Facebook, now Meta, remains one of the best ways to build your custom audience, raise brand awareness – and make more sales.

Here are some tips to make better use of the world’s most popular social media platform.

1. Prioritize Your Business Objectives.

Every brand on Facebook is on Facebook for one reason – to (eventually) get more business. Different brands will have different objectives, such as:

• Driving in-store sales;
• Increasing online sales;
• Launching a new product;
• Building awareness; or
• Promoting a mobile app.

Even with these objectives in mind, there are a few stepping stones that precede turning fans into customers. If you want customers you have to first:

1. Build an audience;
2. Drive inbound traffic to your website;
3. Turn that traffic into qualified leads; and then
4. Nurture those leads into customers.

2. Build Your Facebook Audience

To grow your Facebook fan base, you need to make your Page and your posts as discoverable as possible both online and off. No one can connect with you on Facebook if they don’t know you exist.

5 ways to get noticed.

1) Make Sure Your Page Is Properly Filled Out With Searchable Information.

After you’ve created your Facebook page, make sure the About section of your Page includes:

1. An overview of what your business has to offer;
2. A link to your website; and
3. Any other information that will help prospects understand your business better.

2) Invite Existing Contacts To Like Your Page.

Chances are you already have existing customers, friends, and family who would be more than willing to connect with your business on Facebook if you simply asked them to. Whether in person, via email, or via Facebook, try asking for Likes (fans) and positive reviews. Within the Page Manager section of your page under the “Build Audience” menu, you have the option to invite your personal Facebook friends to like the page, share your page with your Facebook friends through the News Feed, or upload a list of email contacts to encourage existing contacts to connect. Use one or more of the three options as long as you’re cautious about overpromoting to uninterested connections.

3) Incorporate Facebook Into Your Online And Offline Communication Channels.

Making your Facebook Page as discoverable as possible includes promoting your Facebook presence using what online and offline marketing channels you already have, and removing any barriers for existing contacts to like your Page. If you have a physical storefront, place stickers in your front windows promoting your Page and include your Facebook URL on your receipts. If you have a website, blog, or email newsletter, utilize Facebook’s various social plugins – especially the Like Button or Like Box – to get people to like your Page on the spot and without having to head over to Facebook.com.

4) Create Value.

Creating value really comes into play with the content you create and share with your fans and how you interact with them (more on that later). If you’re in tune with your buyer personas, you’ll have a good idea what types of content to publish. If not, or if you just need some inspiration, consider spending a week taking note of anything in your own News Feed that compels you click, comment, or share. What inspired you? Use your observations to inform future posts.

5) Pay For New Likes (fans) Using Facebook Advertising

One of the ad types that Facebook offers is a “Page Like Ad” that contains a call-to-action to “Like Page,” and can appear in the News Feed as a page post or as a display ad on the right hand column of the News Feed. If you’ve exhausted your existing contacts and want to reach people who don’t know about your Page yet, you can use Facebook’s granular targeting capabilities to reach your ideal buyer persona(s) and spur audience growth.

To give you an idea of what a “Page Like Ad” looks like in the News Feed, here’s an example from Twix. (We’ll also talk more about how to bolster your organic Facebook efforts with ads later).

3. Build Your Facebook Audience By Making Your Page As Discoverable As Possible, By Encouraging Your Existing Contacts To Like Your Page, And By Advertising.

When it comes to Facebook, we focus first on creating useful content (like blog posts, presentations, templates, and ebooks) that our audience or marketers will find valuable.

All this content creation arms our social media manager with a library of resources to promote in unique ways on Facebook.

We use Facebook to drive traffic to landing pages where we can convert visitors into leads.

Without creating content aimed at solving problems for marketers, we’d simply have nothing interesting to post or advertise on Facebook, and we sure as heck wouldn’t generate any leads!

4. Champion Value Creation: What Content To Create & Share On Facebook

To attract customers, you can’t only post sales-driven content.

The key to generating leads on Facebook is to post a variety of content that aligns with goals other than generating leads or driving sales. Aiming for goals like reach, awareness, buzz, customer satisfaction, and engagement (comments, likes, shares) are just as important as rigid lead gen or sales goals. They’re the stepping stones to what you really want: more business.

5. Maximize Customer Acquisition With Advertising

Facebook is evolving to become more of a paid marketing platform than an organic one. A brand’s ability to reach their fan base organically has diminished as more brands and content compete to appear in users’ News Feeds.

At any given moment, there are approximately 1,500 News Feed stories competing against one another. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes only about 300 – one fifth – of them. The brands that want to get noticed have to pay to play.