As a business owner, you should be aware of the important role social media should play in promoting and marketing your products and services. This is particularly true of Facebook, which is the biggest and most popular social media site on the internet.
If your business is local as opposed to global you may not see the benefit of using Facebook. You might assume that either there are not enough local people using Facebook to make it worth your while or that Facebook is only for international businesses and corporations. How wrong you would be.
The truth is that Facebook is the perfect platform to market and brand your local business and if you are not taking advantage of it then you can be certain your competitors will be.
The first thing you want to have is a Facebook page. This is where your followers will gravitate to, read your posts, have discussions and most importantly where they will see any offers or promotions you are running. When creating your Facebook page always use a designer who has experience of creating them. Whilst you may have some graphics skills, your time can be better spent on more important matters.
The second advantage for your local business is that you can target specific geographical areas within Facebook, no matter how small or how large they might be. This can range from a particular town, through to a city, a state or even an entire country if your business is big enough. The point is, your efforts and money in terms of paid advertising on Facebook, will be targeted only toward those geographical areas you serve, rather than wasted on those that you don’t.
Another strategy which Facebook enables you to implement is being able to target specific groups of people, which could be by gender, age, social grouping, and educational attainment. Whilst these are the most common, you could instead target people who have shown an interest in other local companies within your industry. For example, if you offer financial planning, you could target Facebook users who have liked or shown interest in financial services and then only those within the geographical areas you cover.
This ability to use Facebook’s incredible database of users’ likes and interests is an incredible tool to have in your armoury. Just think how much time and money it would take to determine which people in your local area are interested in the types of products or services your business sells.
Even if you employed a market research company it would probably take months and thousands of dollars, whereas, on Facebook, you can create your audience and see the numbers for free before setting up and activating your paid advertising campaigns.
