How to Promote Your Business on Facebook

With an incredibly expansive user base with estimated daily user counts reaching over 3 billion, it's hard to argue with Facebook's reach. This also means businesses have a bountiful harvest, where they can tap into a stable user base to grow their online presence and community.

But it can be intimidating to get started, so today, we have a crash course to learn everything you need to know about how to promote your business on Facebook.

Part 1: How to Utilize Facebook for Business

Here we outline the detailed guide on how to promote business on Facebook with these 9 ways:

1.1 Set Up and Optimize Facebook Page

The first step is to set up your Facebook Page. Facebook Pages is your brand's home on Facebook where users can find and engage with your content, find like-minded fans, learn about your product/service, and more.

Here's a quick guide to create and set up your first Facebook Page:

Once that's done, your Facebook Page is ready.

You'll want to make sure the information included during the initial setup is accurate and relevant. Add an attractive bio that includes your brand's products, services, and information, include an address for your office/store, add your store's active hours, etc.

You can also turn on 'Recommendations' so that visitors can leave a review about your business to prove your business is trustworthy. This also helps your Page show up in searches for similar products.

1.2 Create Engaging Content

The next step is to start populating your Facebook Page with engaging content for your viewers to read, watch, and comment on. This doesn't have to be solely related to your business, but can also relate to industry news, the latest trends, promotions, updates about your business, etc.

There are a few types of content you can include on your Facebook Page, so here's a quick breakdown of each:

1. Text Posts: Text posts are your Page's bread and butter. Here's where you can write important updates, industrial news, and products.

2. Links: Linked content is essentially embedded URL links that redirect to your other websites. It's a great way to share relevant information from your business's other channels like websites, blogs, YouTube videos, and more.

3. Photos: In addition to text posts, photos are a great way to keep your audience engaged with infographics, updates, photos of your products/services, satisfied customers, and more.

4. Videos: Videos are a great way to efficiently demonstrate product demos, a tour of your business, and other content like challenges and 'trendy' topics. This keeps your audience entertained and engaged with your content.

5. Facebook Stories: Facebook Stories give users a way to see everyday photos/videos without having to visit your Page. Since this content is available on their Facebook homepage directly, they're more likely to see it, visit your Page, and engage with your content.

6. Live Streaming: Live streaming is a great way to engage and communicate with your Page followers directly. Users can tune in to learn about the latest updates and sales, or just chat and engage with your business in an open forum.

Moreover, there are also Events and Polls you can utilize to engage with your followers.

While there are a plethora of content types you can use for your Facebook Page, studies show that photo and video content are the most engaging content on the platform.

According to Facebook, 50% of time spent on the site by users is watching videos, and over than 2 billion users watch Facebook stream videos every month. So videos and live streaming are the most popular content types on Facebook, and try to upload more videos as possible as you can.

1.3 Run Facebook Ads

While organic growth and reach are the ideal way to grow your Facebook Page, relying on that alone is unfeasible. To help you reach more people and gain more Page followers, you'll need to run Facebook ads.

Luckily, Facebook ads are accessible and aren't too complicated to use. You can allocate daily budgets, the duration of the ads, the demographics & audience you want to reach, and much more.

You can also use top-performing posts on your Page as a more 'natural' ad that showcases the type of content and products people can find on your Page.

That said, here's how to create first ad on your Facebook Page:

Apart from that, you can also access Facebook Ads via the Ads Manager or Meta Business Suite.

1.4 Create & Promote in Facebook Groups

Besides your Facebook Page, you can also use Facebook Groups to help promote your Page and business. Pages and Groups are different entities on Facebook but are pretty similar. While your Page represents your business, Groups are more akin to a place for users to find other users who share common interests.

The great thing about Facebook Groups is they provide an alternative platform for people to learn about your business, what you can do, and build a reputation in the industry by providing valuable advice, engaging with content, etc.

To create your own Facebook Group, follow the steps below:

We'd advise against using the Group as a promotional tool 100% of the time and rather focus on engaging and creating content users can refer to, learn, or discuss centered around your industry.

Alternatively, you can also join other Facebook Groups related to your brand to help spread the word about your business or build a reputation within the local community. Simply search on Facebook to choose the groups or check this guide about Facebook Groups to join.

1.5 Leverage AI

To bolster your Facebook Page and business's performance, make good use of AI platforms. For your Facebook Page, you can use AI in two main ways:

ChatInsight is a chatbot builder without coding, enabling you to build an AI chatbot based on your company and products. Here's what to do:

You can add the URL of your AI chatbot to the Action button of your Facebook Page. By doing so, the AI chatbot can reply to all the customer queries immediately, and it can reply in multiple languages, reducing the language barriers.

These are incredibly useful tools that can help automate a lot of your Page processes which saves you time. Having AI-generated content that aligns with your brand identity can help improve engagement while an AI chatbot support tool can help you respond to a bulk of your daily messages.

1.6 Use Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite is an official and free tool for users to control and manage your Meta platforms including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp in one centralized place.

To access Meta Business Suite, simply access your Facebook Page profile, and click 'Meta Business Suite' on the left.

Here's a quick overview of what you can do with the Meta Business Suite:

• Cross-Platform Posting: You can cross-post your Instagram and Facebook Page content to one another seamlessly.
• Post Creation and Scheduling: You can also create, publish, and schedule posts on Meta Business Suite.
• Unified Inbox: You can unify your messages and comments from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp into one unified inbox.
• Automated Responses: Set up auto responses, including FAQs, away messages, greetings, and more.
• Advertising Management: Create and manage all your ads across Meta's platforms directly.

1.7 Run Giveaways and Contests

A surefire way to improve engagement and reach of your Facebook Page is by running giveaways and contests. This keeps your Page fresh and you'll notice improved engagement with potentially new users following your Page.

The process is pretty straightforward and depends on your social media strategy and business. Here's a guide to run a giveaway on Facebook:

Also, don't forget to post attractive content after the contest to enhance stickiness of your new followers, otherwise new followers will be gone if they just follow you for the contests.

1.8 Collaborate with Influencers

Another great way to promote your Facebook Page and business is by collaborating with influencers. But the trick here is to engage with influencers who fit with your brand in terms of content and identity.

Collaborating and sponsored posts can help you reach out to their audience, who are probably also interested in your products since they align their online identity with your content/industry.

You could set up the collaboration in a way where the influencer promotes your products/services and tags you, which helps drive their audience towards your Page.

To help you find relevant KOLs, try out social listening tools to search for the right influencer for your brand.

1.9 Utilize Facebook Insights

Lastly, make good use of insights you gain from Facebook. Keep an eye on what content works for your brand and what doesn't, what users engage with the most, track trends, ad campaign performance, and more.

The best way to access and use Facebook insights is from the Meta Business Suite.

To access your Facebook Page insights, follow the steps below:

You can also set up weekly plans to increase your Page's presence & engagement, learn about your audience demographics, messaging performance, and much more.

Part 2: Common Mistakes to Avoid

Inconsistent Posting

An irregular posting schedule can decrease engagement and make it hard to maintain a strong social media presence. The internet moves fast, so if you're inconsistent, you risk your audience losing interest and forgetting your brand.

Over-Promotion

Promoting your business is a great way to get the word out, but it can also annoy your followers. Keep a balanced page with valuable & entertaining content and mix in promotional content. Try to use storytelling techniques to make promo content more engaging instead of product showcases.

Ignoring Mobile Users

A large percentage of Facebook's user base accesses the platform via mobile devices. With that in mind, optimize your content and ads for mobile viewing.

Before going live, make sure to preview your content on mobile devices to ensure it looks and functions as intended.

Part 3: Benefits of Using Facebook for Business Marketing

Large Audience

With the amount of daily and monthly active users, Facebook offers businesses a simplified and extensive reach to potential customers across a variety of demographics.

Cost-Effective

Facebook advertising is relatively affordable compared to other platforms and marketing channels. This makes it cost-effective to grow your online presence.

Targeted Advertising

Facebook allows businesses to avail advanced targeting options to reach specific audiences. You can narrow down your target market by age, location, job title, interests, behavior, and much more.

Insights and Analytics

Facebook Insights offers detailed analytics and tools to gather valuable data on audience engagement which you can use to refine marketing strategies and improve ROI.

Community Building

Facebook Pages is a great place to foster community engagement and build lasting relationships with customers, creating brand advocates and giving customers a space to meet other like-minded individuals.

Part 4: Best Practice of Using Facebook for Business

Engage Regularly

Posting regularly and prompt responses to your follower's comments and messages keep your audience engaged and showcase your brand's attentiveness to your customers.

Monitor Competitors

Keep an eye on your competitors' Facebook strategies to help gauge industry trends, differentiating yourself from the competition with your posts and identity.

Create a Content Strategy

Develop a diverse content plan that mixes up promotions, educational content, and entertainment material.

In general, there's an 80/20 rule you can follow: 80% of content should inform, educate, and entertain and 20% is to promote your business.

Part 5: Summary

And that's the gist of how to promote your business on Facebook. Of course, this is an incredibly 'general' guide, and depending on your business, industry, and social media strategy, can be quite different.

But if you're a small business looking to build your brand's online presence, Facebook is a great place to foster a stable & engaged community and with our guide, you've got everything you need to get started.