Although many resources like the recently published Moz Beginner’s Guide to Social Media do a good job outlining the different ways Facebook can be used to benefit a business or brand, I wanted to focus on the benefits of Facebook Marketing from an Inbound Marketing perspective.
To fully understand the benefits of Facebook Marketing as they relate to Inbound Marketing, let’s take a look at this definition of Inbound Marketing from Hubspot.com/Inbound-Marketing…
By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive. Now that’s marketing people can love.
Now that we can see where Facebook Marketing fits in the Inbound Marketing funnel, let’s take a look at the benefits of an active Facebook Marketing campaign specifically as they relate to Inbound Marketing.
According to the Inbound Marketing funnel presented by Hubspot, we can see that The goal of Facebook Marketing is to attract your target market to your brand/business with the hopes of turning them into customers.
Let’s take a look at how we can utilize Facebook to drive sales an actionable plan!
1) Grow Your Facebook Page Community (“likes”)
- Grow your page community (“likes”) through targeted Facebook Ads
- Set up a Social Campaign with a tool like Constant Contact
- Provide an offer/incentive for people to “like” your page
- Ebook, guide, special offer etc.
- You will now be capturing relevant “likes” and emails! You’re building a powerful re-marketing network
- Incorporate your Facebook link on your website and use your blog and content assets to drive “likes”
2) Engage with Your “Fans” Using the 90/10 Rule
- Create a post schedule (10x/week, 5x/week etc)
- 90% of your posts should provide meaningful content to your audienceAlso, images are incredibly effective on Facebook—posts with photos get, on average, 39% more engagement.
- How-to’s, interesting news, tips, opinion content etc.
- Share your content/blogs
3) Start Driving Leads, Sales & Conversions!
- The other 10% of your posts can be self-promotion!Also, stay in tune with what your audience is saying and participate in discussions
- Specials, specific product/service offering, testimonials etc.
- Drive traffic to your website in an attempt to make a conversion
- Continue to use Facebook Ads to drive direct sales to specific website pages
- Test and measure ROI (We spend ‘x’ amount and make ‘y’)
In addition to driving direct sales using the above methods, there are also substantial serendipitous benefits to using Facebook to market your business. Facebook gives you the opportunity to turn customers into fans and ultimately into to advocates for your brand!
Also, check out this page for more about strategic post timing, Facebook rules of engagement, metrics to watch and more!
By Ricky Shockley
