12 Pro Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

2. Learn from your competitors

If you’re selling something online, you’ve got to check out your competitors. Aside from knowing who you’re competing with, you can assess the landscape and see where and how you fit in. 

Look at their brand pages across all platforms to help you decide where to invest your time and focus. You should assess the quality of the content on their pages. You can see how regularly they post and browse the interactions they have with their followers in the comments. 

Go down a rabbit hole and look at their follower profiles to get a sense of what their interests are. Look at the pages they like and the brands they follow.

Analyzing your competitor’s reviews and how they respond to them can also share a lot about how they operate. 

Pro tip: Read between the lines. Your competitor's negative reviews can highlight a way to improve on something they aren't getting right. It could be their packaging, their service, or a feature that doesn’t work - it tells you how you can fill a gap in the market.

After some time spent ‘profiling’ (more snooping), you should have a good sense of who is doing well and who isn’t. Your successful competitors show you the standards to meet - this is what you’re up against, and something they’re doing is working.

The competitors who aren’t doing so well tell you an equally valuable story. They show you what not to do if you read between the lines. 

You should combine all these learnings into your Facebook marketing strategy. 

Extra pro tip: Add your closest competitor pages to ‘Pages to watch’ in your Page Insights. This lets you spy on their Page performance against yours. You can see their posting frequency, number of Page likes, and any changes in that number. You can also look at their posts to see what worked.

Go to Meta Business Suite, then “Insights,” and click “Benchmarking.” Then, click “Businesses to watch.”

Here, your business is pinned to the top of the list, and you can add other Facebook Pages to monitor—as long as you have followed them. Click on the “Add Businesses” button to add a new one.

You can then search for the businesses you want to add to your list.

3. Create a Facebook Page

Once you know what you’re up against and who you want to sell to, you should create a Facebook Page for your brand. You may even already have one. 

If you do, this should serve as a reminder to update it. 

When creating a Facebook Page for your business, you should provide as much info as possible to optimize it. The more fields you can fill out with searchable information, the better. This is one way you can attract new customers organically.

You should also use this as an opportunity to grow your brand awareness. Adhere to your brand guidelines on your cover photo and use your icon or logo as the profile image.

Beyond the Facebook Page, there are additional Facebook tools you should use to market your small business on the platform.

Meta Business Suite helps you manage publishing your content and admin access to your Page, while Meta Business Manager lets you manage your entire business on Meta. 

If ads are your end goal, you should set this up properly. Don’t waste your time trying to manage ads from the Business Suite. Once you’ve set up your Business Manager, you can create a Meta ad account.

4. Keep on posting quality content

In content marketing, quality and consistency are equally important. You can’t have one without the other. 

If you’re posting consistently but the quality of your content is below par, it’s not going to help you.

And if you’re posting excellent content once in a blue moon, the algorithm won’t show it to as many people as if you were posting regularly.

Posting consistently can be a stumbling block for many people because it’s hard work! 

Shoutout to all my social media manager peeps out there.

Luckily, Meta’s Business Suite includes the Planner tool for scheduling your posts, stories, and reels on Facebook, Facebook Groups, and Instagram.

This lets you schedule your posts in advance and do them in batches weekly, monthly, or however you prefer to work. You can see your social media calendar in real time across Meta’s platforms, making it easy to spot content gaps.

Pro tip: Think twice before sharing someone else's link. If you can post directly from your Page instead of linking out to the original poster, do it. Otherwise, you're helping their post's performance, not your own.

5. Focus on building relationships with your audience

The thing about great advertising is that it doesn’t feel like advertising.

Social media platforms are where you encounter the bulk of your potential customers. How you interact and engage with them makes a difference in how your brand is perceived online. 

Try not to be too salesy - be relatable and personable. In a world of bots, AI software, and apps, Facebook is where your humanity is valued. Be authentic, be yourself, and don't be shy about sharing real photos.

Start meaningful conversations and speak to people as if you understand their pain points and are here to help them solve a problem because you are.

Your word choice matters, and for the love of all things sacred, DON’T USE ALL CAPS!!!

Be responsive to messages and comments. The longer you leave a message, the colder your potential customer, follower, or fan will become.

Pro tip: When you engage with your potential customers on social media, they are more likely to leave a positive review if they buy from you. Everyone wins.

6. Create eye-catching content and focus on videos

As a lantern attracts bugs, the content you share is what pulls Facebook users to your business Page. Creating thumb-stopping content is key to your success at advertising a small business on Facebook. Professional-looking content is a must.

It’s how you stand out amongst the crowd. 

Video content is where it’s at in 2024 - creating more stories, reels, and video posts is a surefire way to boost interest in your brand. Plus, video ads are a great way to market your business on Facebook.

Pro tip: Add captions to your videos because most people watch with the sound off, and you want to make sure the hard of hearing are included.

Luckily, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to content creation tools. Here are some of my top software picks:

• As a starting point, you can do a lot with Canva. You can create posts and videos, resize them for different platforms, and add text and music to your videos. You also have access to their stock photos and videos on their free plan, and their Pro plan is affordable.
• To create high-quality videos from scratch, you can use Fliki.ai or Animoto. Clipchamp is a web-based free video editor with a drag-and-drop editor.
• Invideo.io is a software solution that creates AI faceless YouTube videos from an idea. It’s easy to use and has no steep learning curve. 
• Use Pexels or Unsplash for free stock photos and videos to supplement your own content.
• For copywriting help, you can use tools like ChatGPT or Copy.ai. Make sure that you are detailed in your prompt and include what type of copy you’re writing so you get the most out of the tools. 

Pro tip: You don’t need to hire a full creative team or video production crew to get started! A lot of this content creation can be affordably outsourced (Upwork, Fiverr, or our very own Sparkle.)

7. Start a Facebook group and share your page on other groups

Building a community online is an excellent way to grow your audience. You can create a Facebook group relating to your niche and encourage people to share their stories. Sparking these conversations helps boost your authority. 

Joining similar groups and existing communities helps increase your reach. The best part is that these people are probably already interested in what you offer. It’s also a great way to get to know your audience and build relationships with them. 

Pro tip: Share your Facebook Page on your group and other groups you’ve joined to advertise your business. Just be sure to stick to the group rules when it comes to promotion - each group has different requirements.

8. Host giveaways and contests

To get the word out about your small business, you can host giveaways and contests with your Facebook followers. These drive engagement on your Page, increasing visibility and boosting brand awareness. 

As a small business owner, you know that you need to spend money to make money. 

However, you can be smart about how you leverage these situations to create a win-win situation for everyone. 

For example, you can encourage users to create content and post it on your Page to enter the contest. A content trade is a great way to balance out the cost of the giveaway. User-generated content is a powerful tool to improve your business reputation. However, you must make sure you’re adhering to Facebook’s guidelines on contests.

Competitions and giveaways can generate a lot of hype and encourage people to tag their friends and spread the word. However, keep the entry requirements simple so that you don’t make it a chore.

Contests are also great content creation opportunities. You can create hype and winner announcement posts and share unboxing videos - and even a review post from the winner once they’ve sampled your product.

Pro tip: Turn your lucky draw into content and host it live to drive engagement! You can use a random name picker to choose the winner and Facebook Live to announce it on your Page. 

9. Reuse content you create for other platforms

In the biz, we call this content repurposing or content multiplication. This is the principle of fully leveraging your content by adapting it to different formats to suit various platforms.

For example, you could start with a blog post for your website. From it, you can write a short and punchy tweet. Add an image and hashtags for Instagram. Then, you can flesh out your idea into a longer caption with the image for Facebook.

You could create a video on the same post idea to share as an Instagram story, reel, or on TikTok. You could also create a longer video for YouTube.

Then, you could use the audio for a podcast. The list goes on!

If you’re smart about how you approach your content, you can ensure that you get the most out of your original piece. Content repurposing lets you stretch it across platforms, making it consumable in different ways. Doing this is also great for SEO, which boosts your visibility over time.

Pro tip: Facebook is a great way to disseminate links back to your brand on other platforms. For example, you could share your products and content from your website, blog articles, YouTube videos, and more. Sharing these links provides more ways for people to discover your brand, and it’s great for SEO.

10. Highlight business milestones

Honey, unless you share your successes, no one else will know. 

Building a business is hard work, and every milestone should be celebrated - publicly! 

Capture the moment and share it on your social media platforms. This will tell your audience you’re relevant and show them you’re on the right track. Engaging your community with these types of posts provides social proof of your business. 

Often, before making a purchase, customers vet the business on social media. When these milestones are discoverable, they help strengthen trust in your brand. This helps them decide to buy from you.

Sharing your growth with your community builds trust and forms connections with your audience. People look at brand interactions with followers for an indication of how the business operates. So, you’ve got to share your wins. 

It's time to cozy up, get personal, and share what it’s like to be a small business owner. Nowadays, people care more about supporting the little guy than the corporations. Show them what they’re supporting.

Pro tip: Sharing great customer reviews provides social proof - the psychological phenomenon of “If they’re buying or doing it, I should do or buy it too.” Plus, they make excellent Facebook ads, so you should collect them 😉

11. Run Facebook ads to reach a larger audience faster

It’s no secret that your Facebook Page followers don’t see all your posts. 

The average reach of an organic Facebook post varies between 1% and 2.2%. It’s a sad number, really. Knowing this, you can appreciate how long it takes to grow a social media presence.

You can achieve it this way, but expect slow results. Meanwhile, running Facebook ads sure does speed up the process of building your audience.

Facebook ads let you specify the interests, behaviors, and demographics of the audience you want to target, making it an efficient way to find your tribe in terms of time, effort, and cost.

Nowadays, advertising a small business on Facebook is so much more than just the Facebook platform. Your ads display across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the Audience Network. 

You can choose from 6 campaign objectives to achieve your ad goal and tons of ad types to suit your audience.

It’s important to know the difference between boosting your posts, creating Page ads, and using the Meta Ads Manager.

Boosting a post lets you boost existing content from your Page but doesn’t offer the same level of ad customization as the Meta Ads Manager.

Creating an ad from your Facebook Page gives you a few more options, like advertising an event or promoting your Page. However, the ad options here are still limited, so you won’t get the most value.

By using the Meta Ads Manager, you can create any ad that Meta has to offer with zero restrictions. You have much more control and can manage your ads more effectively.

Pro tip: Set up a Business Manager account for full control of your business on the Meta platform. You can create ad accounts, assign admin access, manage all your assets and billing, and configure reports from one place.

12. Test, analyze, and optimize

Anyone spending time, energy, and money on advertising must analyze the results of their efforts.

You should monitor the performance of your content and ads to see what resonates with your audience and generates engagement and sales!

The formula for success here has already been proven, so we have a blueprint to work from.

Test your creatives

You can’t predict the outcome of your creative concept to hit your audience the same way every time. The best approach is to test your ad creatives. If you’re running ads, you should test different creative variations of your images, videos, and copy to see what works best. 

We have an article with guidelines for Facebook ad creatives with everything you need to factor into designing winning ads.

Pro tip: Browse the Madgicx Ad Library for inspiration on your next ad. You can browse by brand, category, ad format, and platform, so you never run out of ad ideas. Try it for FREE.

Test your audiences

You should also test different audiences to see which ones are more profitable. By trying different audiences, you can learn more about your customer profiles and uncover new audiences you didn’t think of before. 

You can also test audience segments and audience types, plus you can create brand-new audiences based on the ones that drive the best results. 

Analyze performance

Then, you analyze your results once your campaigns have gathered enough data and combine your learnings to inform your next campaign, so you improve every time. 

You may notice that one call to action works better than another or you get more signups when you use an image with a person in it. You may discover that your single-image ad performs better than the video you created, so it’s better to test and know for sure.

Only once you analyze the results, will you know how to proceed. 

Even if an ad performs badly, you learn what doesn’t work so well. You can’t lose.

Pro tip: Use Madgicx’s One-Click Report for centralized dashboard reporting for all your channels. With One-Click Report, you can pull data from Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Shopify, and TikTok. Plus, you can customize the report to show your most important metrics. Try One-Click Report for FREE.

Optimize your ads

Lastly, you optimize your ads for even better results. 

These optimizations can range from the time of day to location, budget, and more.

Here's an example. If you see your ad is doing well in Alaska and not so well in Hawaii, you can pause your ads showing in Hawaii so you don’t waste your ad budget unnecessarily. 

Additionally, if you find that your targeting isn’t attracting the right type of person, you can make adjustments to improve this.

You can make these optimizations manually on Facebook or use Madgicx to do it all for you. Madgicx does the heavy lifting - it helps you test creatives and audiences easily, and the AI Marketer analyzes your ad account daily.

It presents your ad account data in a meaningful way and tells you what to do next to optimize your ads by identifying weaknesses and spotting opportunities.

Optimization is a “lather, rinse, repeat” process that ensures you improve - the only thing that may fluctuate is your creativity 💡

Wrapping up

It’s plain to see that advertising your small business on Facebook has got to be on your to-do list this year. You don’t need to have a lot of money to start, and there are plenty of affordable and free tools available to help you do it well. 

The only thing left to do is to start. 

If you’re crazy about great results in record time, use Madgicx as your Facebook advertising tool of choice. You can go from inspiration to launch in no time at all. Give Madgicx a whirl.