Facebook Marketing: How to Market Your Business on Facebook

Facebook for Business is More Than Just Facebook Ads (Part 2 in a 9-Part Social Media Marketing Series)

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Philip Mandelbaum
06/23/2023

A hand holding up a smartphone with the Facebook app open, displaying a paid post from Northern Territory - Australia, where the photographer is standing, surrounded by high red rock walls

There are nearly five billion social media accounts worldwide; launched in 2004, Facebook alone has about three billion active users — or more than a third of the entire world population. Although the average consumer uses seven different social media platforms per month, US adults spend more time on Facebook than on any other social media platform, at 33 minutes per day. Facebook is the second most used app and the third most visited website that exists, and almost nine in 10 marketers used the social media app to promote their brand last year. In fact, Facebook accounts for 71.64% of all web traffic referrals from social media. (Twitter, in second place, accounts for 9.02%). Why?

In addition to being the favorite social networking site of the 35-44 demographic, Facebook ranks behind only Instagram for brand research — with more than half of all Facebook users using the social media platform to follow and research brands and products. Plus, if you’re looking to advertise (which you should be, by the way), Facebook ad costs are lower than Instagram, with the potential to reach 62.6% of Americans aged 13 or older. That’s nearly two thirds of all teenagers and the entire shopping population of the United States. Not to mention Facebook now includes Facebook Shops for selling your products directly from the platform.

Point blank: Social media is the best place for brands to connect with their target audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement and generate leads. And even with the rise of TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and Meta’s other social media app, Facebook remains an industry behemoth and a major social media marketing opportunity for any B2C brand.

A Facebook blue and white 3d rendering of a series of variously sized floating Facebook thumbs up icons, with a light blue background

What is Facebook?

Even today, FB is not optional. If you’re wondering how to use Facebook, you’re in luck: it’s relatively straightforward, with countless empirical case studies that demonstrate tried and true best practices. The most downloaded app of the 2010s, Facebook is a social networking and social media platform owned and operated by Meta, the same company behind Instagram. Like Instagram, Facebook is dynamically designed for use on desktops, tablets and smartphones; however, whereas Instagram is visually oriented, with most users more focused on browsing and scrolling than showcasing their own profiles, Facebook users use FB to connect — and compete — with family and friends, follow brands, and showcase themselves across their profile page, providing brands with more data about the values, sentiments, behaviors and demographics of their brand ambassadors, customers and prospects. For companies using Facebook for Business, your profile page could be seen as a third-party microsite; with nearly three billion active users, you may get more clicks here on your brand page than direct links to your website. With a brand Facebook page, there are even more customization and optimization options, including adding a store to sell your products directly from the app.

A view over the left shoulder of a person (who appears to be a young Asian woman with glasses) on their laptop looking at a photo of an Asian Facebook influencer

How do I use Facebook for marketing?

Nearly 20% of US consumers start their online shopping search on Facebook — more than on any other social network; only Amazon, Walmart.com, YouTube and Google initiate more online brand research and shopping experiences. And that’s not all: more than a third of Facebook users will make a purchase on Facebook in 2023 — as many as on TikTok, and more than on Instagram or any other social media app.

Facebook marketing is another term for Facebook for Business; it includes all the social media marketing strategies and tactics your brand employs specifically on Facebook to connect with your target audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement and generate leads.

Marketing on Facebook can (and usually should) include:

Organic content, including photos, videos, carousel posts, Lives, Reels, and Stories
Paid content, including boosted posts, Facebook campaigns, Messaging ads, Stories ads, and Shopping ads
Messenger chatbots and auto-responders
Branded Facebook Groups
Shopping tools, including the Shop profile tab, product catalog, product tags, live shopping, Facebook Checkout, and Shopping ads
Influencer marketing and user-generated content

A Black woman content creator looks through two ring lights at the back screen of a DSLR camera resting on a tripod, during a video recording session for a brand Facebook marketing campaign

What is a Facebook marketing strategy?

A Facebook marketing strategy includes your target audience(s), goals, KPIs, editorial plan, content calendar and content development and distribution processes and procedures, as well as the campaigns you’ll run and the AI and other martech you’ll use to achieve your goals. There are seven steps to developing and optimizing a Facebook marketing strategy that works.

7 Steps to Developing Your Facebook Marketing Strategy

1. Define Your Audience(s)

Here’s how to find yours:

Use your zero-, first- and third-party data to learn as much as you can about your existing customers, subscribers, website users and Facebook followers
Use any feedback your Facebook marketing managers and coordinators may have logged to identify gaps and opportunities
Use surveys and focus groups to learn more about what customers, prospects and the general public think of your brand, products/services, and Facebook presence
Develop user personas, including personal background, professional background, user environment, preferred content types, preferred devices, preferred communication methods, attitudes, interests, motivations, needs, goals and pain points, buying motivation(s), and buying scenarios
Map out the customer journey, identifying all the different paths a Facebook user might take toward making a purchase; the thoughts, feelings and actions of your prospects and customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle; and how you’ve been using Facebook to recruit, retain, upsell and/or partner with customers
Use a CDP and/or DXP to organize and manage all your customers and prospects, segment audiences based on your user personas, and improve the empathy and personalization exhibited in your marketing on Facebook

2. Establish Your Facebook Marketing Goals

To ensure clear direction for your Facebook marketing strategy:

Define goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (SMART)
Start with your overall business goals, proceed to your long-term strategic marketing goals, move on to your social media marketing goals, and conclude with your Facebook- and campaign-specific goals
Identify the social media marketing KPIs against which you’ll measure your Facebook campaign performance — found exclusively in the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
Outline your expectations for each stage of the customer journey

Two women track and field athletes in competition, mid-hurdle, with an almost angelic light around the women and a blur effect on the surroundings

3. Conduct a Competitive Analysis

To understand what your competitors are doing well or poorly on Facebook, and identify successful tactics you can incorporate into your social media strategy:

Use your SEO tool, apps like Glassdoor and the various social media platforms to identify your key competitors
Confirm the social media platforms used by your key competitors
Search your competitors’ names, account handles and relevant keywords on Facebook to determine what they’re sharing and how their audience and the public are responding (social listening)
Track your competitors’ Facebook performance, using your predefined KPIs
Track characteristics of your competitors’ behaviors on Facebook, including what, when and how often they post
Focus on your top five competitors, and audit their most popular and most engaged followers, as well as any influencers or users who generate content for their brand
Benchmark your Facebook marketing performance against the competition
Perform a SWOT analysis, determining your Facebook strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Identify gaps in your existing Facebook strategy
Strategize methods for addressing any gaps, weaknesses, threats or opportunities

4. Audit Your Facebook Account, Content and Campaigns

Once you’ve clarified who you’re targeting and what you hope to achieve with your marketing on FB, look back at what you’ve already created — and how it performed — to identify trends and determine what can and should be repurposed.

Start by asking yourself:

Which types of Facebook content have and have not worked?
Which types of Facebook campaigns have and have not worked?
Which of our user personas have been most and least engaged?
Which of our user personas have been most likely and least likely to convert to customers?
Who are our most and least valuable business and influencer partners? (Learn more about influencer marketing.)
How does our Facebook presence compare to that of our competitors?

Then, perform a Keep, Kill, Refresh on your Facebook content marketing and paid and organic campaigns, as follows:

Content

Delete any off-brand, inaccurate, stale or erroneous content (Kill)
Properly name, file and store any content that can be reused as is (Keep)
Optimize any content that could provide added value if updated and enhanced (Refresh)

Campaigns

Replicate any campaigns that performed particularly well (Keep)
Optimize any campaigns that could perform even better with behaviorally informed edits and enhancements (Refresh)
Archive any past campaigns that underperformed (Kill)

5. Outline Your Facebook Content Development and Distribution Responsibilities, Processes and Procedures

Before you begin planning and then creating custom content for Facebook, you need to secure buy-in from all parties on how your content will be produced and disseminated. Specifically:

Who are our Facebook content marketing strategists?
Who are our Facebook content creators? Writers? Graphic designers? Video editors?
Who are our partner content creators, including Facebook influencers, other brands, and customers who provide user-generated content?
Who are our Facebook content reviewers?
Who are our Facebook marketing managers?
Who are our Facebook marketing coordinators?
Who are our Facebook data and performance analysts?
How are the content themes and subjects determined?
What types of content are being created? And what unique step(s) does each type require?
How are deadlines determined?
At what cadence is the content released?
How is content posted? Do we use a social media marketing platform or other third-party AI-powered social media app? (I list my preferred social media martech solutions in The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.)
What type of project management style are we adopting (e.g., agile)?
What project management software are we using (e.g., JIRA, for agile)?

6. Develop Your Facebook Editorial Plan and Content Calendar

Finally, you can flesh out your Facebook marketing ideas, based on your findings from each of the preceding steps.

Be sure to supplement what the customer data and platform and web analytics tell you by:

Interviewing internal stakeholders on trends, topics and techniques they think most appeal to your FB audience
Asking your Facebook followers — and, in particular, your most engaged followers — what inspired them to follow you on FB and engage with or share your content
Asking your customers what, if anything, you’ve done on Facebook that has contributed to them making a decision to purchase your product or service
Asking your partner Facebook influencers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or Facebook presence that inspired them to work with you
Asking past FB followers and customers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or social media presence that inspired them to unfollow you or stop spending

Once you’ve finalized your editorial plan, you can create your Facebook content calendar.

Use the project management software you selected earlier to build out a master calendar, as well as the timeline for each campaign, project and assignment, assigning all roles from development to approval and from distribution to monitoring, analysis, iteration and optimization.

A screenshot of the Facebook public profile header and top bar with the logo for the Intuit Mailchimp Facebook page; the header is pink, with an upside-down white owl with spread wings hanging from a tree on the left and the words 'Guess Less & Sell More' on the right in large script
^{An example of an optimized and strategically focused brand FB profile}

The Top 10 Facebook Tips for Marketers

Facebook is an intimate social media platform, where users post awkward family photos and buy and sell their clothes, furniture, books and baby care products, so don’t shy away from showing your humanity and personality in your organic and paid content
Optimize every aspect of your profile, including your profile photo, profile header, about section, Business Category, multiple links, CTAs, and the experience your provide via Facebook Messaging
Ensure a consistent brand aesthetic across your Facebook profile and posts
Post regularly (two to five times per week)
Get verified (unlike on Twitter, it still helps)
Go live, often but with purpose and enthusiasm
Post a combination of industry news, company news, top tips/tutorials, reviews/testimonials, new products/services and product/service enhancements, promotions, giveaways, and polls/surveys
Create a branded Facebook Group for brand loyalists, influencers, industry experts and company management and staff, and commit a social media coordinator to moderating and facilitating engagement within
Leverage lookalike audiences and all third-party user data still available to target and segment your user personas for the most effective ad campaigns
Create and promote your Facebook Shop

7. Monitor, Analyze, Report, Iterate, and Optimize

Based on the KPIs you’ve identified as being most appropriate for your organic and paid efforts, your analysts should be constantly monitoring your Facebook campaign performance and providing reporting to your Facebook marketing strategists, managers and coordinators to inform ongoing iterations and optimizations.

The truth is: You can always split-test something else. And you can always optimize further.

Before you get started, be sure you’re set up to measure performance against the most important metrics — available now, if you download the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.