Every day, Facebook helps hundreds of thousands of small businesses around the world to achieve their goals. Here are ten ways you can grow your business, starting today.
1. Start the conversation
What’s important to your customers? What engages them? Start the conversation and find out. Not only is engagement proven to make customers more likely to buy, it also helps brands build up a loyal community, keeping you in touch with what people think, want and buy. Fashion retailer iKRUSH keeps the conversation flowing on its popular Facebook Page, where it shares daily fashion tips, news and humour with a loyal fanbase .
2. Motivate people
Want people to follow your Page or buy your product? Give them a good reason to take action. Competitions and offers can help businesses reach wider audiences and gain new customers—often within a short period of time. Personalised gift site Merci Maman Boutique found that it could gain shares and new fans, then convert them to customers through Page posts featuring discount codes.
Happy customers are your ultimate business asset. By encouraging customers to share their feedback on your products and services, not only do you deepen engagement and build trust, you’ll also have the opportunity to reach wider audiences. Swedish fashion brandRockDenim.com found that adding the Reviews function to its Page had a knock-on effect on sales, with positive reviews encouraging web traffic and conversions.
4. Be a go-to place for great content
From restaurants to real estate, hobbies to holidays, every business has a wealth of information and inspiration to share. Sisters Anna and Clara, founders of homeware brand Søstrene Grene , share videos packed with crafting tips and ideas that keep audiences coming back for more. Great, informative content is a powerful way to connect.
5. Make customer service your thing
Great service sets businesses apart from the crowd and keeps customers loyal. Pages messagingis a quick and easy way to answer queries and stay in touch with customers. Visit your Page admin to set your query response time, which lets Page visitors know how quickly you typically answer queries.
6. Give video a try
With around 8 billion video views on Facebook daily, it’s clear that video is winning in the engagement stakes. Don’t be put off by big brands’ high budget productions, though; homegrown video can work just as well. A spur-of-the-moment iPhone video resulted in a huge sales spike when accessories retailer Krystellie filmed and posted a short how-to video on its hair extension products.
7. Use Insights to understand what works
Available to every Page is a whole treasure trove of valuable information, in the form of Insights. Here you can find out who’s looking at your Page, when and how. You can also see which types of content they engage with most, so that you can figure out what’s working best. Insights are also handy when you’re using Facebook Ads, because they can help you decide on relevant target audiences and match up Ad copy and creative according to what interests those audiences most.
8. Promote relevant content with target audiences
Mature skin cosmetics brand Look Fabulous Forever engaged its over-55 audience very successfully through its targeted Page posts and Ads.
9. Find new audiences
A loyal following is a great starting point for growth. You can find and reach new audiences who are exactly like the kinds of people who are already your customers. Custom and Lookalikeaudiences can be created from your existing customer data, meaning that you can reach people with an interest in your product or service easily. This makes advertising on Facebook less of a guessing game—and way more cost effective than traditional channels.
10. Turn fans into customers
Thanks to new Ad options and formats, it’s now even easier than ever to turn Page fans and website visitors into customers. Many small businesses have found success with Carousel Ads that allow a selection of products to be shown at once. Holiday rentals firm Fincallorca achieves high numbers of conversions at low cost by retargeting website visitors with Facebook Ads featuring the properties they’ve browsed previously.
For more inspiration and tips to get Facebook working for your business, visit the Small Business Store.
Not the most objective source > https://www.facebook.com/business/news/SMB-10-Ways
