact on your Facebook page and continue to distribute posts to the Facebook community, which can then also become fans of the site. Because with a high number of fans, the reach of a post can be increased.

If a company decides to create a page on Facebook, then it should be noted that the corporate identity of the company is included in the design of the site. A Facebook page contains the important components such as a cover picture, profile photo, pin board, photos, videos and events.

Once the Facebook page has been created, content can be posted. It does not matter how many posts you post, but how good the content of the post is. The goal is to enthuse the user with the content of the post.

A first aid may be to ask yourself if you would like to read, like or even share the content. Because it is important to have good posts to generate a long reach on Facebook.

Posts can be generated in the form of plain text, images, videos, links, animated GIFs, 360-degree images / videos, or in the form of live streams.

In terms of content, posts should be interesting, varied and best relate to the problems, wishes or questions of the target group.

Marketing with Facebook Ads

You certainly know it when you're on Facebook: ads appear on the right or if you're watching the latest news.

Ads is a more specialized marketing style on Facebook and is mostly targeted to the individual. They are based on personal preferences, likes, comments and posts on your own or someone else's chronicle.

So, for example, if you have a strong interest in healthy eating, then chances are you'll get advertisements for it.

If you are not interested, you can easily hide them and Facebook will not show you similar ads in the future.

This form is effective and cuts individual advertising for each person, but can be very costly if you want to address a wide range of people.

Marketing with Facebook groups

Groups are similar to profile pages, but also offer additional features such as posting to the chronicle, where everyone has insight on it.

A group motivates its users mostly through surveys, discussions or even to an exchange of knowledge. Applied to your own product or company, valuable feedback can be generated without having to go straight to the individual user.

However, content needs to be controlled because comments and group discussions can escalate very quickly and instead of feedback, harsh criticism is exercised.

For example, companies can create a group for one of their products where members can talk about the product. So the company creates a group of people who talk about the company. The company also has the opportunity to learn more about its fans.

4. Facebook Ads

In the following article is again more exactly on the marketing strategy with Facebook Ads.

Instagram and Facebook have the greatest potential when it comes to online marketing. If you are not a model and you want to appeal to a broad audience, then Facebook is the right choice.

Just as with Google Advertisement, you should also know in Facebook advertising how the system works. This makes your ad more successful and you burn less coal.

As mentioned earlier, Facebook Ads is similar to Google Ads. Facebook also uses its own database. The database consists of the activities and usage habits of the users. This is how Facebook specifies the different consumer groups.

Types of Facebook Marketing

• Facebook site

Facebook pages are perhaps the most efficient way for online marketing. You can build your own empire. Here, Facebook helps you, because it is also his interest to promote the activities of your website.

• Standard Advertisement

Are simple ads that you can use to promote pages, events, and products. It is advisable to change the form of the ad in order to avoid advertising fatigue.

• Story Advertisement

Promotes the interactions on your Facebook page.

• Page Post Advertisement

You can regulate the contributions of your page with the help of Page Post ADs.

How does it all work?

1- Choose the destination from your campaign.

If you want to create an ad, the goal is the first step. Facebook shows you 9 different goals so you can choose the most appropriate target. So you can promote posts, highlight your page, increase the traffic of your Facebook page and much more.

2- Select your audience

Facebook also helps pinpoint your target audience: you can choose location, interest, language, gender and age group. In the end, it will tell you how many users you can reach with your ad.

3. Define budget

Facebook offers two types of budgets: Either choose a daily budget or choose a total amount over a selected period of time. In the detail settings you can choose between two types of billing: Click or Views.

4. Create an ad

Now you can create your ad. It should appeal to as many people as possible, so it is recommended to use images and other fonts. To avoid advertising fatigue, it is better if you think of several ads.

It's that easy to do Facebook marketing! In the following video, Luke Korns also does an experiment: What does he do with $ 500 on Facebook?

5. Tips on how to ensure your success

1. Develop a strategy

There is unlikely much potential in Facebook marketing. However, if you think that today almost everyone uses this social media platform, it becomes clear that you should not underestimate the opportunity to advertise your business.

Every business needs a strategy to achieve goals.

To reach your goal and audience, you need a marketing strategy so you do not waste time and money. You can read more about this in this e-book.

Many swear by a formula called POST Strategy.

POST answers the following questions:

People: Who do I want to reach with Facebook marketing?

Objectives: What do you want to achieve with your online marketing?

Strategy: Which way leads to measurable success?

Technology: What options do you have to measure your advertising and increase influence?

So answer these questions before you start marketing in social media!

2. Set a goal and find your target audience

First of all, you should always define your goals clearly: Facebook will help you. It gives you predefined goals to make your decision easier. Do you sell T-shirts online? Your goal is clear now, you want to increase your sales! Are you an influencer? Create awareness with Facebook Marketing! All these goals can be realized with Facebook Marketing. Follow this link and find out what's right for your business!

Defining the audience seems equally important. With the help of Facebook Ads, you can promote your posts and select a target audience for your posts or ad. For this you have to enter the desired gender, age, place of residence and / or interest.

Many are afraid of defining a narrow target group. This fear is unfounded. The better your audience is limited, the better you reach the people who are interested in your product.

Actually, it is clear what you should do if you want to promote something. Once you post something on your page, Facebook gives you the ability to customize your ad, as shown in the image below:

3. Timing, timing, timing

Not only in photography, good timing is important. It does not matter when you publish your posts.

First, find out when your followers are most active. It also helps you Facebook. Under Statistics you will find the tab of the post interactions.

In our example it is clear that most people visit the Facebook page between 7pm and 9pm, or most of them are available through Facebook:

Between 23:00 and 03:00 it makes no sense to share, because not only the accessibility, but also the contribution activity is much lower. It would be much better to post something at 10 o'clock. This is the way to reach most users throughout the day.

To prove this, we did an experiment. On the Facebook page of Exit Lane, we shared the same video twice. First at 11 o'clock and then in the evening shortly after 21:00.

Although most are active around 9pm, we lost all viewers who were active during the day.

Our video, which we shared at 21:00, reached 17 people. On the contrary, the other collected 127 people.

So the difference is huge. Here you can also check the Facebook page of Exit Lane yourself.

Another tip that can help you with your Facebook marketing: No matter how good your content is, your contribution will not be taken into account if you miss the timing.

6. Success stories for Facebook marketing

As a last point, let's look at some success stories on Facebook.

Lidl

Lidl's marketing team won this year's "Social Media Team of the Year" category. The prize is completely deserved, because Lidl has the largest fan base on Facebook in the food retail sector.

By the number of weekly about 10 posts, they can now reach 2 million people.

How does the Lidl?

They use interactive methods to appeal to Facebook users: pictures that ask a question irritate people's activity.

Short, funny posts draw attention to Lidl's products. Even memes are created on the Facebook page of Lidl. Finally, various raffles also help Lidl's online marketing to the extreme.

In the face of the competitor

Lidl tries to move the competition to the site with creative and funny videos. For example, several commercials from EDEKA have been traded in that video. This video was viewed 4.7 million times and achieved a response rate of just under 53 000 on Facebook.

Student problems

The site has about 6 million followers on Facebook.

The site produces memes about student life. What makes them successful is efficient marketing. They created several Facebook groups where the community can meet.

The funny pictures are shared, reactions are generated by "tag your mate" actions. So the page spreads exponentially.