How to Create a Winning Facebook Strategy in 9 Steps

Taking full advantage of the potential network

For many, Facebook is like an online oasis, rich with information, entertainment and pictures of cats. For others it is a pure waste of time, and for others it is a (in)valuable marketing channel where they can easily "step on the consumer's toes" and offer them the right medicine. And at a low cost and with a degree of individualised targeting impossible to achieve with traditional advertising.

Facebook is the most used social network both in Bulgaria and worldwide. Its nearly 3 billion users spend an average of 60 minutes a day scrolling, liking, chatting, sharing, commenting and consuming text, video and photo content.

Are you and your business there? In our guide, we'll tell you how to create a winning Facebook marketing strategy in eight steps.

1. Study the market

Who are your competitors, what do they offer and how are you different? Define your unique advantages - what makes you stand out and what will make potential customers choose you over other businesses in the same product niche.

Your unique advantages should be everywhere in your communication strategy. The content you post on Facebook is an important element of it and is often a significant source of new users. Present yourself to them in a way that differentiates you from the competition.

2. Choose your audience

Here and now is the time to create a buyer profile, also known as a buyer persona if you don't already have one. This is a customizable image of your perfect customer that will help you understand your audience's needs and wants.

This allows you to tailor your messages to your potential customers. Tell them what they want to hear.

A useful tool in building a buyer profile is Audience Insights. You will find it in Ads Manager in Meta Business Suite (All tools -> Analyse and report). This is where there's a wealth of demographic and behavioral data about your audience and that of your connurents.

In Audience Insights you can, for example, filter the group you're interested in by country, age, interests. This lets you know what percentage of them live in certain cities and what pages they follow. This valuable information tells you a lot about their lifestyle.

Another useful method of collecting data about your potential customers is through a questionnaire, after completing which the user receives some kind of reward (for example, a promo code).

3. Define your goals

Ask yourself "What do I want to achieve?" and plan your Facebook advertising and activities around the answer.

It's important to know what your goals are and create content that meets them. Brand awareness, lead generation, and made sales are among the steps in the marketing funnel that can easily be accomplished on Facebook through various paid or "organic" campaigns.

Be patient, inventive and original. If the content you publish and the products you offer are valuable, the results will not be long in coming.

4. Take care of proper content

You've probably heard the digital marketing mantra "Content is king". The Internet landscape has changed beyond recognition since 1996, when Bill Gates, a true visionary, published it in an essay on the Microsoft website. Yet content continues to dictate the rules and take the lead in any digital strategy.

In a world where anyone can publish anything for free, it's becoming increasingly important to be a relevant, innovative and reliable source of information. The content you create should meet the needs and interests of your perfect buyer, which you built in one of the previous steps.

When planning what to post on your Facebook page and when, it's a good idea to follow the 80/20 rule. In other words, 80% of the posts should be informative, helpful and educational, and 20% should be promotional. This is a sustainable strategy that allows you to build an audience of people with interests relevant to your products. In the long run, it will be much easier to keep their attention on your posts if they know they can expect valuable and interesting knowledge from you.

The more genuine and natural you are in the content you post, the better. Some of the types of posts worth trying out are:

• blog posts;
• live streams;
• product information;
• customer reviews;
• materials "from the kitchen";
• games (giveaways);
• co-publish with influencers your audience likes.

5. Create an action plan

In it, describe all the content you plan to publish, as well as the period in which it will be live. Your action plan should contain elements such as:

• weekly publications;
• Daily Stores;
• advertising activity;
• campaigns with influencers;
• seasonal campaigns;
• cost optimisation, etc.

Once you've identified the content, it's time to decide what to post when. This is where the calendar comes in. In it, you can describe month by month, day by day, and hour by hour the different posts, as well as marking those from the same campaign with a certain color.

If you're ambitious, you can add columns to enter performance data for each post, such as Reach, Reactions, Conversions, and more. Also describe the spend and return you have for each campaign so you can easily see where you need to optimize your spend.

Over time, your page will accumulate information about your audience's behavior, which you can use to see when users are most active and when is the best time to post. This is easily accessible when you create a post in Meta Creator Studio from the Active times button.

It's a good practice to adjust your posts ahead of time. That way you can be sure not to miss an important moment when your users are active while on vacation, for example. Of course, spontaneous posts related to recent events are also important.

6. Use extra features like Facebook Groups, chatbots, events

Facebook offers many additional features for businesses that want to provide users with a comprehensive experience.

Facebook groups are a great way to increase audience engagement in an "organic" (unpaid) way. They create a community of dedicated (potential) customers on the social network who, with the right incentivisation, can turn into passionate followers promoting your products by word of mouth.

Chatbots are a great way to incorporate Facebook into your customer service through automated responses to common questions. They're a good option for easily and quickly delivering important information your users need without making them wait.
Events are an interesting and engaging way to win users over by providing experiences that match their interests.

7. Choose the right channels for advertising

The advertising strategy of a business is the sum of all planned activities and the channels in which they are carried out.

Depending on your target market and the specificity of the products you offer, there are many options for promotional activities in the digital space and places to advertise. Among them are:

• Facebook;
• Instagram;
• Google Ads;
• TikTok;
• Snapchat;
• Microsoft (Bing) Ads;
• SEO and content marketing;
• emails;
• offline channels such as billboards, radio, TV.

A Facebook marketing strategy is much more successful when it is part of an overall communications picture that includes other channels. They are not isolated, on the contrary - it is very likely that an individual will see your ad in their user journey after searching on Google, then come across another on Facebook, and finally place an order after receiving an email from you. That's why it's important that advertising channels and messages work in symbiosis.

Through Facebook advertising, you can grow your audience with targeted ads as well as bring your existing audience closer to the final steps in the marketing funnel.

Depending on your goals, you can choose different types of campaigns to create more engagement with your audience, to promote certain publications, to promote specific products or events. Among the more exciting options for marketers are lead generation campaigns, as well as retargeting campaigns that are shown to users who have already visited your website.

The possibilities are endless, especially if you have a big budget, but even if that's not true, with good planning and smart targeting you can see results with small amounts.

8. Analyse the data

Test different messages, visuals, campaigns, advertising techniques, then always analyze the data to see what works and what doesn't. This is one of the most important and prioritized steps. Proper analysis will give you information on what works (to keep doing it) and what doesn't, and is unnecessary to stop or replace.

Depending on your specific goals, it will be helpful to track metrics such as CTR (click-through rate), conversion rate, ROI (return on investment), ROAS (return of ad spend) engagement rate, and more.

9. Optimize and/or start over

Once you've analyzed the metrics and results, figured out what's working well and what still leaves something to be desired, go back to your action plan. Change something - launch a new campaign, increase your budget, change the targeting or creative of your ad campaign.

Sometimes it takes something very small to get a campaign going in the right direction. Other times, it may require a more serious rethink of a campaign's goals, messaging and design.

After a while, do the analysis again and see what works better. Over time, you'll figure out the exact formula for creating and publishing successful Facebook content that attracts new users and sells.
As you can see, a winning Facebook strategy requires a lot of planning, creativity, and analysis. When you put passion into it, you can expect results. And if you need help with your Facebook marketing, we at ADvantage Digital Agency are always here to help.