Social Media Dominance
The wisdom of digital marketing is realizing that there will always be a new platform in a year or two from which to expand your business and to jump at the opportunity to create a presence there. Less than 20 years ago, no one had heard of Facebook; today, it is one of the dominant communication tools on the internet.
As time goes on, social media has grown to mean more than simply connecting with old acquaintances from wherever you are in the world. It is a place where like-minded people can congregate, where individuals can debate and support one another, and where ideas flourish. The zeitgeist is no longer what you hear around the water cooler or on the radio — it is simply what’s “trending.”
Has your current Utah marketing firm suggested advertising in these spaces yet? Perhaps you’ve already seen that it’s a good idea but you aren’t sure how it’s done. You’ve come to the right place.
Digital Marketing and Facebook
By far, the largest platform on which to advertise is Facebook. There are ostensibly two main ways to get the word out about your business on that platform but there are still others that utilize its influence outside of the website. You can rest assured that with Gravitate One, an experienced team of social media experts will use every tool available to ensure that your voice rings out loud and clear to all your potential customers.
Step One: Paid Ads
This is the big one. Paid advertising on Facebook generates billions of impressions a year, each one potentially converting to a sale. In order to use Facebook Ads (the platform’s advertising portal), you must first register your company with Facebook Business Manager. This has multiple benefits:
- You can generate ads for one business or multiple.
- You can oversee which users have access to your business, such as your own employees or your digital marketing team.
- You have full access to Facebook’s analytics for your Page.
- You can set up and operate Pixels for your website and various landing pages.
Once you have a formal Business account, the Ads Manager becomes available to you.
Setting Up a Paid Ad
Thanks to the sheer volume of advertising that goes on on Facebook, they have created a relatively easy process for creating and launching your own ads. After you’ve chosen a name for your current campaign, you’ll be asked which purpose your ad will be fulfilling for your company. Perhaps you just want to drum up Likes for your Facebook page so that you can more easily grow your audience. Or maybe you simply want to corral as many people as possible to your landing page, wherein you have a digital storefront.
There are numerous ways to classify your ad, each subtly influencing how it will roll out across the platform and who will see it.
Generating Your Audience
The proper use of Facebook’s targeting options is the heart and soul of every successful ad; who sees it and how often will make all the difference. As such, here are some tips to keep in mind when trying to determine who your ad is meant to target.
Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s Audience Insights page.
We all know that the analysts at Facebook gather all sorts of data about its users, their interests, and their general demographic traits. But did you know that they make that information available to Business users?
Here, you can learn about your own followers or cast a wider net to see which trends emerge based on gender, education level, relationship status, categories of interest, and more.
Build your audience from your own business contacts.
Facebook will let you target your already existing customers by letting you submit their contact information. You can also send your ad to anyone who has recently clicked on another one of your ads in the past.
What if you are an influencer on Instagram or have a fairly regular Facebook Live audience? You can target them, too!
Search according to your customers’ characteristics.
You likely have some idea of the kind of people who have been buying your products, or at least the kind of audience you want to bring to your website. You can narrow down a target audience by their jobs, their interests, their genders, their economic station, their education, etc.
Of course, there are some restrictions that apply, especially if your business has any affiliation with the housing market or public elections. Facebook is extremely sensitive about classism or racism that may be present on their ads platform and may not let you target certain demographics, depending on the nature of your ad.
There are certainly other ways to narrow down your audience. Facebook is always expanding its targeting tools and so you may consider hiring an acclaimed Utah marketing firm like Gravitate One to create your social media ads for you.
Put on the Finishing Touches
Once you have figured out what type of ad you’re creating, and who it is meant for, you are allowed to get creative! You can pick from a number of different display types — from a video to a photo carousel, to a static image — as well as write the ad copy.
Once the landing page is in place and set your budget, you are ready to publish. The ad will then run for as long as you deemed earlier — either a set amount of time, or as long as the money holds out, or indefinitely with recurring billing to your credit card.
Step Two: Boosted Posts
You likely value all the interaction you have with the followers on your Facebook page. A boosted post is a great way to throw some money behind a message to your Wall so that it is seen by a wider audience.
The process is much more simplified than the formal paid ad. On every post is a button to boost it, which you will click. Then you can set the budget for your post, as well as which audience you’re targeting. These audiences fall into three categories:
- One of your preset audiences.
- Those who have Liked your page.
- Those who have Liked your page and their friends.
The purpose of the boosted post is to drive engagement. Hopefully, by making your message better seen by everyone, you will see a more immediate reaction and get people to comment, share, or click the embedded link.
Step Three: Linking to Facebook
Facebook is such a big platform that it is beneficial to every business to link back to it in other forms of communication. As part of our digital marketing suite of services, Gravitate One will quarterback your email marketing, Google ads, or any other form of social media interfacing. In each of those areas will be a link to your business’s Facebook account.
Social media is here to stay, so learning how to best utilize it is key to the success of any organization. If you’re curious how you can beef up your social media presence, give us a call today.