Facebook Marketing for Small Business
When you think of marketing teams you probably envision a large corporation with a massive marketing team and a budget to match.
The reality is far different!
In the United States, small businesses that have fewer than 100 employees make up 98% of the country’s businesses. Marketing teams for organizations that are this size are typically between one and five individuals.
In other words, small marketing teams far outnumber the big fancy ones.
They also have their fair share of challenges. Marketing budgets are usually small and team members often must wear many hats in order to meet the sizeable expectations of the company. Small marketing team success is very doable though.
It just takes a lot of efficiency, and a little creativity.
This is why Facebook is an ideal platform for the small marketing team. And this is how to make it work for your business!
Automate Key Marketing Processes
Creating Facebook posts is pretty hands-on, but you can use tools – including the Facebook Creator Studio – to help you plan and schedule out posts in advance!
Then there’s the flip side of Facebook marketing that no one talks about – lead collection. Route completed lead forms directly to your sales team instead of processing them manually. Connect your database so that it is updated with lead information automatically.
Trim tasks where you can so you are freed up to focus on the things you can’t automate like clever Facebook posts and witty banter to engage your audience.
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Give Your Audience a Peek at What Goes on Behind the Scenes
Brands that bring humans into their social media mix and put them at the forefront do amazingly well with their audiences. People love to see the faces behind the products and services they love, especially when there is a fun story or goofy photo to accompany it.
After all, you don’t want to bombard your audience with strictly sales pitches all the time. That’s not what Facebook is all about. Mix it up with product info, industry news, customer testimonials, and these fun behind-the-scenes posts.
THEN you can sprinkle in the sales pitches.
Take candid shots of employees doing the things they do at work and post them to your social media profile (with their consent, of course). Take a picture of Jane working on a great new design, coffee cup in hand and pencil over her ear, seriously focused look on her face. Or get a shot of Tom and Mike bringing lunch for the whole team because it’s storming outside.
In other words, show both work and play because humanity is both. Tell stories that make your audience feel more connected to your brand through your people.
Turn Employees into Facebook Personalities
Instead of just one person creating all of the Facebook posts for your company, get the entire staff in on the fun. Encourage employees to create posts about the company, industry, behind the scenes, or what they are thinking about on that particular day. And always end the post with the person’s name – first, first and last, or nickname.
Use cool photos to support the posts and encourage employees to respond. If they aren’t comfortable responding with their personal accounts they can use the company profile and just end each comment with their name, so it is evident who is writing.
Facebook is a community-based platform and users are looking for connections. This type of interaction allows them to see the human side of your company and they will keep coming back.
Create guidelines for all employees, outlining what is acceptable and what is not allowed. If you have an employee who may be a loose cannon, you can assign a quality control lead to monitor all outgoing posts to ensure they are consistent with the brand requirements.
Hire an Intern
Creating an internship program is surprisingly simple for small businesses. You’ll need to brush up on the labor laws that pertain to internships and make sure that you are compliant, but after that, it is a pretty easy process.
First, you want to set some goals for your internship program, then plan it out carefully. Establish a method that you will use to review your interns and how you will work with them to best help them learn. Finally, develop your interview and hiring process as well as onboarding which includes training and orientation.
Once established, your intern can work with you, help your small marketing team, and get fantastic on-the-job experience in the process. Social media marketing, such as Facebook marketing, is a perfect job for an intern to perform.
They are close enough to the company that they are able to make in-depth, beneficial content choices that will increase engagement and compel visitors to visit your site.
Share Customer Testimonials
People will read your content and watch your videos. They will read about your products or services, and even give you some likes and shares. But they don’t really connect until you bring real people into the mix.
Posting customer testimonials on your Facebook business profile news feed is a great strategy for drawing people in and letting them hear from real people who have dealt with your company.
Customer testimonials are powerful.
Video the testimonials or write them or do a mixture of the two for maximum impact. Get permission from your customer, then post it for everyone to see. If the customer is OK with it, you can even tag them in the post.
Facebook has some wonderful tools for posting videos, photos, and text. Learn it and use it to your advantage. Recycle your content with other social media accounts so that people who aren’t on Facebook (is there really such an animal?) can have access to the information too.
Create a Referral Culture
One of the best advertisements your company will ever get is word of mouth. And on some level, that is what Facebook marketing provides. You put the information out there and your followers do the rest.
However, you can up that even more. Create a culture that encourages your customers to refer their family and friends. Offer rewards, discounts, and special products or services to customers who refer someone to you.
This is where Facebook comes in and is very useful. Say you are running a sale and you post on Facebook about it. In the text that is with the graphic, let your followers know that if they like and share the post they will get a discount on their next purchase.
If they refer someone to you, they can shoot you a message with the person’s information or the person can message you with their name. There are many ways to accept and encourage referrals – and reward them.
Create an Exclusive Group
Facebook is known for its groups and people flock to them. Create an exclusive Facebook group for your customers or for certain customers. Use the group to provide information and discounts that those outside the group aren’t privy to. Offer sneak peeks at new products or services and provide early access to sales or special additional discounts.
By making the group exclusive and only available to select individuals, you make it all the more enticing. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, send your customers a Facebook message or SMS message when they qualify for the group. If they are shopping online, it’s much easier because you can include it with the receipt.
There are so many different things you can do with a Facebook group. The possibilities are endless. But you will need someone to moderate it and you should post at least once a week. If you can post three or four times a week, that’s even better. You can always allow group members to start discussions within the group and assign your intern the task of moderating.
Hire a Freelancer to Pick Up the Slack
Freelancers come in all flavors and to fit all budgets so you should be able to find one who will fit yours. There are many different platforms out there that allow you to hire a freelancer to get the content that you need. If you don’t want to work directly with them or you don’t want to deal with billing and such, you can use a platform that has staff to do it all for you. You just tell them what you want, and they make it happen.
Of course, you can always hire a freelancer directly. Just make sure you have a contract, and you have a clear plan with solid deadlines.
A good freelancer can shape up your content, provide new content, repurpose old content, and write your Facebook posts. You can hire freelancers for content, graphics, or solely social media management. They can take your Facebook marketing and make it work for you.
The beauty of freelancers is that often you can hire them only when you need them or only hire them to do a specific job. For instance, if you want someone to take over the Facebook marketing for your company, you hire them just for that. They will likely provide a fixed rate, so it is pretty easy to work into your marketing budget each month.
Is your small marketing team feeling a little overwhelmed? Let Tailwind help you out. With tools to plan, schedule, and post to your social media accounts as well as create beautiful content for your platforms, Tailwind is your smart marketing assistant!
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Posting to Instagram from your phone can be really inconvenient.
There are still some kinks in this process, though. You still need to manage multiple text and image files manually throughout the process (although this process is shortened via automatic syncing), you need to remember when to post, and you’re still copy/pasting text throughout the process to make it work. It’s a big improvement over the purely manual email process, however.
