Having a hard time keeping up with Facebook?
You're not alone.

Welcome to the Facebook Marketing Mini-Series page! Below you'll find tips to help you achieve Facebook quick wins that will optimize your current marketing efforts.

Quick Tip #1:

The below might seem basic but are important for all retailers to know to correctly use Facebook, and to save time.

If you have two business pages, or you have a personal profile acting as a business page AND you have a separate business page, you can combine these into one page. Your Likes will merge together, or if you have a personal profile you’ll migrate it to a business page, and your friends will become Likes. So, you won’t lose your audience, but the content will not move over so keep that in mind. When you Migrate and/or Merge, Facebook will share with you what will and won’t transfer over, so make sure you know this before making the move. To Migrate a personal profile to a business page click here and to Merge two business pages click here.
To save time sharing to your page and to quickly respond to people commenting on your page and posts, download the Facebook Page Manager application to your smartphone. This is not the general Facebook app, the Page Manager is specifically for business pages. You’ll have access to your page for posting, view Insights (the pages analytics), respond as the page to comments, get page Notifications, schedule posts and more. Click here to download the app for iOS and click here to download for Android.

Quick Tip #2:

Facebook created templates for business pages. They are:

Services
Business
Venues
Nonprofit
Politicians
Restaurants & Cafes
Shopping
Standard

Is your page set up with the right Template?

If you’re not sure go to your page, click on Settings in the top right, then click on Edit Page. The first option you’ll see on that screen is Templates, and click the Edit button if you’re not seeing the right one that best fits your business.

If you’re a retailer, I recommend choosing the Shopping template. It’s designed to showcase products and make it easy for people to shop online.

Facebook is always adding new features and tools for businesses to market and grow exposure and sales.

Local businesses are getting extra attention now and in the coming months, so if you own a local retail store, stay tuned for some exciting tools to help you grow your business and tools to help you track in-store traffic generated by Facebook.

Quick Tip #3:

The number one question I get asked by retailers: “How many times a week should we post on social media?”

For Facebook, I recommend no less than once a week and no more than 2-3 times a day.

Daily posting on Facebook is starting to be too much because of how many users are on Facebook (more than 2 billion people!) and more and more businesses are advertising. So, unless you’re posting high-quality content every day that your audience loves, try to scale back a little and use the right Facebook Ads and post types to get the most out of each post.

Following this formula, typically posting 2-4 times a week works best in today’s Facebook marketing world, using video and photo posts and Facebook ads.

But here’s the deal when it comes to how much you should post, and this applies to any social media site, not just Facebook….

Post as much as you can come up with, that your perfect customers will love and act on. Take a little more time to create a meaningful post that tells a story, uniquely showcases products, provides helpful tips and advice; don’t just post all the time, spamming about your sales and products.

Have a conversation, ask questions, humanize content and be your authentic self through every post.

Make sense?

Quick Tip #4:

Two tools on Facebook that are increasing businesses event attendance and building stronger relationships with customers are Event Pages and Groups.

If you have in-store events, do you set up Event Pages on Facebook? I hope your answer is, ‘heck yes’!

There are two specific reasons I recommend setting up Event Pages on Facebook.

With Event pages, people can click the “Going” button to basically RSVP for the event. They can invite their friends and they’ll get reminders of the upcoming event so they don’t miss it. You can advertise your Event page to get additional exposure and attendees, and you can post on the Events Timeline to update attendees about your event, and remind them why they must go. I highly recommend you promote your event, and you post on the Timeline leading up to your event for optimal Facebook Event Page success. Make sure you’re focusing on warm audiences when advertising events.
Within the Facebook Mobile App under Explore, and on Facebook’s site under Events, Facebook users can see events their friends have invited them to, upcoming events they’re RSVPed to on Facebook and they can ‘Discover Events Near You’, finding things to do today, tomorrow or this weekend in their city or town. This is a free way a business like yours can show up to people who are in your area, but you have to create an Event Page to show up here. Pretty cool, right?

Try it out now – click here to explore the events that are happening in your area, you just might find a fun new thing to do this weekend.

Quick Tip #5:

Today’s consumer expects instant everything – instant access, instant answers, instant gratification. And, more and more consumers, especially Millennials are turning to social media sites like Facebook to ask questions about products.

To provide instant answers without being tied to Facebook 24-7, set up Response Assistant within your page settings by clicking on Settings, Messaging on the left and click to “Jump to Section” next to Response Assistant.

I highly recommend you have the assistant turned on, so when someone messages your business page, they’re automatically replied to. Here’s an example of the info I recommend including in your response.

“Hi there, thank you for your message. If this is urgent, please call the store at [enter phone]. You can also email us at [enter email address]. Our store hours are [enter hours]. We’ll respond to your message within 24 hours. Thanks again and enjoy the rest of the day!”

If you sell online, you might also want to include a link to your site to a FAQ page or encourage them to shop online.

With the above example, you’re giving additional contact info which will be appreciated, especially if you don’t respond quickly to Facebook messages or you’d prefer for people to call you. You’re also providing store hours to help manage their expectations of when you’ll respond. Finally, by giving a timeframe of when you’ll respond, like within 24 hours, you’re again managing their expectations.

Now it’s your turn! Head on over to your page to make sure the Response Assistant is turned on, and that you’re providing all the necessary information to be as helpful as possible, instantly.

Quick Tip #6:

Are you investing in Facebook ads? Have you hit the ‘Boost’ button to give an extra push to a post about a sale or new items?

The majority of retailers I speak to are actively boosting, spending $2 a boost to over $100. But did you know there are many other types of ads you can run on Facebook, other than just boosting?

And did you know these ads are much more effective at increasing exposure on Facebook and driving traffic to your store and website?

Let's focus on one ad that is performing extremely well for local retailers, and I call it the Most Recent Ad.

The Most Recent Ad promotes your most recent post, only to your local Likes. The reason this works is, the people that have liked your page want to hear from you – they want to see your posts in their Newsfeed. They have probably shopped at your store, have a friend that likes your page and/or love your products.

But with Facebook’s algorithm, only about 1-6% of your Likes are seeing what you post. By advertising your most recent post, just to these people, you help more of them see what you’re posting, and your cost is typically lower because this audience Likes your page and wants to see what you’re posting.

At Social Edge, we run these ads for many retail stores, and it’s been the reason our retail clients have engagement rates of 15-25% on their posts; versus 1-6%. It’s the reason our retailers are selling out of items when posting them to Facebook, the reason for busier events and the reason for more traffic and sales.

Click here if you'd like to learn more about having Social Edge manage your Facebook Ads.

Quick Tip #7:

Do you ever wonder, “is Facebook actually doing anything for my business?” If so, you’re not alone.

The truth is, social media can be hard to track results. But so is tracking a radio ad, TV commercials, newspaper and magazine ads.

There are several tools you can use to track social media results. Facebook Insights, Facebook Ad Reports, and Facebook Offline Conversion Tracking are just a few specifically for Facebook.

But what metrics are meaningful?

A few metrics you should be monitoring are:

Store traffic
Conversions (online and offline)
Cost per action
Engagement

Let’s focus on the metric, store traffic. How are you tracking in-store traffic?

Are you and your employees asking every single person what brought people in? Where are you storing this information?
Are you running promotions on Facebook where people can save $ if they mention Facebook?
Are you giving Offers that people can conveniently bring in on their phones?
Are you promoting a specific line, which sales are up for (I call this product matching – matching Facebook posts and ads to in-store sales).

You have to ask these questions and do the research to see if what your posting and advertising is driving in traffic. Then you need to store this information somewhere, like in your POS system or even manually on a tracking spreadsheet on your computer or printed out in the store’s back office.

Most retailers I work with are not following these steps because they forget or it takes more time and is an extra step. But, it’s worth it! If you’re spending your time and money on Facebook, let’s make sure it’s actually supporting your business. And if it’s not, you need to try new things until you start seeing traffic.

Quick Tip #8:

I hope you’ve learned at least one new thing with this mini-series and have implemented it into your Facebook marketing!

Our last quick tip is an important one, and it's about selling on Facebook.

Did you know there are several ways you can sell your products on Facebook?

You can do so through a regular post on your page, by tagging products in a picture or video, through the Shop tab (basically a store built into your Facebook page), and there are many 3^rd party apps.

If you’re wanting to take your selling on Facebook to the next level, try these two tips.

Pick one item, or a collection of items, and post about them in one post using video or photos, sharing the benefits of the item, the price and tell people how to buy (come in with urgency “only 3 left!”, call us listing your phone number, “comment below to buy/hold it,” etc.) This is the simplest way to sell, it’s just through posting but you’re being strategic on the item(s) you’re posting about, and how your posting (photo, video, copy).
Take this a step further and tag the products inside the post. After you post the photo or video, click Edit and select “Tag Product”. Choose a product you already have in your Shop, or create a new one. To see this in action, click here to see my post on Facebook, that has a product tagged (it says “Products shown:”). Pretty cool, right?! By tagging a product, you can either send people to your website to buy, if you sell online, or you can create a Shop tab on your page and sell directly through Facebook. Facebook does not take a fee, but you’ll need a payment gateway like PayPal or Stripe, which will charge a fee for each transaction.

Finding these tips helpful? Looking for a complete Facebook Marketing training course made for retailers? Click here to learn more about our course, and get instant access today!