By Laura Edward
Facebook is undeniably one of the most popular social media platforms nowadays. It transcends through generations and people from all walks of life use it. This makes it a very effective social media marketing tool. If you are planning to maximize the use of Facebook for your business, it might be helpful to know that these countries have the most number of Facebook users as of July 2018 according to Statista:
- India – 270 million
- USA – 210 million
- Brazil – 130 million
- Indonesia – 130 million
- Mexico – 85 million
- Philippines – 70 million
- Vietnam – 59 million
- Thailand – 50 million
- Turkey – 44 million
- UK – 41 million
This is a relevant information especially if your business wishes to target consumers from these countries. The next thing you need to equip yourself with are the ways to reach this audience. Here are five ways you can use Facebook for your online business.
1. As a Selling Platform
Once you are able to create a Facebook Business Page, you can start customizing it depending on your preferred usage of the page itself. It is most relevant for an online business to make it a gateway to your online store. Most businesses have a “Shop Now” call-to-action on their page. It also contains a preview of the items and their prices. When you click “Shop Now” or a particular product, it will direct you to their website or another buying sites like Amazon or Shopify.
Facebook also devised a way to keep the consumers in their platform, making you shop right on Facebook and it’s called Marketplace. You can directly post your items here and get responses and inquiries directly on your Messenger.
2. To Test Your Content Marketing
Posting on Facebook allows you to describe your products and services at length. It is a perfect tool to capture your audience who rely on Facebook for news and other sources of information. If your strength is creating quality content, a Facebook page is an effective tool to test the response of your target market to a particular content, promotion or product.
If you can post unique content on Facebook to create a habit, making your audience look forward to something new on a regular basis, for example “Flash Sale Fridays.” You can also post teasers to articles for your website to actually see how people will likely want to visit your site through Comments and Likes or Reactions.
Facebook analytics can also help you understand better the perfect timing for your posts, based on the engagements each of your posts has generated.
3. For Targeted Advertisements
Using Facebook to advertise is probably the smartest way to utilize Facebook for business. It can let you target your consumers in your locality, based on their interests, gender, age, etc and it will work for you whether you a big or small company.
It is also a great tool for retargeting. It works by letting you place an ad on Facebook and show it to people who recently visited your site, making them remember you once again and hopefully this time, it would lead to purchase.
4. For Lead Generation
Facebook offers a lot of ways for your business to generate leads and grow your email sign-ups. You can customize your “call-to-action” button to “Sign Up” and that can reach your current audience and new visitors who would want to get to know your promos, deals and future announcements.
Your Facebook messenger, with the help of Messenger Chatbots, can now also be a tool to gather information from your clients as they reach out to you. You can also directly post about email sign-ups in exchange for exclusive perks like discounts on their next purchase, free membership for the first 100, etc.
You can also utilize Facebook ads through Like or Sign up Ads for a wider reach.
5. As a Customer Service Platform
When waiting in line and on the phone line started to take so much time, consumers have shifted to chat and email-based customer service. With the dawn of Live Chat supports on corporate websites, reaching out to different companies just got easier and responses are faster.
Chatbots incorporated in Messenger are programmed to respond to your needs with a simple click on the options or through simple keywords that matches the programmed answers. For inbound messaging, as soon as an audience visits your page, Messenger chat box opens with different options to choose from, usually answering the frequently asked questions about your business. It also allows email sign-ups. You can also use is outbound to broadcast upcoming promotions and other announcements.
Truly, your business presence on Facebook is a necessity. It is an extension of your website, a powerful advertising tool, a good way to jumpstart your email sign-ups and to champion automated customer service.