13 Fantastic Facebook Marketing Tricks & Tips [2018]

It’s becoming more and more important to take a more personal approach to how you advertise to your target audience in order to stand out from the crowd. Nothing could be more true than navigating Facebook. Facebook currently has over 2 billion users, and as the platform continues to grow, newsfeeds changes are implemented and eCommerce businesses increase, your Facebook competition is getting tighter by the minute.

In this week’s post we look at 13 fantastic Facebook marketing tricks and tips to help you make the most out of your Facebook marketing strategies this year.

1. Quality Over Quantity

Did you know that every 60 seconds there are 317,000 status updates and 54,000 shared links uploaded to Facebook? And that’s just updates and links!

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That’s a bucket-load of content being uploaded every minute. To stand out from content noise, you should be concentrating on quality over quantity. It’s not frequency that’s going to increase your reach; quite the opposite, actually. With new newsfeed updates it’s even more important to create high-value quality content. Content that is segmented to smaller niches improves the likelihood that your ads are relevant to potential shoppers and thus increasing your chances of interactions. The same thing can be said for your organic content; which brings us to tip #2.

2. Quick Facebook Page Promotion Tip

Planning on running an ad to promote your Facebook page? When you create these campaigns, it will automatically set the text and description as per your page settings. Instead, to improve your response for each segmented market, you can customize the heading by clicking Advanced options and using the text block to adjust headings.

3. Integrate Your Facebook Strategies

Whether you’re creating a PPC ad or Facebook page content, your objective should be the same: providing highly relevant content that your potential customers want to engage with. Sure your objective may be different, with PPC ads driving traffic to your store and page posts used to keep followers entertained or informed, but for results for each you want to ensure you’re creating awesome, interesting content.

Which is why it is so important to integrate your organic and paid Facebook strategies, to ensure you’re providing good content that is equally inline with the voice of your brand. There is a big chance your potential shoppers will encounter your brand through organic and paid social posts and therefore any conflict in your messaging can result in mixed messaging, ultimately undermining your marketing efforts and your ROI.

Sprout Social have an awesome webinar on how to integrate organic and paid Facebook strategies to get you started! You can view it here:  5 Best Practices for Integrating Organic and Paid Social Media Strategies.

Pro Tip:

When planning your Facebook page’s ‘organic’ content, remember the 80:20 rule. You want to make sure that only 20% of your content is hard-sell promotional, while the remaining 80% is fun, inspiring, educational, high-value articles, and any other non-sale content. Just because your text isn’t over-sell, doesn’t mean you are not building your loyal customer base. Look at the below example – are they telling you, “BUY NOW”?

4. Go Live

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years, you probably already know just how important video content is to Facebook marketing. One of the best video content reach you can get is with Facebook’s live video. According to Livestream stats, 82% of brand audiences prefer live video over any other form of social media posts.

If you’re waiting to be able to shoot ‘good quality video,’ you’re missing out on huge reach potential. Like we have said time and time again, you don’t need video to be professionally shot for it to be effective, even more the case with Facebook Live. Use live video to reveal a new product or promotion, to give tips in your niche or show behind-the-scenes teasers for upcoming lines.

Don’t take our word for it, just as marketing genius Gary V who is constantly crushing – if you’ll excuse the pun – his Facebook live content.

5. Quick Tip to Increase Reach? Get Tagging

Want to maximize your organic reach? Try your hand at tagging your fans when you are sharing UGC or tag partner businesses, publications or Facebook pages you’re working with.

6. Don’t Underestimate Instant Replies

We may not all have big budgets to get in on growing AI and BOT tech, but Facebook’s Instant Replies are the next best thing. So many consumers now opt for communicating with brands directly through Facebook as opposed to emailing customer support.

The upside: being able to create a more personalized shopping experience; the downside: people expect instantaneous response. Facebook Instant Replies allows you to engage with your customers messages before you’ve even read them. Here’s Facebook’s guide to get instant replies set up:

7. Tell a Story

Yes, even for your paid Facebook campaigns. Telling a story will help you get more interest and build stronger connections with your target audience, both in turn helping you get more ad clicks. You can do this by creating teaser ads before a product or site launch, getting people invested in your launch, or outlining a story that’s important to your brand in long form video or text posts. An awesome example of just how powerful presenting a narrative is, is HONY: Humans of New York.

Since starting the page in 2010, HONY creator Brandon has turned storytelling into a page with 18 million followers, and extended his stories into his own Facebook show.

8. Share UGC and Testimonial Posts

When it comes to building a sense of community around your brand, nothing beats genuine UGC (user-generated content) and testimonials. Not only is this a great way to include your fans and shoppers, incorporating UGC into your Facebook marketing content helps to entertain, boost trust and ultimately increase sales. Want further proof? According to Adweek, when deciding on buying a product, up to 93% of people turn to user-generated content. Plus, there are a lot of studies out there showing how UGC increases relevant scores and ROIs.

So how do you integrate UGC into your Facebook marketing strategy? It’s as easy as manually sharing content or using tools such as TINT to automatically integrate it. Whichever way you decide to start using UGC for your Facebook ads, the key is collecting user-generated posts you can use. 

9. Make Your Image Ads More Engaging

As you can see from the previous point, UGC is a good way to stand out from the crowd. This is not just because they make for trustworthy testimonials, but because these images are unique enough to break through the thousands of daily ads. With all image ads, you want to ensure your content stands out. Try using multiple image carousel ads to create an image story, or use single images that pop and stand out from the crowd.

Pro Tip: Keep your ad text short, concise and on point when doing image posts to ensure you don’t lose your potential shoppers’ attention after you’ve hooked them in with an attractive image.

You don’t need to be a designer to create awesome images. Head over to our 23+ Online Design Tools to Create Perfect Visuals Without Design Know-How guide on our blog to get started.

10. Make Targeting All About Your Potential Customer

I’ve said it once, and I will say it a million times more: segment, segment, segment! Segment your audiences and then create highly targeted ads aimed specifically at that niche market. It is not the amount of reach you should be concentrating on, but the percentage of that reach that is engaging. Once you have “niched down” your audiences, think about things like what their interests are, where are they specifically located, what they are watching, who are they following and when that specific segment is active – and then create highly specific ads aimed at them. Facebook’s custom audiences is built for this, and that’s what sets this marketing platform apart. Add that to Facebook pixel driven Facebook dynamic product ads, Messenger and retargeting ads, and there is no niche too small to reach.

Bonus: 4 Quick Strategies to Make Your Facebook Custom Audiences More Effective

11. Utilize Your Cover Photo

By updating your cover photo regularly with new product lines, promotions or seasonal content. This will ensure that when potential fans and shoppers come to your page, your latest (most popular) content is front and center, getting their attention straight away. With apps like Canva, this is super easy to maintain.

Pro Tip:

Use your Facebook cover and promotional posts to offer exclusive content/promotions for your Facebook fans. This is a great way to build your followers who will be more inclined to follow if you’re offering ‘VIP’ deals and inside scoops.

12. Optimize Your Campaigns in Real-Time

Like with most PPC campaigns, to get the most out of your budget you will want to monitor your campaigns and make adjustments in real-time to make sure you’re getting the most clicks for your buck. Without creating a new campaign you can adjust your audience, your budgeting, your schedule, your placements, your artwork and even your delivery choices.

It’s important to note here that normally a campaign needs to run a day or two for you to get enough data to judge its performance. For those that aren’t performing there are a number of things you could be doing wrong:

• Your Facebook targeting is all wrong
• People aren’t seeing your Facebook ads
• The campaign objective is incorrect
• Ad placement is off the mark
• Your landing page and Facebook ads aren’t in line
• Your ads are not attracting attention
• You haven’t scaled your Facebook ads correctly

Head over to our Facebook Ads Not Performing? Here are 7 Reasons Why post for more tips.

Bonus Tip: How to Scale Up a Performing Facebook Ad 

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There you have it, the Facebook marketing tricks and tips to stand out from the crowd this year. Think about who your potential shopper is, drill down your segmented markets and then create content for those segments. As we know, personalization is a key eCommerce trend, and starting with your Facebook strategies is a giant step in the right direction.

If you’re looking for more Facebook tips to improve performance, lower budget and turn you into a Facebook pro, head over to our Facebook Guides blog section. If you have questions, post them in the comments below!

Happy selling!

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8 Hacks to Boost Traffic & Sales Today

Want to make 2018 your best year yet? Yes of course you do! By increasing the amount of targeted traffic to your store and optimizing your store for shoppers, you can increase your sales to make this year a cash-cow.

As we know, some traffic generators such as SEO is a long-term game, but there are a number of ways you can increase your targeted traffic today to help you start off the year right. And once you have the right traffic, there are things you can do to instantly turn that traffic to gold.

So without further ado, here are the 8 hacks to boost traffic and sales today!

1. Use Your Packaging to Increase Sales & Win Traffic

After-sales service, when done right, not only builds those loyal lifetime customers, but can generate a lot of sales. The psychology behind it is fairly simple: how do you capitalize on the moment when someone receives your product and is super happy? It can be as straightforward as putting coupon inserts into the packaging that offer the buyer extra discounts, or as creative as what one of my favorite online stores, Happy Socks, does.

I recently ordered some of their gift box sets (I have a little bit of a sock fetish…) On their packaging they include their branded hashtag which allows happy customers, like me, who have just received their order to take pics and share. We all know how UGC (user generated content) can drive traffic and sales. Being able to prompt people at that moment to share can be a lot more effective than asking for reviews or content after the fact via email.

Get your FREE Social Media Checklist here

2. Get More Traffic With Influencers

Influencer marketing is all the rage and definitely a 2018 eCommerce trend to watch. Influencer marketing is user-generated content on steroids and can have amazing results.  Influencer marketing allows you to put your products front and center to niche markets in your niche; all by utilizing an already popular account. The reason why this kind of marketing is so great for generating highly targeted traffic is that you’re accessing very segmented target audiences linked to micro influencers within that niche’s online community.

With great platforms such as Tribe, you can be linked with an influencer in your niche quickly and easily and begin generating more traffic in no time.

Bonus Tips: Beginners Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing for Online Store Owner

3. Help Your Way into More Traffic

If you’ve been following our blog you know we say it a lot: being an authority or expert in your niche is fundamental in driving people to your site. You also probably know that the key to being an expert is in your content marketing plan. However, what you may not have thought of is guest posting. Think of UGC, and turn it on it’s head. Guest posting is where you approach other online blogs and submit a guest post to their site.

Now, the key to being successful with this is twofold:

• Stay in Your Lane

Approach online publications/blogs that are within your niche. For example, if you’re selling hair care products, approach beauty bloggers with articles such as “Five Tips to Beautiful Hair.” Before submitting your posts make sure that your content suits their target audience.

• Don’t Send Spamy Posts

This is not about hard-sell, this is about providing valuable, helpful content that the readers of that blog will read. So make sure you know the sites’ guidelines before you submit to save disappointment.

Pro Tip: Getting your content on high-traffic blogs is another form of that good-old influencer marketing we were talking about. Therefore it’s worth the investment in freelancing your guest posts out. Hop over to our eCommerce Entrepreneur’s Guide to Finding Freelancers to guide you through your search.

4. Change Your Email Marketing Strategy

The year 2018 is all about segmenting. Segmenting with influencers in small niches, segmenting by using AdWords remarketing tactics and segmenting with Facebook Messenger ads. Why? Because personalization is the key to upping your sales this year. And your email marketing is no different.  Did you know that there were  269 billion  emails sent last year? If you want to stand out, personalization is a must.  

What you want to do is make sure your specific emails such as abandoned cart emails are automated and for the rest be far more specific in your targeting. Send promotional emails specifically designed for shoppers who have bought those products from you before, or who have very similar geographical profiles. The key is more segmentation, because segmentation means the emails are designed specifically for the reader and therefore will generate more targeted traffic. And as we know, targeted traffic means more sales.

Bonus: Monitor These 5 Email Marketing Metrics for Sales Success 

5. Automate Your AdWords Campaigns

AdWords is still one of your top traffic drivers, although it can seem like a lot of work to keep your campaigns optimized for great results. Most small business owners who are doing most of the work themselves, just don’t have the time to keep a close eye on their campaigns. However, there is an easy fix for this with AdWords automation options. Automation rules will help you optimize your campaigns by adjusting bids and editing campaigns for you. This video guide will help you set it up. 

Alternatively give apps such as our Traffic Booster a try which will run, automate, optimize and manage your campaigns for you at an expert level, for a fraction of the costs that an agency will cost.

Pro Tip:

Are you bidding on your own brand names yet? If you aren’t, you should be. Find out how branded keywords help bring in more traffic and convert more sales here: Why Do I Need to Bid on Branded Keyword Terms?

6. Add Subscription Options to Any Store

One of the hottest trends this year is subscription services. Subscriptions mean repeat business, repeat business means staying fresh in the minds of your shoppers and also more UGC opportunities. Now before you shake your head and say it doesn’t fit into your traditional model, think again. I touched on it briefly in my last blog post, but the idea is to add some subscriptions to your existing product base.

Here are some ideas to get you started: Think of something, within the niche you’re selling, that people could use more than once (such as what Dollar Shave Club does with their razors) and build subscription packages around that. Obviously if you’re in the fashion niche, you wouldn’t be sending the same thing twice. Instead, you could start an “accessory package” where people sign up for accessory subscriptions where they get a surprise purse or scarf for the upcoming season.

7. Change Email Subscriptions to Social Follows

It’s time to rethink your pop-ups. By using apps like Coupon Pop you can turn web-traffic into social followers. The beauty of this, unlike email subscriptions that only target one person, is that more social followers means more content likes and shares, which ultimately is a kind of brand exposure that email can not offer you.

Plus, I don’t know about you, but I am getting more and more guarded on who I give my email address too – when there are 260 billion emails being sent yearly, can you blame me? Meaning when I am faced with a pop up asking me to subscribe I am less likely to sign up than If I have to be giving away my email address.

Get your FREE Social Media Checklist here

8. Shoot a Product Video

Last, but by no way least, get out your phone and shoot a product video. Yes, right now. Today. Shoot your video and post it! At the end of last year Proven Audience Formula ‘How to get 8 million Facebook Views with an Amature Video’ and demonstrated how their single, short, home-made video took them from selling one to two units per day to 150+ units a day. That isn’t small potatoes.

If you are waiting for a budget to hire videographers, you are missing the point big time. This is where small businesses have an equal playing field with the big guys: Content! The content king Gary V has been saying this for years with his ‘Don’t Create, Document’ philosophy. Don’t know it? Here’s his video to get you inspired:

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There you have it, 8 ways you can get traffic to your store and make those sales. If you do just one thing on this list this week, you are well on your way to being the most successful you can be this year. You’ve got this!

Have something to add? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

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