The 7-step guide outlines an effective Facebook marketing strategy: 1. Set goals like increasing brand awareness or engagement. 2. Understand your Facebook audience through insights and demographics. 3. Engage proactively by conversing, discussing content, and asking for engagement. 4. Schedule content like status updates, videos and images at optimal posting times. 5. Determine your Facebook ads strategy focusing on relevance and cost-effectiveness. 6. Encourage employee advocacy by transforming employees into brand ambassadors. 7. Track and analyze results and ROI using tools to compare performance over time.

1. 7 steps to an effective Facebook
marketing strategy
Written byby Jenn Chen
Published on August 5, 2020
Reading time 9 minutes
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Facebook still reigns as one of the most widely used online platforms by
adults. And the vast majority are using it daily, which continues to provide
brands and businesses with an opportunity for maximum visibility when
implementing a Facebook marketing strategy.

2. Often times, the toughest part is simply getting started, but we’re here to
provide you with seven steps to help get your Facebook marketing efforts off
the ground.
Read on to ensure you’re getting the most out of this ever-powerful social
media platform.
1. Set goals for Facebook
The first step to any marketing strategy is setting the right goals. This
roadmap will be an essential reference to measure against to make sure your
Facebook strategy is successful. But to set goals, you’ll first want to do a little
research to ensure your plan is attainable through the platform.
In the 2018 Sprout Social Index, we found that marketers on Facebook had a
few top goals in mind:
 34% wanted to increase brand awareness
 21% wanted to increase community engagement
 11% wanted to increase sales and lead generation

3. So, if you don’t have Facebook goals of your own yet, these survey results are
a great place to start. Additionally, if your company has already set general
goals, look for how these overlap with your own plans for marketing on
Facebook.
Addressing Your Goals
Here are some common yearly goals for businesses and how an effective
Facebook strategy can help you:

4.  Increasing quality of sales: Improving the quality of sales starts with
better targeting. Through a well-planned Facebook marketing strategy,
you reach your target audience more efficiently. Just because the pond
is bigger, doesn’t mean you’ll get bigger fish. Work on what you know
best and use Facebook as a source to improve your reach.
 Adding more value to the organization: Facebook can better nurture
customers, improve awareness and provide more resources to you
audience. Make Facebook your go-to source of information.
 Better pulse on the industry: Are your competitors always one step
ahead? With the help of social media monitoring tools, you can track,
listen and report on all social conversations revolving around you, your
competitors or the industry. Always try to increase your listening powers
before speaking.
 More efficient recruiting: No one said social recruiting is easy, but it’s
only growing in popularity. Social can be a great source for increasing
recruiting efforts and reaching top talent faster. Working your
employees’ social networks for a higher social reach makes your chances
of recruiting higher quality employees better.
 Smarter growth: Reducing churn, limiting spend and increasing
acquisition are all parts of a successful business, but Facebook can help
you in each of these areas. Whether it’s through ad spend, increased
targeting or more social selling, addressing your Facebook marketing
strategy can help you get closer to these goals.
 Tracking progress: Of course, making sure you’re on pace to
accomplish these goals is essential, and with a tool like Sprout, you can
easily keep tabs on all your Facebook reporting such as displayed in the
picture below.

5. 2. Know your Facebook audience
Understanding who is on Facebook and what your current audience
breakdown looks like will be important in determining which Facebook
marketing strategies you should employ and how.
Sprout Social’s deep dive into social media demographics is a great starting
point for getting a general sense of who is using. the platform and how.
Once you’ve studied up on that, spend some time getting familiar with your
own Facebook demographics using either Facebook Page Insights or a tool
like Sprout.

6. 3. Engage proactively with your audience
Like most social media channels, they’re built as networks to converse, discuss
and share content. As a brand, you can’t forget that basic idea of what makes
a social media network. That means conversation and engagement should
never be put on the back burner.
Instead, try to be a community for your audience. Facebook is a great place to
hold industry chats or discussions, whether it’s with a different audience or
your own customers. While Twitter often gets all the limelight of being a social
customer care mecca, don’t forget about Facebook too.
You can help drive Facebook engagement by asking people to simply engage in
the first place. However, you can’t sit back and wait for your followers to
interact. You can’t reach everyone, but there are ways to increase engagement.
For example, Zippo does a great job at interacting with users on several
comments and continues the discussion on Facebook. The brand also acts as a
source for info for loyal customers.

7. Post at the Best Time on Facebook
Facebook is still one of the most difficult social networks to use for organic
content. Again, algorithms make it a challenge for businesses trying to find
optimal posting times. However, our guide on the best times to post on social
media outlines the do’s and don’ts of posting on Facebook:

8. Post at the perfect time with Sprout Social
Sprout’s patented ViralPost® technology analyzes your audience data and
detects the most active times for authentic engagement, enabling you to
automatically schedule content at the best times for your brand.
And with Sprout’s Calendar feature, you can maintain oversight of your
publishing strategy over the long-term to ensure a consistent cadence. Then,
using Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can monitor all connected social channels
simultaneously to stay on top of comments, questions and other messages
related to your content.

9. Our No. 1 used feature is the Smart Inbox. It’s the way I start and end
every day. I don’t think I could ever express how incredibly useful it is.
Through that, I’m tasking messages to other Sprout users, responding
and engaging with content and our followers.
Erin Supinka
Assistant Director of Digital Engagement in the Office of Communications
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4. Schedule your Facebook content
Content creation and curation are important components to any social media
strategy. On Facebook, you have many more choices on the types of posts you
can use. This ranges from Stories to status to Group posts.
With the selection of options comes the specific types of content your
audience is interested in, which should also be kept in mind while evaluating
the techniques for marketing on Facebook that will work best for you. Our
2018 Index analyzed what type of posts consumers want from brands. Thirty

10. percent said they would like links to more information and 18% want more
images. Videos came in a close third with 17% of people surveyed.
The same report also discussed what social marketers need to succeed. For
Facebook, the top priorities included video and a budget for ads, which we’ll
go into next.

11. For scheduling content, you have both free and paid options available to you.
Facebook’s Page controls allow you to schedule your posts right from your
own page. Sprout’s ViralPost feature will pick the best times for you based on
your highest expected audience engagement.
Scheduling and planning your calendar makes it easier for you to see where
gaps are in your posts. Using a tool like this will save you time in the long run.

12. 5. Determine your Facebook ads strategy
Whether you’re just starting out on Facebook or you’ve been on it for a while,
it’s difficult to escape the need to pay for brand exposure. Our comprehensive
guide to creating your Facebook advertising strategy is a great place to start
learning more about Facebook ads.
However, growing your audience and brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight.
You have to earn it.
But there is one shortcut to get there a bit faster–social media advertising.
Specifically on Facebook, there are more than four million advertisers with just
an average click-through rate of 9%. Advertising on Facebook is simpler, but
not easier. You still have to effectively build your brand and showcase it
perfectly with ads.
Aim for Higher Brand Awareness
You Facebook ad campaigns should always be focused on two things:

13. 1. Cost Effective
2. Relevant
For starters, you want to stay within your allocated weekly or monthly spend
with Facebook to avoid over exposure and useless clicks. Ad spend can shoot
up in a hurry when you’re targeting isn’t effective or set appropriately, which
brings us to the next step.
Your Facebook ad has to be relevant. Targeting a broad audience isn’t a bad
thing. At first, you want to actually see what works best to build awareness.
However, relevance is crucial toward great Facebook ads.
Try to build custom audiences and address customers who would best fit your
Facebook content. If it’s a retargeting measure, make sure the content
provides something recognizable but also something new.
Decide on Creative Content
Earlier in this post, we did a deep dive into the types of content on Facebook.
Now it’s time to choose which pieces of content you think are worth
advertising in front of a much larger audience.
Some of the best aspects of your ad content should include:
 Identity: Does it relate to your brand and effectively showcase your
product/service? Are your logo and business colors correctly displayed?
 Reward: What do viewers get out of it? Is it a deal, promotion, offer
code, whitepaper or industry guide?

14.  Tone: Does your content maintain the same tone across your entire
Facebook page or business in general?
 Action: Your content must drive an action, which goes back to your
Facebook goals. A clear and precise call to action is best.
Keep Facebook Ad Content Fresh
Facebook ad content is literally squeezed between your friends and family
feed, which means it’s seen often. Have you ever deemed a TV commercial
the worst ever and seen it replayed endlessly through your favorite show? This
is the same thing.
Don’t let your content get stale with viewers, so make sure to update and
repurpose your ad content every week or two. The whole purpose is to drive
users to a specific site or purchasing page. So don’t let old content ruin your
Facebook retargeting or remarketing efforts.
Create a spreadsheet and document your core metrics. Each metric will
provide you with unique insights into what you specifically want to achieve
with your ad:
 Click-through Rate: If traffic is essential, track CTR and see where you
can improve.
 Impressions: Having trouble with visibility? Revisit your image or
content and see what can drive more impressions.
 Cost to Acquire: If your purpose is to limit spend and budget more
effectively, track cost to acquire and set weekly or monthly goals.
6. Encourage employee advocacy
Your employees should be your biggest cheerleaders. In the Sprout Brands Get
Real report, 72% of people reported feeling more connected with a brand
when its employees shared information about it on social media. Employees
put faces to the brands, making them more relatable to consumers.
While you can try to wrangle employee advocates using company
announcement emails, a solution such as Bambu is specifically designed to

15. streamline the process and make it easy to transform employees into brand
ambassadors.
Before Bambu, it took a lot of time and effort to get content in front of
our employees to share. With Bambu, it saves us time, it saves them time and
it allows our employees to be the thought leaders that they are with this
curated environment.
Chelsea Larsson
Senior Manager of Content Strategy
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Your employees are an invaluable asset when it comes to messaging
amplification, social selling and authentic engagement. And unlike industry
influencers, their services on social are free.
Use Bambu to easily curate content for employees and track your advocacy
program’s performance.

16. When considering employee advocacy, don’t forget about the CEO. In the
same report, 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when its CEO
is active on social media.

17. 7. Track & analyze your results
The last step of your strategy is to keep an eye on the metrics you identified
earlier in goal setting and analyze the results. This also includes determining
your ROI.

18. Sprout makes Facebook data analysis a breeze.
Quickly measure Page impressions, Fan growth and how your Facebook
content is performing using intuitive, interactive reports that can be
downloaded and shared with stakeholders in seconds.

19. With Sprout, I can quickly analyze our followers, reach, impressions,
video views, link clicks, and send reports to our senior colleagues….
Sprout is also really useful for breaking down analytics and looking at different
campaigns to see where we may need to focus our efforts.
Paul Newton
Head of Digital and Media
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And don’t forget to see how you measure up against the competition. With
Sprout, you can directly compare your performance against industry averages
and competitor’s data to ensure your Facebook marketing strategy is on the
right track.
Conclusion
With this seven steps in hand, you can begin plotting your Facebook
marketing strategy today. To keep your strategy rolling, check out our free
toolkit on using data to elevate your social success.
Categories
 Facebook

20.  Social Media Advertising
 Social Media Analytics