Merely having a Facebook page is not enough. We don’t subscribe to the “build it and they will come” philosophy because we’ve never seen it work. If you really want your Facebook page to work for your business, you need to put thought into what your Facebook strategy will be and come up with a bulletproof plan.
Having a clear plan will work in your favor and save you time when you’re creating your content and devising a publishing calendar.
After you have launched your new business Facebook page, then the real work begins.
Four Pillars of Building Your Facebook Strategy
- Promoting and utilizing the page
- Your target market
- Advertising and promoting your page
- Content
Think about your Facebook page as a microsite offering unlimited opportunity for traffic. How do you harness the power of the billions of people on the platform for your better business good? We’re going to tell you how.
Promoting and Utilizing
Think through how you want to promote and utilize your page. Revisit your business goals for having a Facebook page. Which one of the following goals apply?
- selling products
- app downloads
- brick & mortar traffic
- selling consulting services
Your Target Market
Next, think about who exactly who you’re targeting. Who is your perfect customer?
When you’re thinking about your targeting, the “demographic” of your target speaks to its age, gender, and location. You’ll also need to think about the “psychographics” of your target audience, such as personality, interests, values, and lifestyles.
What other brands, services, and companies do they Like?
As an example, say you specialize in female yoga clothing. You could potentially say, “my target market is any woman that does yoga,” but targeting in this kind of broad manner makes it difficult to market effectively.
Think about it. You wouldn’t speak to a 20-something in the same way you would to a 40-year old to get your brand message across, would you? The same applies to messaging and imagery: there are many brands on the market that essentially sell the same product, yet the way they present their branding is designed to resonate very differently with different target demographics.
Think about your digital voice and how it will effectively speak to your ideal follower, and then craft your content accordingly.
What if you have more than one target market?
That’s OK. Most companies do have more than one audience. First, identify the audience segment that’s most lucrative for you. What do your most profitable customers look Like in terms of demographics, psychographics, or online behavior?
Develop a model of this audience: it will be your primary audience; other less valuable but still important groups will become your secondary audiences.
Let’s take the yoga brand example again.
You’ve got your primary audience; say it’s 30-45 year olds that like yoga. You also may want to target yoga instructors (because lots of yoga students see them and look at their outfits). Therefore, yoga instructors would be your secondary audience.
Some questions to ask yourself when identifying your specific customers are:
– What is the age range I’m trying to reach?
– How much money do they make?
– What do they do in their spare time?
– How do they Like to get their information?
Some brands will write out a whole description about the “persona” they are trying to reach. For example, “Meet Anyango! She lives in Kisumu, likes to run on the North Side of Kondele Street, she enjoys a hard workout. She eats Fish, not Githeri. She goes by the motto ‘work hard, play hard.’ She is busy; you probably won’t find her at the famous Bottoms Up Club… ”
Homing in on “who” you are trying to reach will help you immensely when you want to speak to them.
When you write out the copy to accompany any post picture or video, you’ll always want to think about how you’re getting your message across to the specific groups you’ve identified.
Content
Content is serious business. If your content sucks, so will your results. Period. You’ve got to think about user experience. As we always say in the digital world: “content is king.”
Content — whether it’s text content or visual content — needs to be relevant, compelling and timely. Think about how can you add value (knowledge, insight, utility, benefit) to your target customer.
For example, if you were to visit the yoga clothing company page, it might offer value by providing information about quality fibers, where they’re sourced from, and why they’re chosen to make such a high-quality garment.
Along with the information, you’ll want to have a great picture or perhaps a cool edited “behind the scenes” video of these garments being planned and made.
Final takeaways
– Have clear business goals for your Facebook business page
– Get specific on your primary and secondary audience
– Think about how are you marketing your page
– Think about the valuable content you’ll be offering