We live in a world where social media platforms and digital tools have revolutionized life as we know it. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are not just for communication, but they also act as marketing and promotional tools for brands to advertise products and interact with consumers.

Out of all these sites, Facebook stands out the most. With 1.73 billion daily users and a robust suite of complementary apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, it’s possible to launch a business and make it successful.

Interestingly, 23.8% of all Facebook users are between 18-24 years of age, 71% are college graduates, and around 4.8% of people are senior citizens. So there is no doubt that you'll find your target audience there.

Businesses can enhance their followers' user experience with 360-degree videos, chat-bot messengers, and integrations with other social media platforms.

To help you make full use of Facebook's immense potential, we have compiled a guide on how Facebook marketing has evolved over the years and ways companies can take advantage of these.

Here are some Facebook marketing strategies that we will cover:

How to create attention-grabbing Facebook ads
The idea of a Facebook shop and how to integrate it into your business
The essentials of creating Facebook cover photos
How to set up a business event on Facebook for maximum exposure
Tips for using Facebook live

Tactic #1: Create Attention-Grabbing Facebook Ads

The number of users spell out a massive potential for marketers, making Facebook one of the best advertising platforms for all kinds of businesses. However, it’s organic reach has declined over the last few years and savvy marketers have turned to advertising on Facebook to get results.

There are mainly two types of ads that you can create with Facebook: Sponsored Ads and Right-hand column Ads.

Building Sponsored Ads

Facebook sponsored posts appear in your Facebook newsfeed and are ads that are paid by companies to "boost" in order to reach customers outside of their existing market segment. As organic reach on Facebook decreases and more and more businesses have started crowding out newsfeed, the need for having sponsored ads has been increasing.

It is a cost-effective way of increasing your reach and engagement. Here's an example of a sponsored post from Udemy that prompts users to sign up for a course:

The Right-Hand Column Ad

Right-hand column ads are more visually appealing than a sponsored ad. They appear smaller at the side of the screen so garner fewer conversions.

Check out this example of a right-hand column ad on a Facebook newsfeed:

Source: Facebook Business News — **Source:** **Facebook Business News**

Some basic strategies to create compelling ads also include:

Creating Targeted Ads

The best part about advertising through Facebook is that you can use pre-built Facebook ad templates to create specific ads for your target market. You can target your ads by:

Gender: allows you to specify their audience according to gender

Behavior: allows you to target audience through their past activities such as someone visiting your website or subscribing to your newsletter

Interests: group audiences according to their interest such as beauty or fitness

Connections: allows you to specify audiences who have liked your page or pages similar to you

An example of a targeted ad can be this video ad from Old Navy. The ad is targeted at consumers who have listed 'fitness' as their interest in their Facebook profile. This way, Old Navy narrows down its audience and targets only potential leads.

Translating Your Brand Voice In Your Visuals

Every brand has a unique voice and persona that should be reflected through their visuals so that when users scroll through their Facebook feed, they can recognize your brand immediately.

For example, if your brand caters to the youth, try using popular slang in your copy to help your prospects relate to your products.

Think about the way your local spa or health resort advertises to their target market. They use a soft color palette, a serene tagline with photos of people relaxing and feeling their best.

Yoni Spa, an empowering, feminine retreat, utilizes a soft color scheme accompanied by powerful poetry on female strength. They know exactly who their target audience is and aren’t afraid to sell to them fearlessly. Their visuals reflect their brand's identity at one simple glance.

Source: The Creative Wilderness — **Source:** **The Creative Wilderness**

Your graphic designer plays an essential role in deciding the kind of graphics you should go for. But if your business is just starting up and hiring a dedicated designer isn’t feasible, our tools help you compose compelling imagery with pre-made Facebook ad templates.

Tactic #2: Tell Your Story Through Facebook Cover Photos And Videos

500 million viewers watch video content on Facebook daily, be it mobile devices or desktop.

Facebook cover photos and videos are designed to capture attention and prompt consumers to make a decision fast.

Aesthetic visuals let brands convey their message to their audience, and Facebook videos provide them an easy way to advertise their product. Surprisingly, Facebook cover videos and photos are relatively easy to make and can work across multiple devices.

Facebook Cover Photos

Your Facebook cover is not like any other post or picture that you upload on your website. Think of it as an identity for your Facebook page through which consumers will be directed to your website.

If you're confused on how to go about creating an interactive Facebook cover, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Match Your Website Branding

Since your Facebook cover is your brand's identity, the visuals you choose should complement your brand style and website. Try keeping your font styles and photography consistent for all your social media channels.

Chewy.com is a good example of a Facebook page that reflects the brand's identity through a combination of colors and a tagline. Looking at the cover, consumers can instantly guess that the brand is for a pet lover! Anyone directed to the website from the Facebook page can see the visual relationship between the two.

Communicate Your Brand's Purpose

Your Facebook cover photo is not only an opportunity for you to play around with your creativity but also provides you with a chance to show off what you do without being wordy!

For example, ModCloth's cover photo shows models wearing different dresses, skirts, and tops. The visuals portray that the brand sells all types of female clothing and highlights its accessories, tempting the audience to make instant decisions.

Their fun and trendy images make it easy for consumers to imagine how an item would look on them.

The second image shows the comments left by interested customers on the ModCloth Facebook cover photo.

Facebook Cover Videos

So now that you know how to create compelling Facebook cover photos, let's step it up a notch from here and see how you can create Facebook cover videos! You might be wondering why create cover videos when you can get the same result with a cover photo?

The truth is, nothing attracts your consumers better than moving images. Your cover photo might be attractive enough to grab their attention, but a short to-the-point video can convince the customer to make an actionable decision.

Facebook cover videos give you the chance to describe your business within 1-2 minutes that can leave your consumers excited enough to try your product or service. Biteable provides a good example of interactive Facebook video cover to show a trailer for their new services. The video is colorful, fun and visually engages the customer till the end.

If you'd like to make one of your own free Facebook cover videos, our online tool allows you to create a highly personalized cover video for maximum impressions!

Pro-tip: One thing to remember with both Facebook cover photos and videos is that it is usually challenging to pick the right size dimensions that maximize their aesthetic on both desktop and mobile devices.

Ideally, you should choose an image that is 828 x 315 pixels wide for desktop and 640 x 360 pixels wide for smartphone users.

Tactic# 3: Sell From Anywhere With Your Very Own Facebook Shop

Facebook Shop is the newest feature added to the Facebook app to make it easy for small businesses to set up an online store for customers to access Facebook and Instagram. Consumers can discover brands they love and have a seamless online shopping experience with just a few clicks.

Moreover, with the increasing trend of online shopping, most buyers find new products online while browsing their favorite sites, including Facebook. 60% of shoppers, who were online looking for a specific product, ended up buying new products.

Making a Facebook shop is relatively simple. With the help of a few tips and tricks, businesses can customize their shop's look and feel, choosing their colors, cover image, and logo to showcase their brand. It is a fantastic opportunity for brands looking to revamp their shop but couldn't do it due to budget constraints.

This means that any business, from a small scale operation to a global brand, can seamlessly shift their operations online as per their convenience.

Moreover, sellers can showcase a mix of products – from festive collections to specially curated brand designs and trendy items without worrying about space issues. The best part? Facebook analytics uses people's interests and recently searched items to show products and brands in their feed accordingly.

It's a win-win situation for both sellers and buyers!

Though this might be a different shopping experience, you can get creative with new product features and tools and set up a digital shop front for your customers on the go!

Get inspired for the season ahead with these few creative ideas and bolster your sales:

Create different categories for your products. Group them into seasonal collections, feel-good collections, collections according to their material (like fur collection or leather collection), so it becomes easy for your customers to navigate the online shop
Design your shop aesthetically, using visually attractive imagery and design elements that highlight your brand identity. It’s possible to customize your whole shop using professionally designed Facebook Ad templates
Drive discovery and get a global reach by integrating your online shop with Instagram tools
Add custom shopping engagement tools to your ad campaigns to target people who are browsing through the store and maybe confused about their purchase decisions
If you already own an ecommerce website, it is preferable to sync it with your Facebook shop. This will allow you to easily control inventory on both platforms from one place, reducing the pressure on admin and operations.
Connect your loyalty programs from your favorite brands to your Facebook account to track earned points and rewards

Tactic #4: 5 Effective Ways To Use Facebook Events For Your Brand

From upcoming events and global phenomena to discussions on social issues, 59% of US adults get their daily dose of news from social media sites. Facebook Events is one such feature that lets businesses spread awareness about their events or conferences, generate leads, and instill customer loyalty. With its interactive publishing features, Facebook lets marketers customize their content to fit their brand type and offer the audience a new kind of news each day.

Here are five ways of how your brand can use it to optimize customer satisfaction:

Give Your Event A Unique Name

Your Facebook event has more chances of standing out if it has a catchy, intriguing event name. Try to be creative with simple names like Starbucks did with their "Happy Hour" at Starbucks.

They renamed the event to "Frappy hour" – signifying a mixture of Frappuccinos and happiness.

Source: Sprout Social — **Source:** **Sprout Social**

Use Facebook's Recognized Venue Locations

It is easy to market events through Facebook events without providing location details to your audience. Facebook has the option of entering an exact address or venue name that is made easily visible to consumers.

Just start with typing a name, and Facebook can complete it with its automatic suggestions. And that's not all! When consumers hover over the location, Facebook will direct them to its official page with all the details.

Remember always to use an official Facebook listing as your venue as it renders credibility and recognition to your event page. Linking your event to that of the venue's page can also help promote your business in other niches.

Create An Attractive Event Image That Is Visible On All Devices

Your Facebook event images need to be appropriately sized to provide a visually stimulating experience to your audience, regardless of the device they use to view it.

These event photos should be compelling enough to make people want to find out more about the event. And the best way to optimize this experience is to ensure that the picture size is compatible across all devices.

If you're creating a company event, make sure that your company's logo, purpose, and name are visible on the image. Your brand colors and font style should also be consistent across all posts and events.

Partner With Co-Hosts

Co-hosts are partners that can make edits to your event and feature the event on their calendar. Your co-hosts can be your business partners, spouse (if it's a personal family event), or a friend (if you're hosting a friends' reunion).

For company-wide events, co-hosting your event with a well-established brand is a great way to expand your market reach. For a strong online presence, you can also co-host your event with social media influencers.

Use Keywords For Tags

Defining the kind of event you're having is essential for your audience to make sure they show up to the event instead of just marking it as "interested." Optimize your event by including relevant keywords from the tags section. Include as many related keywords as you can.

For example, if you're hosting a book club, you can include genres of a book as a tag to make your event visible to a broader audience.

The more tags there are, the more Facebook will recommend your event to users based on their interests and behaviors (discussed in the first section).

Tactic #5: Go Live On Facebook

Live broadcasters are all the rage now! A significant reason for the rise in live streaming is integrating social media platforms' algorithms with search queries made for live streaming sessions. Facebook was one of the first social media websites to adopt this feature of broadcasting a live video to your audience through your company's profile.

Marketers who have adopted the practice of conducting live sessions are seen reaping the benefits. Studies show that Facebook live videos receive three times more engagement than a traditional video. There has been an 8% increase in internet users for these live streaming services.

Additionally, companies also use live-streams to communicate with their audience or hold tutorials about their product or service. We recently started an ongoing series of livestreams, teaching viewers the basics of design elements.

Each live-stream covers a different design element. As the streams continue, each stream's expertise level keeps increasing - starting from the basic aspects of design to teaching the more advanced techniques.

This allows our videos to be accessible to a wide variety of audience, catering to all levels of expertise. Viewers can pick-and-choose whichever video they like to engage with.

As a marketer, if you're looking to increase engagement with your audience, raise brand awareness or get more leads, Facebook Live should be a must-have tool in your pocket!

Here are a few simple ways you can make your Facebook Live fun:

Have A Q&A Session During Your Live

Your interaction with customers doesn't have to be limited to comments, likes, or messages. It so happens that many messages are left unread, or if they are read, social media managers forget to acknowledge them.

A live video session allows an interactive session between owners and consumers where the latter can ask questions in real-time, getting instant replies. This increases the opportunity to engage with the audience at a time when they are hyped up.

Sephora is an excellent example of live video sessions where they share information about their lesser-known products and answer questions on the go.

You can also opt for a consistent series of Q&A on a specific day and time of the week. This prepares consumers in advance who can then send in prepared questions before-hand for you to answer, increasing engagement during sessions.

Partner With An Influencer From Your Niche

Co-marketing is a proven way of increasing engagement and tapping into a new customer market. Team up with a thought leader or a well-established influencer in the same industry as yours and organize a live session of chat and discussion through Facebook Live! Not only will a partnership increase your PR and relationships with other leaders in your industry, but it will also give your brand a chance to tap into the potential customer market.

For example, the Food & Wine Magazine hosted a Facebook Live where they had chef Marcela Valladolid create her favorite recipe from her cookbook. The live session allowed readers of the magazine and Valladolid's loyal followers to come together, resulting in free publicity and engagement for Valladoid's cookbook as well as tonnes of new followers for the Food & Wine Magazine's Facebook page.

When you host a live video on your Facebook page, you're showing your customers that you're willing to engage with them and provide them with valuable information.

Create An Interactive Facebook Live Banner

Having a huge list of followers or partnering with an industry leader will be of no use if you have nothing visual to attract your customers with. Don't under-estimate the power of aesthetics when it comes to marketing! You can make colorful, attractive Facebook banners for your marketing campaigns without having it on your budget. Use our free Facebook Live banner to create custom ads – or choose from various ready-made templates!

Wrapping-Up

As we have seen, digital marketing tools are essential for your advertising campaigns. Starting with Facebook, one of the oldest social media platforms, lets you render your brand’s aesthetic, visuals, and identity to create a compelling presence on it’s platform.

Use this to power your online marketing campaigns and target the right kind of people with Facebook’s proprietary tools and resources.

You can even take advantage of hundreds of professionally-designed templates for your live video, your event page or your very own Facebook shop!

Are you ready to take your marketing campaign to the next level? Time to take the trainer wheels off and get started!

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