Marketing your small business can seem a little overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a massive budget or team of experts guiding you along the way. Here are some simple things you can do right now to take your marketing efforts to the nexel level and set your business up for success without breaking the bank.
1. Spy on your competitors with Facebook Ad Library
Have you ever wondered how your competitors are marketing to their customers? One of the best ways to spy on your competitors is to use Facebook’s Ad Library.
This feature will allow you to see whether or not your competitors are running Facebook Ads, and how exactly they’re promoting themselves. Understanding how your competitors position their marketing efforts can help you identify your own strengths and weaknesses with marketing. Long are the days of guessing what your competitors are doing to bring in business!
To use this feature, just go to a competitor’s Facebook page and scroll down to “Page Transparency” on the left hand side. Click “See all” then go to “Facebook Ads Library,” or you can follow this link.
2. Get to know your customers better with Facebook Pixel
Incase you’re thinking, “What the **** is a pixel?” it’s basically a piece of code that you place on your website to collect data. It allows you to track things like who visits your website, how long they stay, how they engage with your business, cost per lead, and cost per conversion. This data can help you build Facebook campaigns that align more closely with your business goals.
So what exactly can pixels track? Here are the 17 standard Facebook pixel events that anyone can simply add to their website:
- Purchase: Someone completes a purchase on your website.
- Lead: Someone signs up for a trial or otherwise identifies themselves as a lead on your site.
- Complete registration: Someone completes a registration form on your site, such as a subscription form.
- Add payment info: Someone enters their payment information in the purchase process on your website.
- Add to cart: Someone adds a product to their shopping cart on your site.
- Add to wishlist: Someone adds a product to a wishlist on your site.
- Initiate checkout: Someone starts the checkout process to buy something from your site.
- Search: Someone uses the search function to look for something on your site.
- View content: Someone lands on a specific page on your website.
- Contact: Someone contacts your business.
- Customize product: Someone selects a specific version of product, such as choosing a certain color.
- Donate: Someone makes a donation to your cause.
- Find location: Someone searches for your business’s physical location.
- Schedule: Someone books an appointment at your business.
- Start trial: Someone signs up for a free trial of your product.
- Submit application: Someone applies for your product, service, or program, such as a credit card.
- Subscribe: Someone subscribes to a paid product or service.
To learn more about Facebook pixel standard and custom events, click here. But first, create a pixel for your business if you haven’t already!
3. Use ads to drive traffic to your website
Now that you’ve set up a pixel for your business, it’s time to start bringing people to your website with Facebook ads optimized for traffic.
Driving visitors to your website will ultimately make your business more likely to generate revenue. The more time people spend on your site clicking around, the more likely they are to take action (like making a purchase or filling out a lead form).
Using Facebook ads, you can target people most likely to be interested in your businesses to your website. Start with a small budget of $5/day and slowly increase that budget over time. As people visit your website, Facebook will keep track of key metrics like age, gender, location and time spent on your website. With the help of your pixel, you can then create more ads that retarget people who have visited your website multiple times.
Think of your website as a tool for marketing and building relationships with both prospective and returning customers. Remember that when someone visits your website it’s most likely their first point of contact with your business, similar to when someone walks into a store for the first time.
We hope this article gives you a little more insight and guidance for your Facebook marketing efforts. Click here to learn more about how to set up Facebook campaigns with the right objective, but before you start running ads don’t forget to sign up for a free social media audit! We’ll take a look at your social media accounts and report on areas where you can improve your online presence. Click here to get started.
Su Rodriguez, Digital Ads Specialist – The Spark Social, Inc.
