Common Facebook Marketing Mistakes that Local Business Owners Should Avoid

There are other marketers that are saying that Facebook is dying.

Well, not literally shutting down or taking down its site but dying in terms of its appeal and use among internet users.

However, the statistics says otherwise.

The 2019 Global Digital Report that was released recently showed Facebook on the top of the list of social networking sites that most people on the internet are using.

Read also: Digital and Social Media Marketing Courses to Improve Your Skills Today

In fact, in spite of its privacy and hacking issues last year, it hasn’t much made a significant decrease on the number of users using it.

Why don’t you take a reading tour on Facebook Marketing and get to know this side of social media more?

Why is Facebook Marketing Important?

image source: Elegant Themes

Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes first established the social networking site Facebook in 2004. They were students back then at Harvard University.

Chris Hughes first established the social networking site Facebook in 2004. They were students back then at Harvard University.

According to Britannica, it was first named as TheFacebook but still wasn’t that widely used because of the popularity then of Myspace, which had over five million members in that year.

It was in the following year that the social networking site was just named Facebook. It was also in this year that it made its success that by the end of 2005 it has reached six million monthly active users including those outside of the United States.

Facebook has proven its great contribution especially in promoting a company’s product. Way back in 2006 when Zuckerberg opened its membership, household product manufacturer Procter & Gamble was able to attract 14,000 people to their promotional effort on teeth-whitening products.

It was during that year too when more companies began using the social networking site for their marketing and advertising.

Fast-forward to the year 2019 Facebook already has 2.121 billion active users, according to the Global Digital Report.

That’s a 1.121 billion users added since 2012.

How does this impact the advertising and marketing of businesses?

According to the report, 35 percent or about 742 million people or adults can be reached by advertisements on the social networking site.

Most of the active users are millennials aged 18 to 34. Their combined population has reached 1.240 billion or more than half of the population of active users on the site.

This means this is a great platform to market your brand to potential and even existing customers.

Facebook has the attention of about more than half of the social media users globally.

Imagine getting that much attention to your brand.

Now, does this mean you just need to post and post in order to make your brand grow?

It’s no longer enough, according to Hubspot.

Remember that you now have competitions. Hundreds or maybe thousands of them!

How would you stand out from all the noise?

How about you get to know Facebook marketing first?

What is Facebook Marketing?

image source: Elegant Themes

Hubspot considers Pages, one feature of Facebook, as a tool essential for businesses to use for their marketing efforts.

It is similar to a Facebook profile but instead of adding it up among your friends list, you have to like the page in order to get content updates from it.

So, is this entirely Facebook Marketing?

It’s just a part of it.

Just like Marketplace, Groups, and Jobs features on the social networking site.

It is more of using the platform and all its features to allow your brands to be known on this channel.

Facebook as a company offers a lot of products including another social media application Instagram.

Apart from it, other products include the mobile app and the in-app browser, Messenger, apps like Direct and Boomerang on Instagram, Portal-branded devices, Moments, Bonfire, Facebook Mentions, Spark AR Studio, Audience Network, and any other features, apps, technologies, software, products, or services.

Facebook Inc. or Facebook Ireland Limited under Facebook Data Policy offers these services.

It also includes Facebook Business Tools. These are tools used by website owners and publishers, app developers, business partners (including advertisers) and their customers to support business services and exchange information with Facebook, such as social plugins (like the “Like” or “Share” button) and SDKs and APIs.

Scratching your head? You’ve probably been using the application for years now but you haven’t heard of the products mentioned above, right?

In order for your marketing to be successful, you must first get to know the platform or tool that you are using in order to understand how it works and how it could be beneficial for you.

Are you really on track in using Facebook for your marketing efforts? If you are in doubt, why don’t you read on and get to know if there is something that you’ve been doing wrong all along.

Facebook Marketing Mistakes that Local Business Owners Should Avoid 

1. Do not use Facebook profile for your local business.

image source: Mari Smith 

Here are the reasons why:

• It doesn’t have analytics tools. You wouldn’t know how far you are doing. You wouldn’t know if your posts are reaching the people you want to reach. You only see the likes and the shares.

Facebook profiles are used and meant for individual users. It is meant for a more personalized way of networking with friends in your hometown and in all other parts of the world.

With Facebook Page, you can have insights and analytics to help you get to know your audience, their interests, and the time that they are usually online.

• It is limited to only 5,000 people. That’s the maximum number of friends you can have if you are using your profile. If it exceeds and you want to add more, then, you’ll have to work again and build another profile. You can use Facebook page instead as it doesn’t have any limit as to the number of people who can like or follow your page.
• Facebook has Terms of Service. If they found you are violating any of it, they might delete the account that you have been building.

2. Facebook Groups do not work for every business or entrepreneur.

image source: Social Media Week 

In the Philippines, some entrepreneurs who do wholesale tap Facebook Groups to get in touch with their resellers and retailers. However, they also have a separate Facebook Page for their other customers.

There are also those who use Groups so they can make announcements for their clique, their workmates, their organizations and etc. They use it as a platform for discussions.

For businesses, it’s not that advisable as people have different interests on the brands and products they buy.

3. Don’t publish your posts if your followers are not even online during that time.

image source: ABC News 

People have jobs during the day and others are in school. So, if you’re targeting career people, do not post if they are not online during that time.

Your analytics come in helpful on this one. You can determine the time that your posts are doing well and the time that there are lesser engagement.

Again, you have to get to know your audience and their behavior in order to get to them.

4. Do you ignore comments? Don’t!

image source: Medium 

One of the main reasons that users get irritated with on social media is that administrators of some pages ignore their comments even if they are valid ones.

While there may be rude ones and inappropriate ones, these shouldn’t stop you from checking on the ones that actually bring up valid concerns.

Check it from time to time. People would really appreciate it if you’d respond because it only means that you are listening to them!

Most of those who keep coming back on your page are the ones who appreciated how you listened to them.

5. Don’t ignore the personal messages.

While there are those brave souls who express themselves through the comment section, there are also those who’d rather like to keep it in a private conversation.

Don’t ignore these messages too.

If they’ve found out that you are actually listening to them, chances are they would be coming back again.

If they’d like your brand, your products and services, they’ll definitely stick.

It takes time to build relationships.

Think about this as building a new relationship that needs nurturing from time to time.

6. Social media is about being social. Don’t just self-promote.

image source: Interesting Entertainment 

People turn to social media and social networking sites because they either want to connect with friends or gain new knowledge while they are online.

Their hunger for consuming more information urges them to treat social media too as one of the main sources of information.

That’s why news agencies are on social media too. That’s why some of the government officials and government agencies are on social media too.

They want to inform the public. They take advantage of this hunger for information and feed them with content that truly matters or relatable to them.

However, some businesses missed this fact.

They overly promote their products and forgetting the part where they should educate their consumers.

Businesses such as yours may present contents like tips and helpful videos about certain topics that you can relate to your products.

7. Paid Ads.

image source: Empow’Her

As what was mentioned earlier in this article, Facebook can offer a lot of products for businesses like yours.

They have this feature on its pages where you can create ads from it.

How? Facebook cites eight ways.

a) Promote your page.

This feature helps you reach new followers or new customers on the platform.

If your aim and goal is to build first the audience for your page, then, use this one.

This is also helpful in building brand awareness of your business and products and services.

When you want to promote your page, you can get the chance to choose the people you want to reach.

You can edit the gender, age group, and locations. You can even do detailed targeting.

This comes with a budget. You can choose to have daily or lifetime budgets.

    b) Boost post.

This helps you in getting a lot of people to engage with a specific post.

Similar to page promotion, it can help you reach new customers and help boost your brand awareness too.

    c) Promote Call to Action

Do you have a specific advocacy in mind for your product or for your brand? Then, use this.

    d) Boost an event.

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to promote? You can utilize this feature.

Events are now visible on the site making more and more Facebook users keep tabs of the different events that are near them.

    e) Promote you business locally.

Do you want your business address be found? Facebook now has this feature to help you promote it using their templates.

    f) Get more website visitors.

If you want more traffic on your website instead, then you can use this promotional tool.

It helps people get directed to your site once they click on the link.

    g) Ongoing promotions.

The key here is also being consistent to create that brand recall to the minds of your customers.

    h) Get more leads.

If you want them to sign up for your offers, then this promotional tool is for you.

These promotional tools, once used in the right way can be very beneficial to your business.

8. No complete details about your company on your page.

People would appreciate it if you have the complete details of your company on your page including your address, your contact number, your website, your business profile and among others.

Pages with detailed information about their businesses are perceived as credible and trustworthy.

So please, don’t forget these important details.

9. Be consistent with your branding.

Your profile photo, your cover photo and all the other content that you place on your page should be coordinated.

The colors and design should always be consistent with your business’s actual logo and color.

The same goes as well with your other posts.

10. Don’t post too often.

image source: GSMArena 

When you are a newbie to using pages, you’ll likely be overwhelmed to start building your audience.

You’d want to post more content.

However, too much of something is not good.

Don’t bombard your followers and likers on your page with so much content. They can only take so much and digest so much.

According to a study from HubSpot, the lesser frequency you post something, the more clicks it gets.

It may lessen your engagement but it still all depends from the number of followers you have.

But the best way to ensure more clicks is to post content that is very relevant to your target audience.

11. Image quality.

Are you still posting low quality images on your page?

Delete them and go take some new and clearer ones! You don’t want Facebook users to ignore you and your post just because your photo of the event was either out of focus or blur, right?

The quality of digital images really makes it more appealing and enticing.

Facebook has also become an avenue and a platform for budding photographers and artists to showcase their work.

Make sure the photos of your products and services are the expression of your creativity as a business owner.

What you put on social media would always reflect back on your brand. If you post low quality images, then, some customers would think that you are mediocre because you allow it to be placed on your page.

12. Wrong use of tone.

Set the tone at the beginning of your existence on Facebook.

Do not confuse your fans, as much as possible.

Remember that moody people always push people away.

So, try to set the tone. If you want to project a fun brand, then, be fun. If you want to be serious and formal, you can also do that.

However, you always have to put in mind your target audience. What do they prefer the most?

13. Don’t forget to involve your customer service team in your social media marketing.

image source: Post Planner 

They are the most useful ones in terms of addressing concerns from customers.

They know the approach and they know how to work around. It can even win you some more fans on board.

Also, the response time of pages matter because your target audience on Facebook would prefer pages that are responsive to their needs and queries.

14. Don’t post with shortened URLS.

image source: Ug Tech Mag

Do you use apps or sites online that help you shorten your URL to your content?

Think again.

Using shortened URLS are best for social networking site such as Twitter which can only accommodated a limited number of characters.

Longer URLS have “three times as many clicks as shortened URLS”, according to Salesforce company named BuddyMedia.

15. Don’t leave it.

image source: Neil Patel

Just like any businesses that prosper, consistency is key here.

Don’t just be too complacent enough just because you already have an audience.

Remember that you put up the page in order to help your local business be known.

Not all local businesses have the budget to hire, shoot and pay to be on air on television stations and allow the people to get to know them.

Post consistently. Increase more following.

Read also: Top Digital Marketing Experts and Authorities That You Should Follow

Conclusion

Before you close your browser and close this article, please do take not of these common Facebook marketing mistakes.

You need to know them so that you can correct them.

When you have corrected them, then, that’s the time that you’ll be able to do the best practices in order to help your local business grow.

Have you already thought what are the mistakes you have made in the past in terms of marketing on Facebook? What steps have you done so far?

References:

www.britannica.com/topic/Facebookwearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019

www.hubspot.com/facebook-marketing

blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-post-frequency-benchmarks