Facebook Marketing: What, Why and How?
It is truly said that customers do not fall for products, they fall for the ideas and emotions that come along. And that is why marketing is the key when it comes to making an idea reach its audience. Marketing is bringing down the desires of the buyers onto the plate.
It is utilizing one’s creativity and planning to formulate strategies to make a profitable market for the sellers and a satisfying one for the ones who buy their products and services. Let us explore some more on one of the most popular marketing techniques in the new digital world, i.e. Facebook Marketing.
What is Facebook Marketing?
When it comes to choosing which is the best way to present your ideas in the growing and changing trends of every day, social media marketing has become to be one of the first choices. Facebook marketing is a place where you will find numerous types of paid advertisements targeted to a specific audience.
For example, popular Facebook groups like “Flats and Flatmates”, “Solo travelers of India”, etc. provide a massive reach for anyone who wants to advertise their property on rent or startups based on travel. Social media is something that people scroll through for entertainment; therefore, it is one of the most used platforms.
In the new age, a person can wake up to the notification sound of his/her social media accounts like Facebook or Instagram. Therefore, it is a way that is accessible for the buyer to find a wider customer range.
Before learning about Facebook marketing in detail, let us have a look at different types of marketing used in a brief:
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Types of Marketing Tactics
- Traditional Marketing
- Digital Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Conversational Marketing
1. Traditional Marketing
Do you recall how we get those pamphlets about the new gym in our area or advertisements in the newspaper? Yes, you remember it right. All those variations where marketing is based on prints, billboards, and hard copy ads come under traditional marketing. It is the oldest technique used from the time when the internet was not developed or was still developing.
Though nowadays everything is moving to an online and digital version, still traditional marketing proves to be useful in rural areas where digitalization has not been reached yet. For example, the opening of a new bakery in a small town would reach more people using word of mouth or newspaper advertisement.
2. Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is one of the most searched and pursued topics over the internet. As the world takes steps towards online platforms, traditional marketing traverses through to digital marketing. Digital marketing is nothing but a process of presenting your services using an electronic device or the internet. It includes those Google Ads pop-ups we get when we navigate through websites and the emails, we receive about the recent sales coming up on Amazon or Nykaa.
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The most prominent aspect of digital marketing is the rate of reaching audiences. As the advent of the internet becomes more and faster, this technique provides newer and prompt ways in-game marketing.
3. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing, which is popularly known as SEM, is a technique that uses the importance of keywords being used over the internet. For example, if your content contains the keywords which are searched more, it will be ranked among the top results of the search. The better you rank, the more people come down to your website and more people buy your products.
Search Engine Marketing is divided into two parts – a.) Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and b.) Pay per click (PPC). While SEO focuses on search results rankings using keywords and content as the base while PPC is driven from advertising using Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).
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4. Social Media Marketing
Social Media is one of the largest online platforms joining millions of people over a commonplace. Be it Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram, they are being used by people all day right from when they wake till they sleep.
These days, WhatsApp forwards reach faster than Ambulances or Pizza delivery. The viral stories give rise to overnight reach to the entire country. Hence, Social Media Marketing is a powerful tool that can be used for Marketing. Facebook Marketing also falls under Social Media Marketing which we will read about later in this article.
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5. Conversational Marketing
Conversational Marketing is one of the unrealized marketing techniques used in daily lives. You might have observed those “please follow” DMs on your Instagram accounts or the Facebook messenger texts. Conversational marketing is based on one-to-one interactions over online or offline platforms.
In offices, chat platforms like email or Slack also fall under conversational marketing. Using this technique, you can direct messages to your target audience which gives a faster response window and instant results.
Why Facebook Marketing?
Before opting for the correct marketing technique for your business, it is very necessary to understand the WHY part of your choice. Therefore, let us read through how Facebook Marketing can help the sellers a unique way to market their services and ideas.
1. Global Reach
The first and foremost benefit of Facebook marketing is that it has coverage over customers globally. Over 2.7 billion users sign up to Facebook every month for connecting to friends and people. Imagine the size of the market you have access to when you use Facebook as your marketing platform.
Not only limited to one’s own country but it is also used all over the world. Therefore, if you have an idea, the sky is your limit. One can explore the buyers of its products globally and reach them easily using Facebook.
For example, during the pandemic of Corona, everyone was confined to their home space which made social media users even more than usual. I personally came to know about a fitness coach from Germany who was active on Facebook and posted a variety of food and fitness regimes to be followed for a healthy lifestyle.
In this case, when one follows a product on Facebook, you also land up to their websites as Facebook provides an option of linkage. That is how I landed up buying a monthly challenge e-book from the same fitness trainer.
Here, if you observe, I might not have come to know about a person using a simple Google search, but Facebook did accelerate it. Everything seems to be accessible when you are on Facebook. The world seems so small!
2. Organic Reach
One does not need a good hand at paid advertising while using Facebook as the marketing platform. You have a huge area to connect with people all around the world and therefore, you can utilize your social skills as well to sell your products. For example, you can create your Facebook page separately and start posting about your services and share the link over Facebook messenger, and thus, the information gets a way to flow from one to another.
For example, let us say you do not know anything about Facebook. You sign up to Facebook, sets your profile picture, and begin the voyage. Now, even with the basic circle comprising of your school, college, office, and family, you might add up to a basic of let’s say,300 friends on your Facebook account. Now, even if you have 10 people who might share your posts on their own profiles pave a huge reach of 10*300 people who will be seeing about your product.
Hence, if followed with perseverance and smart work, Facebook can prove to be a blessing for your entrepreneurship journey. It will add experience to your understanding of how things work in the field of marketing.
3. Specific Target Audience
Let us say you open a boutique and decides to market your products over Facebook. Your products are women’s sarees and hand-crafted oriented.
Here, Facebook gives us an option to set various filters for our audiences like age group, income level, educational background, or gender. It groups the audiences based on their searches and clicks.
For example, if you are someone who clicks on the healthcare articles over Facebook, you might have been receiving emails from Flipkart or Amazon on beauty products buying and sales. This is how it works. Therefore, it helps the businesses to reach the required audience faster using a variety of demographic categories in filters.
4. Impactful Ad Formats
Facebook Marketing is useful because it gives attractive and catchy ways to reach customers. Imagine the difference between the advertisements you listen to in between your Gaana app songs and the ones which come in between your YouTube videos. The difference is in the first case, you hear about the product and in the second, you get a direct visualization about it.
There is no denial about the fact the visual stories give a longer and stronger impact on our minds. You might forget about the news you heard two days ago but you will always remember an image from the same days ago. And this is how Facebook aids in. It provides businesses to create Video stories and post them to their audiences.
One of the trendiest Video-based markets you might have observed is the online dance tutorials or any other creative or technical side. People follow the videos, learn from them, and forward them to their friends if they like them. The Travel businesses which post a video of the activities to be done and other traveler’s experiences using video blogs hit more reaches and likes compared to those who post only itineraries.
5. 24*7 Customer Support
Customer Support service is one of the pillars of a successful business. Social Media makes it easier for the customers to reach out for their concerns and issues. It is as fast as how you respond to your emails versus your WhatsApp messages. Facebook Marketing helps in engaging your audience on a personalized level and therefore using Facebook Messenger you are always a text away from it.
For example, if you buy a Watch online from Website X, and on delivery, you find an issue with it. If this website does not have a Facebook page, the first step you will be doing is either calling on their customer support number or dropping them an email. Whereas if they have a Facebook account, you will instantly drop a message to them on Facebook explaining the issue or can even post it to their Facebook group as you will be a member of it when you must have bought it.
Since Social Media engages a wider audience, therefore your post/review about the product affects the market reach of a business. It is how we decide restaurants and food in Zomato or Swiggy based on ratings. Similarly, businesses can be impacted in both extremes as per the review and services of their products.
Therefore, Facebook Marketing does not just provide Customer Support, it provides the customer with power as well.
Hot Features of Facebook
Apart from the five key benefits of Facebook Marketing, we went through, let us also look at the technical buttons and features of Facebook which can make our business idea and services reach the audiences in a more unique way.
1. Facebook Live
The Live feature enables you to connect to your followers. For example, when a company launches a new product, it is obvious that it cannot invite people from all over the world. Even it does, the physical presence of your customers cannot be achieved.
That is where the Live option plays a key role. Creating an event over your Facebook account, sending invites and promotional messages to your customers and followers, and then on the launch day, just click over to LIVE and broadcast yourself to the audience.
Customers can watch the entire event sitting comfortably on the Sofas of their homes and get to know about the product and its features there and then.
2. Facebook Watch Party
Facebook Watch Party is a feature to be used when multiple people gather to experience the same video. For example, let us say MakeMyTrip organizes a Watch Party over Facebook for the next Summer Treks plans and dates. A watch party is kind of an event over Facebook. All the watchers will be together seeing the same content which will look like online streaming get together for people with similar interests.
3. Facebook Stories
Where one of the posting criteria on Facebook is using your news feed, the other one is Story. Anything posted to the news feed stays permanently on your account until you go and delete it. A Facebook story holds your content for 24 Hours. Yes, you heard it right.
Anything posted on your Facebook story will be removed automatically after a complete day. Facebook Stories appear on the top of the news feed. As per the statistics, people might reach the complete feed in their daily usage, but they do check Stories regularly. That is how Facebook Stories proves to be a great feature in Facebook Marketing.
4. Pin Post
Pinning a post helps to keep specific posts on the top of your Facebook page. A pinned post is the first thing anyone would see when they browse your page.
It is a great way to organize the specific posts on top so that you do not need to scroll through when you need to find them. Also, it helps you to create a strong message and impression for your customers. It showcases your brand better and helps people to decide on why to choose you over other competitors.
5. Photo Post
In general, posts accompanied by pictures are more reachable compared to text posts. For example, if you are looking to advertise for your house on rent, a text post containing the rent, contact, the house details might reach people fine, but if you add pictures of your house, the rooms, the surrounding, and the inclusive details would add a greater impact on the viewers.
Photos also add authenticity while using Facebook for marketing. It creates a real-time picture in customers’ minds. It becomes more relatable and trustworthy which in turn attracts more audiences to your services.
The drawback about Facebook Marketing is that it has become a little less used by the coming generations which are moved to other Social Media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Therefore, to conclude we can say that Facebook is an amazing platform if you want to enter the world of Marketing and learn more about it in practice. The best thing about using social media is that you get to know how people react to your ideas and innovations instantly. It provides you the option of mixing humor and a personalized touch while interacting with your customers.
For example, the brand of jewels can use the concept of what to gift your wife on this Valentine’s day using a short video Ad inclusive of the evergreen husband-wife anniversary. These days the concept of Memes is also very trending. Memes are nothing but an online picture version of those creative jokes we see in Newspapers. An apt example of this Amul Groups. The way they synchronize their products with the latest political and trending topics of India.
Using social media marketing is easy and trendy for the brands to sell and the customers to buy. It also lets the customer build a special trust with the products and their owners. The one thing that really connects people in Facebook business is because customers also get to see the other side of the brand which can include their interactions in Facebook events and live chats. Also, the buyers get to see the experiences of other buyers through pictures and videos.
Social Media allows their customers to be in power and provide the buyers a platform to explore and express their opinions on any product. Similarly, it also enables the sellers to prove themselves to their best potential and reach out to an audience of billions from all over the world. Facebook is something which anyone looking out to learn the techniques of marketing shall go for. And the best part is, there is no investment at all!
