As Facebook tweaks its algorithm to make sure that its users only see content that they find enjoyable and relevant, organic reach for posts by businesses has turned into a shadow of what it used to be. If you have a business page on Facebook today, only 2 percent of the people who are already your fans, on average, are likely to be shown any given post that you put out. If you don’t have the advertising budget to compensate for the drop that you’ve experienced in organic reach, there are ways that you can get in front of your audience on a tiny budget. Here are tips.
Target highly specific audiences
You can use Facebook to target fathers under the age of 56 around Miami, who are interested in fitness and who speak Spanish. If you want to go further, you can make sure that these fathers have college degrees, have an anniversary coming up within 15 days, and who are interested in the environment. Facebook has all this information on its users, and more, and it’s yours to use.
If you’ve developed a buyer persona for your business by describing the qualities of your ideal buyer, you should know that you can easily find that buyer on Facebook. The more specific you get, the smaller your budget needs to be, and, yet, the more effective your advertising will be.
Run a contest for greater engagement
Contests on Facebook offer participants the fun that comes with competing. You don’t have to offer expensive prizes. In most cases, a simple prize like a case of beer is all you need to get participation. Your contests can be simple, too — you don’t need to do anything more than ask your followers to send in pictures of them with your product, for example. You can award the prize to the best entry. Even simple contests can generate a great deal of user interest and engagement.
Create short and interesting video posts
If you’ve already tried video without much luck, it’s possible that your content is overly long, or not engaging enough. Facebook serves between 4 and 8 billion videos a day. People on Facebook are interested in killing time, and have short attention spans. You should help them out by providing them with videos that are no more than a minute in length. When you learn how to make these videos interesting, you’ll have a winning recipe on your hands.
Aim for leads that you already have
Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature allows you to take people whom you already know are interested in your product — like subscribers to your newsletter — and upload their email addresses directly into Facebook. You are then able to set Facebook to show ads to just those people. If you have the email addresses of people who have already bought your product, you can use Facebook to advertise more expensive products to them, as well.
Clone your best customers
Facebook has the ability to categorize users by an immense number of qualities. When you tell Facebook what your best revenue-generating customers look like in terms of gender, age, education, location, and other parameters, Facebook can look for new people who meet these rules and present them to you. You can take your best customers, and find more exactly like them. Facebook calls this feature the lookalike audience. It’s a highly effective way to find expand your customer base.
Locate your best content and keep promoting it
If you publish content on Facebook, you probably collect statistics once a month or so to see what content performs the best. When you have information on which pieces of content get the most engagement, you don’t have to let those items to fade away over time. You can use Facebook advertising to promote them over and over again to keep them alive. The more you push content that you know is good, the larger the audience is that it will reach.
Facebook provides businesses with convenient tools with which to find an interested audience. All you need to do is to figure out how to entertain them; your marketing will take care of itself.
