Small Businesses – ‘Get Started with Facebook’
By Archana Roche, Facebook Measurement Lead, Httpool APAC
If you’re a small business and find yourself asking the questions: How do I strengthen my online presence? How do I build brand awareness? How do I sell online? How do I reach new customers? How do I increase my business? And how do I become profitable with a minimal budget? We have the answer for you – Get started with Facebook.
An online Facebook presence is proving a critical tool for small businesses in today’s market, with over 90 million small businesses using Facebook and its related products to promote online. Digital is the first point of call for shoppers to prioritize convenience, and in a constantly connected world, the mobile phone presents every opportunity to shop from one’s pocket.
The possibilities are endless for a small business on Facebook. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users Facebook covers a wide demographic range and businesses big and small will find their target audience already active there. A Facebook online presence can not only help you raise awareness for your business, find more customers and increase both on and offline sales, but it also drastically improves your brand credibility. Some businesses even close the deal, from start to finish, without ever leaving the site, in full transparency and in no time at all. Facebook has the full potential of pivoting into a central Marketing hub; expanding reach into untapped markets and to lookalike customers just waiting to discover and recommend your products!
So let’s Get started with Facebook
All you need to do to get started with Facebook is create your brand’s Facebook page.
Your Facebook page will be the heart and soul of your presence on the platform and help customers remember your brand when it’s time to buy. A business page is for brands and businesses and works similarly to your regular profile page, except instead of sending friend requests, users must ‘like’ or ‘follow’ a page to see its posts.
Potential and existing clients alike can find out key information about your business, including a link to your site, hours of operation, your location, and delivery options available.
Facebook’s Customised Plan For New Online Marketers
Facebook makes it easy and seamless for small businesses to get a head start, so even if you’re new to the marketing game and don’t have the time or resources to gain that extra expertise, you’re still a step ahead when it comes to achieving success with your online decisions.
Facebook will ask you a few simple questions about your business and goals and voila! Facebook will not only develop a Customised Marketing Plan exclusively for your business but also support you in creating Automated Ads driving amazing results. By taking the guesswork out of creating effective ads that run on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network, Automated Ads will not only help you work efficiently and effectively but also continuously optimize your advertising plan on your behalf.
By staying active, you keep people engaged with your business and build a community more likely to recommend your business and engage with your content, boosting your reach on Facebook. Following Facebook’s best practices for growing your audience and engagement can help your business stay top of mind, using Facebook’s free tools to increase awareness online.
Facebook Solutions for Small Businesses
You can also build a Facebook Shop where people can browse, explore and purchase your products directly through Facebook and Instagram. This is your online storefront so embrace it, customize it regularly with your new collections, and showcase your featured products here. The Facebook shopping experience is completely seamless, bringing your brand to life without a physical presence and ensuring your customers will love coming back to your online store.
In Commerce Manager you have access to insights on the performance of your sales and the popularity of your products, helping you customize and design your shop accordingly.
Conversational Commerce for Deeper Relationships
The next step in your journey to building deeper relationships on Facebook is to use the Facebook Messenger Solution. You can create excellent customer experiences and turn any conversation into conversion by simply including CLICK TO MESSENGER in your communication and connect with your customers on a more personal level. The conversation all commerce helps make enriching customer service experiences that turn tur one-on-one conversations into r conversions and loyal customers through Messenger chatbots.
Whether you have a big event, performance, or announcement about your business, Facebook Live allows you to live-stream your event and reach a wider community who can watch from their phone, computer, or even connected TV.
You can place your products in front of a captive audience and those who are already in the mindset to buy products similar to yours, by listing them on the Facebook Marketplace – a dedicated space to sell items listed on Facebook within your local community. The Marketplace allows you to reach buyers who are already in a purchasing mindset and browsing products to buy. If you can provide fast answers using real-time messaging with an accurate price and product descriptions, then this is the place for you. From retailers to real estate agents, and car dealerships to recruitment agencies, the marketplace is one lucrative place to be present.
Customer Insights with Facebook Tools
For small businesses, it’s not always easy to build a website. But you may want to consider building a simple one, given the many Facebook tools helping unlock potential revenue and insights for your business. When you implement the Facebook Pixel on your website, it allows you to see how people interact with your website after viewing your Facebook ad. It also allows you to optimize your ads for conversions that means it is telling Facebook how this information can help you refine your ad strategy and get a better return on your investments. The Pixel works by placing and triggering cookies to track users as they interact with your website and your Facebook ads.
It will share back a goldmine of information and deeper insights into those who visited your website and the journey they took to reach your final purchase page; helping you understand them better and unlock lucrative remarketing opportunities for the future.
Facebook Chat Plugins is another free website plugin helping you generate sales by supporting customers while they browse your website. The chat is live and powered by Messenger, helping you provide personalized assistance to your captive audience as well as building a strong relationship to help your business grow.
Now that you understand all these tools and are leveraging them effectively to increase awareness, it’s time to reach out to people who are unfamiliar with your business. Promote your business directly from your Page with Facebook’s simple tools to reach out and connect with new people and new customers.
Mobile First Creatives on Facebook build deeper connections
Armed with all these tools, it’s time to put your best foot forward by creating the most inviting and appealing content for your business, product, or brand. Creativity is everything, it can make or break a brand and help you stand out from the rest. This is why it’s crucial to do your homework and explore the best ways you can relate to your customers with Facebook advertising.
Facebook offers its own Creative Inspiration, meaning you don’t need to be a creative genius or be experienced to succeed. Facebook research has shown that short, mobile-friendly, vertical videos under 10 seconds, with the logo, product, and message prominently displayed in the first 6 seconds are the audience favorite and easy for users to recall.
This short, concise communication is what resonates most, helping your brand to stay top-of-mind when it’s time to buy. Small businesses can run Facebook and Instagram videos with this basic creative framework, hitting all the right chords and translating into better business outcomes.
Let’s take a look at US ice cream company, Blue Bunny, which boosted brand awareness with a series of clever, eye-catching videos designed specifically for mobile. Blue Bunny created short and fun animated videos showing their Cheesecake Loaded Sundaes on a picnic table with close-up shots of their cute bunny-shaped cherries! This creative route coupled with playful text overlays and a punch line “Give in to The Bunny ” was a crowd favorite. This paired with an inviting “Learn More” Call-to-Action linking to the Blue Bunny website was tempting enough to users that their campaign resulted in a:
- 3.4% lift in spend per household
- 3% increase in the percentage of households buying
- 17 point lift in ad recall
- 6 point lift in top of mind awareness
Delight your customers with a rich discovery experience
Another powerful solution for small businesses to create a rich browsing experience and encourage greater product discovery and conversions is the Facebook Product Catalogue. The catalog, as the name suggests, is your online stockroom, holding information about all your products and allowing you to advertise or sell these across Facebook and Instagram. This is a brilliant solution for businesses selling multiple products as they can be connected and promoted in various ad formats and channels around the Facebook group. When combined with Ad formats like the Facebook Carousel, you can tell a compelling story about the array of products in your inventory and boost sales all around.
And if you want to take it one step further and give your customers a completely immersive experience, then drive them to your website with Collection Ads. Offering a seamlessly fast-loading and instant experience, Collection Ads connect your products and services on Facebook straight to your website.
Dynamic ads, when combined with the Facebook Product catalog, are a sure-fire way to target your customers with products you know they’re interested in. This works by utilizing user browser data based on past website visits to retarget them with similar products, cross-sell or even upsell with higher-value products. Dynamic ads create ads automatically using images and details from your data feed, ensuring you don’t spend your valuable time making individual ads, but instead are focusing on things that really matter to your business.
Scale your communication with agile support channels
The rule of thumb for all small businesses is to keep in touch with your customers everywhere, on every platform. Showcase your products and services at every touchpoint your customers are engaged in to create your own success story. The WhatsAppBusiness App allows you to scale your communication by building a catalog to showcase your products and services. An amazing feature of this tool is its automated responses, helping you to respond to customers quickly and efficiently.
Rapidly growing Australian fitness brand, Women’s Best, saw success using WhatsApp Business when they needed a new way to process customer inquiries as email and web chat were no longer able to meet their business needs or customer expectations. Adopting the WhatsApp Business API offered its customers (mostly women aged 18–70) a communication channel providing quick and direct support. For customers reaching out with product inquiries, questions and those visiting the website via their mobile phone, Women’s Best saw WhatsApp as the most convenient support channel.
After implementing WhatsApp Business API, Women’s Best saw the following results:
- 30,000 customer service requests received via WhatsApp per month
- 50% faster processing time for each customer inquiry
- 40 WhatsApp tickets resolved by a single agent in an hour
With the many tools and solutions available for small businesses, Facebook has made it easy for anyone to start advertising without any previous online experience.
Yes, it’s that simple, that seamless and ready and waiting for you to explore and thrive. So what’s not to love about moving your business online on Facebook today?
Think Small Business, Think Facebook.
