Many small businesses overlook the power of a Facebook Business page as a credible source of marketing. Whether it’s the fear of having to spend all day glued to the screen, not knowing what to post, or simply seeing Facebook as a social network for youngsters to arrange their Friday night out. Whatever the reason, it’s time to think again.
In this article I will share 9 reasons why EVERY business, no matter how small, should have a Facebook Business Page.
Largest Social Network
Facebook has 2.7 BILLION active monthly users with 1.73 Billion of them logon on EVERY DAY! This gives you the opportunity to reach far more potential customers than you budget would allow for all other media combined – for FREE! With over 80 million small businesses using the platform, you wouldn’t want to fall behind the competition.
Mobile Accessibility
With the modern age upon us, 76% of adults now own a smartphone and 96% of Facebook users check their newsfeed from their mobiles. It has never been more important to have a mobile presence, so that potential customers can access your information on the go. With a free downloadable App for Facebook, people can check up on your activity whether they are sitting on a bus or sitting in the canteen at lunchtime and all of this is…..yes you guessed it….for FREE!
Promote Your Offers
You can share any promotions you have available by simply adding a post on your page with a link to your website. But be careful……NEVER have more than 20% of your overall posts being sales posts as this will put followers off! Special ‘Facebook only’ promotions work particularly well as this will make your followers feel special and they will stay in contact to watch out for any future promotions you may have coming up. In addition, for a small cost you can create paid ads within Facebook to reach a wider audience.
Personalise Your Brand
As I have said many times before, people buy from people and this is where small businesses can gain a HUGE advantage over large faceless competitors by showing the human side to your brand. Engaging with your followers and showing them there are real people behind the company with updates about your team members, company activities and things you are passionate about, will make them feel part of your ‘gang’ and build loyalty.
Brand Loyalty
With a personalised approach, you can begin to gain loyalty from your followers. If you deliver useful information about your industry and interact with them, they will begin to like and trust you and in time, your competitors won’t get a look in.
Drive Traffic To Your Website
The ultimate goal in any business is to gain customers/sales and a Facebook Business page can increase awareness of your services/products with links on posts to deals and articles you have written. As I said before, be careful not to fill your page with sales posts as people don’t want to be constantly sold to. 80% of your posts should be informative and fun.
Social Proofing
71% of people who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. People like to see how you have handled an enquiry for someone else and more importantly, what other customers have said about you in the reviews section of your page. A great way to build this is to ask happy customers to add a review on your business page so that others can see how well you have done. After all, if you needed a service and you had two companies to choose from, one of them with no social media presence and the other who is active with several positive reviews, which one would you choose?
Built-in Analytics
With Facebook Insights you can analyse your activity to see what is working well and what could be working better. This is a great tool, which is FREE! You can gain data such as when your followers are on Facebook so that you know the best posting times each day, to what response you achieved from each post so you can see the type of statuses are the most popular. You can even use this to see how well your competitors are doing to stay one step ahead of them.
Targeted Audience Advertising
With hundreds of Facebook demographics available including age, gender, marital status, location and interests to name just a few, you can really laser target your advertising to your ideal client at a fraction of the cost compared to other media formats. For example, if you are a vegan bakery in Portsmouth that is popular with middle-aged women, you can choose to only target women within a particular radius of Portsmouth between the ages of 40-55 with an interest in veganism and/or vegan cooking. With this much detail, you are far more likely to gain more footfall and get a great Return on Investment.
Well, there you have it. The list of advantages of a Facebook Business Page and these nine are merely scratching the surface. Has this changed your mind about creating one? Have you found other huge benefits for having one? We would love to hear your success stories in the comments below.
Are you sitting in front of your computer wondering what to post on your Facebook business page?
Do you feel overwhelmed and need ideas to get you started?
Then why not join us in the Facebook Kick Starter Academy™. A membership programme with monthly content ideas, online training, weekly group coaching calls and a community that will help support you to get the most from your Facebook business page, enabling you to be more confident, consistent and effective?
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This is Suzii, signing out till next time. Have a great day everyone!
