3 essential Facebook business marketing tools

September 29, 2016: Facebook now has 4 million business advertisers, according to published reports. What’s truly remarkable is the fact that the network crossed the 3 million advertiser threshold back in March.

Put another way, that’s more than 5,000 businesses joining Facebook each day.

What businesses new to Facebook need to understand

If you’re a new arrival on Facebook and want to achieve some business goals there, you need to know a hard truth right off the bat: organic reach (the ability to get your marketing messages out in front of people) is effectively dead on the network.

Today it’s practically impossible to get many people – even those people who’ve already opted into your messaging – to see your content without paying Facebook a carrying charge (Facebook calls this a “boost”) for each article of content you want to promote. Facebook has – for financial reasons of its own — progressively reduced organic reach to a level somewhere below 2 percent. In other words, if you have 1,000 following your Facebook Company Page, only 20 of them will see anything you post.

The painful — but unavoidable — truth is that if you want to achieve any kind of marketing impact on Facebook, you’ll have to pay for it.

The good news is that Facebook has some terrific tools for businesses with budgets — even modest ones – that can make the clicks you buy go a long, long way.

Here are some of our favorite Facebook business tools:

Facebook Lead Ads

In October of 2015, Facebook nodded to the B2B community when it rolled out Leads as a dedicated business objective within its ad console, and a new type of ad designed expressly for lead gathering. Lead Ads are powerful, flexible, and easy to configure. In fact, if your creative is already done, it’s likely that you can get one up and running in about 15 minutes.If you’re a business whose main goal for being on social media is to increase the number of qualified prospects in your pipeline, Lead Ads should be the first ad format you test.

Here’s an article that will get you started with Facebook Lead Ads:

https://didit.com/build-a-facebook-leads-ad-campaign-in-7-easy-steps/

Facebook Slideshow Ads

On Facebook, visual content rules, and video content absolutely soars. Facebook Slideshow ads provide a quick-and-easy way for businesses – especially SMBs who don’t have a library of high-quality video content – to create attractive, movie-like ads, complete with sound, in just a few minutes. The only thing that’s required is between 3 and 7 high-quality still images (Slideshow ads also support video if that’s available).

Although the results won’t win you any Clio Awards, they’re perfectly adequate for many small business marketing applications.

Here’s a quick tutorial on Slideshow Ads that will help you get them up and running in no time:
https://didit.com/facebook-slideshow-ads-tweaked/

Facebook Custom Audiences

Many businesses have lists of their customers, prospects, and those who’ve already opted into their marketing in some way (for example e-mail newsletter subscriber lists). This is extremely valuable data for business marketing purposes, and Custom Audiences, which Facebook invented in 2012 – will put it to work. For example, a retailer may already possess lists of people who have products or downloaded an app. A B2B marketer likely owns lists of qualified prospects who’ve attended webinars, downloaded e-books, or performed other positive actions. Each of these groups can be marketed to with very specific messaging. You can also create “lookalike” audiences with characteristics similar to those in your email lists to extend your reach to those who – while outside your network of friends, fans, and prospects – are nonetheless likely to respond to what you do or sell.