There are so many ways to promote your business on Facebook and get optimum result through the advertisement. Meanwhile, in case you still find it difficult to know where to start then here are six easy steps to make Facebook work for you.

1. Create a Business Page

If you want to have a solid and professional Facebook presence, you need to create a separate page for your business. A page is like a regular profile, but it’s for brands and business. Also, instead of asking to “friend” someone, users must “like” a page to see its posts.

When you set up your Facebook page, you will notice there are a lot of options to customize it. You should add as much information about your business as possible, including your address, contact information, website, business hours, products, etc. It’s important to also add profile and cover photos that reflect what your business does to enable people notice your page faster.

2. Post Regularly

To use Facebook to promote your business, you need to do more than set up a Facebook page, you need to use it and post quality contents that interests your audience as frequently as you can to show off your business and enable you engage your audience.

3. Promote your Page

What good is sharing and creating great content if no one sees it? Fortunately, there are ways to build a following on Facebook. When you first create your page, send invites through Facebook to your current customers.

Traditional marketing techniques can also help you grow your audience. You should put a link to your Facebook page in your email signature and on your business cards. It’s also good practice to include all of your social profiles on your website and any marketing materials you produce.

Put a special coupon or promotion on your Facebook page, and tell customers to like your page to get the deal. If you create a simple and memorable Facebook URL, it’s easier to promote it.

4. Engage your Followers

Facebook’s new algorithm favors posts and pages that create engagement. Before posting anything on Facebook, you should ask yourself if it will create a conversation. It’s also important to remember that Facebook is a social media platform, so you should be social.

“Businesses should interact with followers by responding to customer comments, questions and concerns,” Campbell told Business News Daily. “Use your Facebook page for what it’s meant to be: a social site. Get to know your customers’ needs by hosting polls and responding to reviews.”

The key to engagement is posting quality content. For best results, try to be friendly and conversational. Keep updates timely and respond to comments and private messages.

5. Leverage Friends of Fans

People are most likely to try something if their friends already use it and since when customers interact with your page, their friends will see the activity in their news-feeds. You can also foster more interactions using polls and asking questions followers want to answer.

Encourage customers to check in to your business on Facebook when they visit by offering a small discount for anyone who does. Checking allows users to notify their friends where they are. You can also create special events and limited-time promotions and invite your followers, who can invite their friends in turn.

6. Try Facebook Ads

If you are having problems reaching users organically, try Facebook ads. Promoted Facebook posts look like regular posts but are highly targeted and reach more people.

Facebook’s tools are very effective and make it easy to target a specific audience. You can target people who like your page or by location, age, gender and interests. Because Facebook collects user data, it can target your advertisement to those who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

The platform also features an analytics tool to helps you understand which ads drive interest and sales. Now how do you make those ads work for you? It’s not just about spending money and running Facebook ads for your business, am certain that you will also want to see your return on investment through the advertisements you placed… Right?

How to Make Your FaceBook Ads Work for You

Now this is exactly how you can get the most out of your advertisement to understand what works best for you below:

First, the thing is that every audience is different and so are their interests which is why you see some group of people coming together to form “FaceBook Groups” with certain names and interests attached to it. However, you need to do some experimenting to learn more and understand your target audience and what works best for them.

Now going back to how you can make your facebook ads work for you, you need to follow the following guidelines below:

A. Get To Know Your FaceBook Target Audience

You can remove some of the guesswork about what to post with these three tips:

Do Facebook polls and look at Facebook Page Insights. Insights are free for every business page. It also shows how many people engaged with your page and how many it reached.
Always respond to customers. Get to know your followers by doing polls and responding to their reviews of your product. Don’t just passively watch them, also ask them questions to learn their habits.
Watch your competitors to see what kind of posts your audience engages with most.

Tips for Building An Audience On Facebook

Once you’ve built an initial target audience and learned their habits, you can leverage this even further. Some ways you can do this include:

Once you create a Facebook business page, you will get a random URL for your page. But instead of using this random URL, you can have a username or vanity URL that is more memorable. Having a custom Facebook URL for your page will make it easier for users to remember your Facebook page. It will also enhance the search engine results for your business.
Put a special promotion on your page and tell people to “like” it to get the deal.
Leverage the friends of your fans. You can do this by generating more interactions on your page. This is important because friends of your followers will see your follower’s interactions with your page in their news-feeds.
Humanize your business by displaying its vulnerability. Write about your employees for behind the scenes posts. These types of posts are great for driving engagement. Also be sure to tag your employees and encourage them to share the post.
Extend your professional network to increase the visibility of your page. You can do this by liking/interacting with other businesses/influencers in your niche. Also try cross promotional marketing: you link to them and they link to you.
Host an event (create the event on Facebook). Make it an exciting event that your fans would want to spread the word about and bring their own friends to. A potential event could be a new product release, informational event, or something else fun.

B. Engage With Your FaceBook Audience

Not only will engagement help you expand your audience further, but it will also help make your Facebook business page more searchable both within and outside of Facebook.

Similarly, private content shared by family and friends ranks higher in news-feeds than public content shared by businesses and media organizations. To overcome this algorithm weakness for businesses, it’s important to generate more interactions.

Ideas for Generating Engagement

So how to advertise your business on Facebook and generate engagement at the same time? Easy. Try the following tips for creating content that drives engagement:

Creating polls is a good way to generate interactions.
Share quality content and behind the scenes information on your employees, products, and services.
Ask your followers questions that they want to answer.
Share real people’s stories.
Post relevant/timely content to connect with your audience. For example: holiday/seasonal info, news/events, and industry events.
Promote your products and services. By doing this you’ll be posting regularly and keeping your audience in the know, which will attract more customers to your business.
Use the same conversation starting techniques as your largest competitors.
Do a name drawing for products/services/prizes.
Interview important people in your niche and post a video of it.
Mix in a little controversy. This is a good way to create conversation, so long as you don’t dive into politics and religion. Silly controversies can surprisingly generate massive discussions. But you should conduct research or source credible research to back up what you say. By doing your due diligence you can potentially reach a broader audience.
Post regularly, minimum once a day.
Thank customers for their great reviews – tag them in your pictures or screenshots of their review.

Important Note About Engagement

Engagement is the key to ranking higher on Facebook and expanding your audience. But for sales, it’s not always a direct correlation. This means that getting clicks, shares and likes doesn’t necessarily imply that your ad is working! There are other factors too.

There are multiple components to getting sales: your ad, your landing page, and your target audience. If one of these is wrong, you’ll be limiting your advertising potential.

The main takeaway here should be: don’t expect sales to come in automatically along with clicks. You might lose a lot of money thinking that way. To easily figure out which ads are profitable, you must use conversion tracking.

C. Boosted Posts

This type of post will cost a little money, but it can pay you back in dividends after getting new customers. When learning how to advertise your business on Facebook, boosted posts are a good place to start.

The main benefit of boosted posts is their ability to drive more engagement, which is critical for getting your Facebook marketing efforts off the ground.

Boosted posts are shown to the people in your target audience who are most likely to respond to your posts. The last part is the key. Boosted posts are one of the best advertising options that Facebook offers.

Now let’s try to answer this: Are Boosted Posts Right For Me?

While boosting your post is a simple way to get your name in front of your target audience, you don’t need to boost every single post. However, boosting your most effective posts is a good idea thou sometimes there are better options, especially for local businesses.

If you’re just trying to get the word out there to your local city or other small sized area, a Local Business Promotion Ad can work better. This is because boosted posts will only show up for the people in your target audience who are most likely to engage and not
everybody in your target audience.

A boosted post takes about 2 minutes to do, and the main purpose of it is to remind your audience that you’re there. It’s also a good way to highlight a special promotion. After all, people who are more willing to engage are also likely more willing to buy or convert! So whenever you are ready, you can click the blue “boost post” button to get started!

How To Boost Your Post for Better Results

Many of the options during the boosting process are self explanatory. However, some of the options should be explained further so you’ll know how to advertise your business on Facebook more effectively.

1. Choosing your objective: the options for “objective” are based on what kind of media is contained in your post. There are different options and objectives for image posts, video posts, and posts that link to your website. To see your options, click “change.”
Why does your objective matter? Facebook will optimize the results of the ad for your chosen objective. So whatever objective you choose, Facebook will show the ad to the people who are most likely to fulfill that objective.

2. Call To Action Button: The wording of this button isn’t totally clear for everyone when they boost their first post. Basically, the call to action button is a button that, when clicked by someone, will execute that specific action. For example, if you have a “donate” call to action button, when someone clicks that button they’ll be prompted to make a donation.

3. Budget: don’t be confused about this number if you aren’t sure then start small. There’s a reason Facebook allows you to boost your posts for as little as $3 per day. You can always boost the same post again in the future if you want more people to see it!

4. Audience Network: You have the option to run your ad on Facebook’s audience network. This is a network of external websites that Facebook has partnered with. You can uncheck this if you want.

Tips For Creating Your Boosted Post

Use digital storytelling. To tell a better story, be sure to vary your posts a bit. Single pictures work well, but instead of using a single picture for every boosted post, try using a video, picture carousel, or a slideshow instead.
Combine a special offer with your boosted post.
Use their local city name in the post to appeal to local customers and attract their attention in their news-feeds.
Use an attractive image in your post that stands out without being too flashy.
Use proper branding if appropriate (store, logo, staff, etc.).

D. Local Business Promotion Ad

As we mentioned earlier, this type of ad is often a better alternative to boosted posts for local businesses. This type of ad is for reaching as many people in your target audience as possible – even the people who don’t typically respond to posts.

You have two options for setting up the ad:

Directly from your page
From your Ads Manager

There are different pros and cons depending on how you choose to set it up.

From your page benefits: you can choose from many different call-to-action buttons. These buttons are designed to drive more sales and inquiries.

The downside: the ad creative can only contain 1 image.

To create the ad, click “promote” in the left sidebar.

Or click “advertise your business” in page post options. Then choose “promote your business locally.”

Ads Manager Benefits: you can choose from the full range of media options.

E. Different Types of Facebook Ads

The beauty of Facebook ads is that they look just like regular posts. The only difference is that ads are targeted and can reach more people. But how should you target your ads? There are a couple different options.

Targeting only those who have “liked” your page.
Targeting people by location, age, gender and interests.

Facebook also has its own analytics tool that comes in very handy. So without any further ado, here’s a list of different Facebook ads and what they do. We’ve organized them into sections of where the ad is allowed to appear on Facebook.

News-feeds And Sidebars For Desktop And Mobile Users

Clicks to website: lets you link to specific pages on your site.
Website conversions: ads directing visitors to specific pages with the goal of converting them on those pages. Before creating this ad, be sure to add a conversion-tracking pixel to your site. You can create the pixels in the Facebook Ads Manager
Page Post Engagement: lets you increase engagements (likes, shares, comments) on your Facebook page posts. These can be video, photo, or text ads.
Page Likes: these ads let you target those who will most likely be fans of your business and encourages them to like/support your page.
Offer Claims: drives people to your store using a special offer.

News-feeds Of Mobile Users:

App Installs: increase the number of people using your mobile app.
App Engagement: encourages people to use your mobile app more often.

Right Sidebar For Desktop Users

Event Responses: get more exposure for your event and get responses from those who you invited already.

Other

Video Views: these ads drive views to your videos. They are optimized by Facebook to only show to the people who are most likely to view videos across Facebook, on all devices.
Premium Ads: these ads guarantee premium placement at the top of the news feed or right sidebar for targeted users, or a large ad placed at the logout page. These are typically meant for larger businesses with higher ad budgets.

Ad Details

Depending on the type of ad and its placement, certain details like image size, image aspect ratio, ad text and video aspect ratio will vary. Also depending on the ad, you can link it to a Facebook page you own, or to something other than a Facebook page. Do note that advertisements not linking to a Facebook page can only go in the right sidebar for desktop users.

F. How To Design Your Ads

And now we’ve come to the meat of how to advertise your business on Facebook and actually see results. Now that you have a better idea of how advertising on Facebook works, you’re ready to start putting the right ideas into action now! But just what are those right ideas? That’s what we’re going to talk about in this section.

The ingredients for this type of post are:

A compelling offer. The key is in the offer.
Your ad should seem like a favor. You’re doing your target audience a favor, not the other way around.
If they buy your product, then it’s their idea, not yours.

You also start to think outside the box. Go beyond the typical standard discount type deals. Make people feel a certain way when they’re
contemplating buying your product. For example, you could donate a certain percentage of the sale to a charity that your target audience cares about.

Maybe your target audience loves horses. If that’s the case, then you could mention that a percentage of the sale will go towards a fundraiser for stopping horse cruelty in NYC.

Oftentimes people will pay a little more if you make a compelling offer and provide them with something that they care about. This can often work better than flat discounts for generating more sales too.

Finally, do some reading up on human psychology too. When it’s all said and done, marketing is really just human psychology in action.

G. Test Until You Succeed

Build Your Ad, Don’t “Create”

How to advertise your business on Facebook and actually see results? You test, test, and test different things over and over again until you land on what works!

A good ad has a good foundation built on solid facts about your target audience. Solid facts are generated through testing what works and what doesn’t. Always remember to test these elements:

Image
Headline
Text
Call to action
Value proposition/main idea of your ad

You can also test these different targeting elements to pinpoint the best audience for your products.

Age
Country
Education Level
Gender
Interests
Purchase Behaviors
Relationship Status

Other elements that you can test are:

Ad location (news-feed, sidebar)
Ad type
Your landing page

H. Consider the Long Term Value (LTV) of your Customers

Before you draw any conclusions from your testing, you must consider the LTV of your customers. The LTV of your customer is an important metric to consider.

Basically the gist of LTV is that it’s fine if you spend $100 and only make $60 on the first sale so long as the LTV of the customer is greater
than $100. If you don’t consider the LTV of your campaigns then you won’t fully benefit from Facebook advertising.

I. Set Goals

Without goals, you’ll be a ship without sales (get it?) on the vast blue ocean that’s Facebook. A lot could be written about this subject, but for the purpose of how to advertise your business on Facebook, it’s sufficient to start with the following goals:

Decide how many products you want to sell per year.
Break this number down by month.
Break it down further by daily sales.

Now you’ll be able to analyze your Facebook ad campaigns on a yearly/monthly/daily basis.

FaceBook: How to Advertise your Business on FaceBook for Better Results