For over a decade now, Facebook has been the most used and popular social media platform, both amongst individual users and brand marketers. We cannot deny its importance on the wide exposure it can give to any product or brand. Even in Nepal, Facebook is playing a key role in driving a significant pace towards digitization.
Facebook is a powerful social media platform that is widely used to gain more popularity not only in Nepal but globally as well. This is possible because the majority of users remain actively online.
Although Facebook was initially created for people to connect with their friends and family, with time, it has emerged as a useful platform for promoting products and marketing businesses.
What made Facebook so important for businesses?
Marketers are always into promoting their brands and products. Having access to the best social media platforms like Facebook not only allowed marketers to look for potential customers but opened up the possibility to engage with them on a larger scale. Similarly, people connecting with other people and expressing their views, opinions on any topic without hesitation struck marketers to see Facebook as a potential platform for marketing.
Facebook grants authority to create business pages that help people to get information about the goods/products they are looking for benefiting both buyers and sellers. That is why the usage of Facebook is a vital part of every business’s marketing strategy as it helps to generate leads and convert them into loyal customers.
Even though Facebook is working on strategies to grow paid marketing revenues, it won’t be wrong if we say Facebook gives the best results in social media marketing both organically as well as through paid marketing campaigns.
So, how effective results can you achieve with Facebook as a key marketing channel?
Here are some of the benefits of Facebook that strategically stands out as a marketing platform for businesses on a global scale:
- ✔ World-wide exposure
- ✔ Marketing with less expenses giving more results
- ✔ Capable of targeting potential customers
- ✔ Build brand loyalty
- ✔ Easy to increase web traffic
- ✔ Access to Facebook insights and competitor’s information
World-wide exposure
Facebook is undoubtedly the most popular social media platform ruling over other social media platforms having over 2.6 billion users world-wide. To drag the attention of these users, Facebook does its marketing activities using three important forms. They are:
- ✔ Pages,
- ✔ Groups, and
- ✔ Ads
Facebook pages or groups are created to represent an individual or business to promote related activities. Interested users are allowed to join groups, comment on the group pages, and interact through discussion threads.
Facebook ads are another important way to capture your brand name in users’ eyes. Facebook keeps demographic data of every user, ads are created by the advertisers to target users based on specific demographic age, sex, location, and most of the time their interests.
Using offline marketing, businesses can reach local customers easily, but targeting customers across borders can be difficult. Facebook helps reach customers from around the world. Whether you own an ecommerce business or a company that provides software services, Facebook makes it easy to connect with possible clients both locally and globally. Businesses here in Nepal follow similar trends to promote their brands and respond to the queries of customers.
Marketing with less expenses giving more results
Creating a website can be costly especially for startups as it requires a good amount of money to develop, host, and maintain. But using Facebook Business page as an alternative allows you to upload your content and promote it without any cost.
Understanding its importance, there has been significant use of Facebook pages and ads in Nepalese startups as a means to promote their business and target potential customers using specific demographics.
Although Facebook ads are paid promotions, it requires very less budget. There are basically two ways to charge for Facebook ads mostly depending on what suits the user and gives better outcome to their business. Those are:
- ✔ CPC (Cost Per Click)
- ✔ CPM (Cost Per Million)
CPC is charged per click while CPM is chargeable per thousand impressions. Businesses can track their outcomes and if it exceeds the expected budget, they can limit their amount to make it budget friendly.
Capable of targeting potential customers
Facebook ads are designed to target potential customers using specific demographic and interests. For example, if you are advertising for ladies clothing stores, you could target women, aged 20-35, who are shopping or fashion enthusiasts.
Facebook’s algorithm is designed for driving interaction between page owner and audience. Posting a message, picture or a video at a chosen time and frequency is a simple tactic to engage your audience. But if you wish to be seen to an audience at a larger scale, the most effective way is by creating and launching online marketing campaigns.
Build brand loyalty
Facebook is the easiest and quickest way to interact and engage with customers in creating brand loyalty. Responding to your customer right in time via messages or through comments allow you to gain their trust and build a relationship.
Young people very keenly search for products on Facebook, and when they see you are replying to their every queries immediately, they start to show loyalty towards you and your brand.
Facebook also helps build engagement in the form of likes, comments, and interaction on your post, allowing you to create a strong bond with your prospects. The stronger the bond, the more you will gain their trust, making it easier to convert them to loyal customers. Not to forget that referrals are the best ways to expand your brand reach.
Easy to increase web traffic
Facebook is also useful in driving traffic to your websites. When promoting any blogs or websites, using suitable links on Facebook will guide users to the website. But, it also depends on whether your users want to click on the given link or not. Once visitors reach the landing page, they get exposed to direct marketing talks through a call to action or by asking them to have a glance at what you are offering.
Furthermore, you can create ads that can specifically ask users to visit your business website if they are interested and there is always the option to link your website and products in the about us section of your business page as well as in the captions of your post.
Access to Facebook insights and competitor’s information
Tracking your performance is easier on Facebook, whether your performance has dropped or shown increment. All of this can be traced without any problem. You can evaluate key metrics that affects your business such as actions on page and post reach. What’s more is that you can even see which is organic and which is paid separately!
Once you create and post an ad, Facebook Business Manager allow you to measure and track a range of performance metrics which include and are not limited to:
- ✔ Impressions (number of times ad appeared)
- ✔ Reach (number of individuals who saw your ad)
- ✔ Frequency (number of times consumers visited your ad)
Likewise, using Google Analytics on your website enables you to get important information, for instance, visits, percentage of new visitors, visitor’s locations, and so on. It also allows you to trace insights using built-in-insights offered by Facebook to monitor basic stats of the competition in your area.
All in all, Facebook is a powerful marketing tool. Whether you are an emerging small business or a well-established one, a digital presence is a must. Whoever your target audience is, you can find people from all sorts of demographics and with all types of interests. Facebook helps you reach your niche and increase your revenue by multiple folds.
The best part is, all of this could be achieved either free of cost or with minimal investment. So, if you are a running business or thinking about running one, and you don’t already have a digital presence, you should seriously consider incorporating Facebook Marketing in your digital marketing strategy.
Reference:
1. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-marketing-advantages/229849/
