Facebook Marketing for Business Tips

With over 1 billion users, Facebook is the ultimate marketing tool for increased brand recognition and customer base.

Facebook marketing provides businesses with numerous benefits: gathering leads, increasing web traffic, and expanding your brand’s position in the marketplace. It’s a great platform to make customers aware of your products and services, increasing your web to lead Salesforce.

Major brands–from coffee giant Starbucks to motorcycle gear supplier RevZilla–utilize Facebook to keep rapport strong with customers and gauge the public perception of its product marketing campaigns.

The social goal of most brands is to solve everyday problems and add value for their visitors. The best brands on Facebook have unique ways of engaging with their customers and offering special promotions, events, and contests. When all works together, these brands create a strong buzz.

Let’s analyze how three established brands from different verticals use Facebook marketing to increase brand exposure, and what lessons you can learn for your own business.

Facebook Marketing Tips: RevZilla

Many small-business Facebook success stories exists, including the one from RevZilla–a motorcycle gear/parts company with over 304,000 likes. RevZilla started as a small business out of Philadelphia with the goal of providing motorcycle enthusiasts an alternative to typical apparel/gear shopping experience. This alternative is based around unique content, such as endless video reviews of apparel and parts, and its “Common Tread” blog.

RevZilla’s Facebook page is a model for many e-commerce websites, initially providing a link to its native website and a “Shop Now” button that hangs from the top of Facebook’s redesigned business pages.

RevZilla’s call-to-action button is immediately displayed and always in reach of any consumer. RevZilla makes effective use of their logo across all of their social media channels and utilizes the same colors and font design whenever available. For consumers already familiar with the brand, the RevZilla Facebook page is set up for immediate conversions.

RevZilla chooses to rely heavily on its content marketing campaign as opposed to pursuing a PPC ad campaign on the social media giant. RevZilla’s marketing success is found in its promotional offers, contests, and events it frequently host and advertise on Facebook. With Facebook’s advanced capabilities, users will frequently discover PLA style ads directly within their newsfeed, either advertising their new catalogue of products or a promotional code sale.

RevZilla posts numerous articles and pictures daily from its own website and other established brands about topics related to its brand. Their strong content marketing campaign both establishes them as an authority over motorcycling equipment, but also creates the potential to be reached by other users who don’t already follow its brand. In terms of establishing brand recognition through social media, RevZilla is one of the easiest and most effective examples for small businesses to follow. With a limited budget and a strong content creation team, RevZilla masters content marketing like no other company.

Facebook Marketing Tips: Starbucks

For a multinational corporation with an established brand, Starbucks could create a blank Facebook profile and still generate millions of likes. Yet, Starbucks was one of the earliest companies conduct a strong social media campaign, stripping its traditional advertising budget entirely in favor of investing in social media channels. Starbucks was one of the first businesses to advertise contests and promotional events to its followers. For example, as early as 2009, Starbucks held a Facebook promotion providing customers with a free pastry when they purchased a coffee before 10:30 a.m.; over 1 million people participated.

Starbucks does conduct a subtle content marketing campaign, but at first look you wouldn’t realize because they don’t post content daily. Starbucks emphasizes content quality over quantity, and offers customers the chance to interact act with its brand on their own terms. You will frequently see Starbucks responding to its own posts and sharing posts from users across its local chains. Starbucks content marketing campaign ranges from clever coffee jokes to contests that actively encourage users to engage with its brand.

Starbucks branding success extends to its numerous local Facebook pages. Hosting Facebook pages for its local stores encourages users to actively communicate and engage with the brand from their brick mortar experiences. Starbucks capitalizes on this wide network by offering its own wallet and payment app, which works at any of its local stores.

The “Mobile Order and Pay” app exceeds more than 10% of its total sales at a number of its busiest local stores. Starbucks’s strong social media model relies on its constant contact and customer services it conducts over its social media channels. With over 37 million likes on its main page, Starbucks also possesses hundreds of local store pages, which allow the company to engage with users on a scale not accomplished by any other brand.

Facebook Marketing Tips: Apple

From Apple’s products to its website, Apple’s brand follows a minimalistic approach to its advertising. Apple truly embodies its own mantra of simpler is better, and this is translated into its product descriptions and its own social media presence. As an established brand within the technological field, Apple created the first phones that allowed users to connect with others on social media on a mobile device. Yet, many users and followers of the Apple brand may be surprised to learn that Apple itself does not have its own Twitter account. More than that, the Apple Facebook page remains inactive.

Apple’s digital marketing campaign relies more heavily on PPC or social media ad campaigns and traditional media outlets to increase their market share. Apple’s products have established the brand as a technological leader within the world. Actively marketing to users on social media is useless for Apple, whose technological innovation markets itself through others.

Apple, of course, does not defy all traditional digital marketing routes, and its CEO Tim Cooke is active on many social media channels, incorporating his own personal brand as the representative of the Apple brand. The App Store, Beats Music, and even iTunes hold active Twitter and Facebook pages that frequently host product promotions and advertising. It actually makes sense that Apple does not host its own Twitter account or post actively on its Facebook page. Consider the fact that the Apple’s unendorsed computer products page has 5 million more likes than Google’s own official and active Facebook page.

Facebook Marketing Tips: Concluding Thoughts

When evaluating these major brands, businesses can educate themselves on these social media strategies, and incorporate them into their own social media marketing campaigns. RevZilla’s highly active content marketing campaign allows it to reach new users and establish itself slowly as a brand authority over its industry niche. Starbucks wide network of local Facebook accounts allow it to engage with customers on a larger scale. Apple’s paid advertising campaign allow it to market products to consumers across a large swath of social media channels without necessarily defying its own brand’s minimalistic approach to advertising. If you have your own website on the other hand and need a company that understands your field, my dentist was looking to book his client base and wanted a website, I recommended serpco dental marketing because they understand the dentist market. Make sure regardless of your platform that you understand your market as well.