If you have been wondering how small businesses can advertise free on Facebook. To answer your question, Yes! Small businesses can advertise free on Facebook.
It’s a known fact that Facebook has reduced business pages reach on its platform by up to 90%. Marketers and business owners have to leverage on paid ads to have a significant reach. Free Facebook marketing is just a way of converting your followers to engaging clients. For small businesses without an advertising budget, it is possible to use Facebook for free.
In this article, we have provided 5 most effective ways on how small businesses can advertise free on Facebook.
1. Create and Improve Your Facebook Page
Open a business page on Facebook and make it as visually appealing as possible. Also, make sure it is filled with contents that are relevant to your target customers. The good thing about having a Facebook business page is that, you can use it as a landing page for customers that are inclined to Facebook. Checkout this post on Landing Pages to know how you can attract customers with an optimized landing page.
Create a robust business page with an attractive and easy to find business name. An attractive profile photo and also a cover photo that tells customers what your business is about. Fill in the appropriate sections (about, contact information, and username).
Add your business story to let customers have a feel of how your brand came to be. It also tells your visitors what your brand has to offer.
You can also promote your product and services. Remember that only the first 100 words shows up in your about section so keep it short but detailed.
To get a more detailed guide on how to open a Facebook page, check out our post here.
2. Get Customers to Like Your Business Page
Make people to like your page by telling them the benefits of your products and services. Give them updates about your business page. You can attract more customers by researching on customers that are particular to your brand niche. You can do this through demographics (age, location, interests), data analytics or following market trends.
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Add your business page to all your marketing channels and materials. These channels can include other social media platforms, business cards, websites and email signatures. This helps to increase your Facebook likes. You can get more followers through your customers, friends and page visitors.
Employ customers that engage with your brand to like your business page. You can offer them rewards in the form of discount on products, coupons or making a product free for them. Implement the use of a pop-up box on your website. This would ask people to like your Facebook page before or after they have made a purchase.
Increase your brand online presence by engaging in conversations, posting on groups or pages specific to your niche. This makes potential customers to notice your brand. You can also answer questions about updates on products and services to direct customers to your page and like it.
Share interesting and informative contents that will engage your customers. Articles that are especially informative and relevant to your customers. This increases the likelihood of returning customers. Post original contents in the form of videos, quotes, reviews and customer photos. This makes your brand relatable and easy to engage with.
Create surveys, run polls, ask questions about your business products and services. Through responses, it is easy to get customers perception about your brand and where you can improve your marketing campaigns. Also, asking about trending topics, events, a product or holidays ensures that your customers remain engaged with you. The more a customer answers questions about your brand, the more likely they are to remain an engaging customer.
Utilize the Facebook live video option to stream original contents for your audience. This allows them to get in on the action. This gives your customers a feel of behind the scenes moments and makes you more trustworthy and relatable.
3. Optimize the Use of Facebook Insights
Review and get a report on how well your customers are engaging with you through Facebook Page Insights. You can use Facebook Insights to schedule and boost posts to broaden your Facebook’s page reach. Use this to feature on Facebook to reach a huge base of target customers.
Facebook insights can help to track which post performance is doing better than the others. This metrics shows how well you are engaged with your page followers. Take note of the posts that have the most engagements (likes, comments, shares). Make sure you tailor your marketing campaigns on Facebook around this type of post. More so, keep track of the time when most of your followers are active. This will enable you to post the contents at the right time.
The wonderful thing about Facebook is that you can schedule your posts. It helps you maintain an online presence on Facebook. Therefore, creating contents for the week wouldn’t take more than an hour or two once a week. Schedule posts for at least three times in a week. In cases where you don’t have time, you can employ the use of expert agencies like WeDesign, a digital marketing agency.
4. Host/ Participate in Events
Create an event page where you can host webinars or be a speaker on topics relating to your niche. You can invite friends and people from groups that you are involved in to attend your event. You can ask your followers to share your business events or posts to their network. This will pave way for your contents to reach new customers and for free too!
5. Provide a Lot of Value for Free
This might sound counter-intuitive, but providing free advice, tips, and value will attract a lot of clients to you. Providing free value to your followers will position you as an authority figure in your field. It will in turn improve your trust rating. Not everyone that consumes your free value will be able to implement it effectively. Some of them will lack the required expertise so they’ll trust you to do it for them.
In summary, it is true that Facebook has reduced the organic reach of business to less than 10% of their followers. Therefore brands need to leverage on ads to have more reach. However, as we have highlighted above, small businesses can use these tactics to advertise for free on Facebook. From opening a business page, to getting followers, to posting captivating contents and to engaging with your customers. You have to identify the right steps to implement if you want to advertise for free on one of the most popular social media platforms.