Facebook Marketing in 2024: A VERY Complete Guide
And don’t let clickbait news headlines sway you: Gen Z and Millennials are using Facebook. People ages 25-34 are Facebook’s largest audience, closely followed by those 18-24 years old.
Marketing on Facebook doesn’t have to cost a lot, either. Whether you’re just starting out with social media marketing or you’ve had a Facebook Page since 2007, these tips will get you the best possible Facebook marketing ROI.
Key Takeaways
* Facebook marketing involves promoting your company on Facebook to build awareness for your products, grow an audience, and generate leads and sales.
* A Facebook marketing strategy can include various types of content such as organic posts, Stories, and Reels and paid ads.
* To effectively market on Facebook, you need to create and optimize a Facebook Page, verify it (if possible), and set up a Facebook Ads account.
What is Facebook marketing?
Facebook marketing is promoting your company or brand on the Facebook platform. Facebook marketing grows your audience, brings in leads and sales, and establishes your brand.
Specific types of Facebook marketing for businesses include:
* Organic Facebook post content (e.g. text posts, photos, videos)
* Paid, or “boosted,” content (e.g. text, photo, or video ads)
* Facebook Reels
* Facebook Stories
* Facebook Live video
* Facebook ad campaigns
* Facebook Groups
* Facebook Pages
* Facebook Messenger ads
* Facebook Messenger chatbots or auto-reply workflows
* Influencer marketing
* UGC content
* Facebook Shops
* Facebook Marketplace
* Facebook Events
#1 for Facebook marketing
Schedule posts, answer messages, and manage ads from one place. Then, show off your results in beautiful reports. It’s so easy.
Start free 30-day trial
How to set up Facebook for business
To start marketing on Facebook, you need to set up a Facebook Page. Your Page is the foundation of everything: it’s where your audience will follow you and it enables you to try advanced Facebook marketing features, like paid ads, should you want to.
To get the most out of Facebook marketing for your business, you should:
* Create a Facebook Page
* Verify Your Facebook Page
* Create a Facebook Ads account
Let’s walk through how to do each of these.
Create a Facebook Page for your business
To set up a business Facebook Page, you’ll need to use your personal Facebook account. Log in to Facebook and click the menu icon at the top right next to your profile photo. Then click on Pages.
Click Create a new profile or Page at the top left. Fill in your business name, category, and description. You’ll see a preview of your Page on the right. Click Create Page and that’s it.
Your Page is now live, but you can continue to add details like contact information, website URL, and more. Check out our Facebook Page optimization guide for how to connect it to your Instagram account, add a Page admin, and other useful tips.
Verify your Facebook Page (optional)
To verify your Facebook Business Page, you need to meet certain criteria, like either being a recognizable individual (e.g. in the public eye) or well-known brand.
Verified Facebook Pages have the blue check icon next to their names, reassuring your audience you are who you say you are.
Not super famous but still want that lil’ blue check? There’s a new option: subscribing to Meta Verified, a paid subscription any business or creator can sign up for to get a checkmark on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The plan comes with impersonation protection, access to Meta support personnel, and rather vaguely phrased “features to help with discovery.” Subscribing doesn’t require you to be “recognizable,” but you do still need to meet eligibility requirements.
Create a Facebook Ads account
Even if you don’t plan to use paid Facebook ads right now, it’s a good idea to get your Meta Ads account set up so it’s ready to use when or if you do.
To enable your ads account, login to Facebook with the profile that has admin access to your Facebook Page, then go to Meta Ads Manager. Before you can run any ads, you’ll have to add your business and payment information.
Alternatively, you can also add this information inside Meta Business Suite. Go to Settings (the gear icon), then Billing and payments.
You’ll see your ad account(s) listed. Click View details. Facebook will alert you if you need to add any missing info to complete your ads account set up. Check everything for accuracy, add a payment method, and you’re good to go.
Not sure how to jump into Facebook ads? Check out our step-by-step guide to Facebook advertising.
Okay, but when should you start Facebook ads? Keep reading and we’ll cover that in a bit.
#1 Easy Social Advertising
Build and post ads for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. Our targeting and reporting are seriously easy.
Start free 30-day trial
How to create a Facebook marketing strategy: 8 easy steps
1. Define your Facebook marketing goals
Everyone starts their Facebook marketing strategy how-to articles with goal setting. Sorry to be boring, but it’s true: your Facebook marketing can’t be successful if you haven’t defined what success looks like.
Do you want to:
* Build brand awareness?
* Grow a massive audience?
* Drive sales on your website and/or physical store?
* Capture B2B leads?
* Build community and gather customer feedback?
There’s no wrong answer here.
Just make sure you define a clear goal for your Facebook marketing efforts and tie it into your overall business objectives.
2. Define your audience
Who are you trying to sell to and/or reach? What do they want to see on Facebook? Answer those two questions first before creating a Facebook content strategy.
Why? Because your content needs to be about what they want to see, not about what you want to post.
At minimum, you need to define your target audience by answering the following:
* What age range do they fall in?
* Where do they live?
* What types of jobs or job responsibilities do they have? (Most relevant for B2B brands.)
* What problem do they have with [your industry/product]? (And how are you the solution?)
* How and when do they use Facebook? (At work, home, doom scrolling before bed?)
Not sure where to start? If you already have followers on your Facebook Page, check out Audience Insights inside Meta Business Suite to see the demographics of your existing audience.
Does your data line up with the customers you want to attract? Perfect, keep up the good work. Not so much? Adjust your content strategy and watch your Insights to see what works for shifting your audience to the one you want.
This data is also valuable for ad targeting if you want to explore Facebook advertising.
Ready to dig deep? Here’s how to get all the nerdy info you want from Facebook Audience Insights.
3. Create a Facebook content strategy
Your content strategy is fluid, so don’t over complicate it. Results not coming through, or just want to try out a new type of Facebook post? Change it up. The key is to have a strategy—a “why” behind what you’re posting—instead of willy-nilly posting whatever comes to mind.
Once again, there’s no wrong answer when it comes to content strategy. What works for one individual or organization may not work for another, even in the same industry.
It’s important to align your Facebook content with your:
* Brand image (colors, style, graphics, etc)
* Brand tone of voice and personality
On Facebook, will you share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your process? Will you post exclusive discounts? Will you stick to business or include some fun and games?
Let your imagination run wild with ideas— Ha! Just kidding. You’re gonna post what your audience wants, right? From all that research you did in the previous step, right?
Creativity is encouraged, though. Blend what you know about your target audience with what you think will perform well. (Psst—we’ve researched all the best social media trends, so you don’t have to.)
Think of your Facebook content strategy like buckets. Each bucket is a topic.
For example:
* Industry news
* Company news
* Tuesday Tips, where you share a short tutorial for your software
* Reviews/testimonials
* New products and promotions
You get the idea. And you know what makes everything, including creativity, more fun? Rules!
A few classic social media content strategy rules to consider:
* The rule of thirds: One-third of your content is your ideas/stories, one-third is direct interaction with your audience, and the last third is promotional content.
* The 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should inform, entertain, and educate, and the remaining 20% can be promotional.
In addition to what you’ll post about, you need to consider where on Facebook you’ll post it and what types of posts you’ll make.
For post types, ideally you should have a mix of:
* Facebook Reels
* Facebook Stories
* Text posts
* Image and video posts
As for where to post them, most likely it’ll be on your Facebook Page. But also consider:
* Facebook Groups
* Facebook Live video
* Facebook Events
#1 for Facebook marketing
Schedule posts, answer messages, and manage ads from one place. Then, show off your results in beautiful reports. It’s so easy.
Start free 30-day trial
4. Post at the right times
Once you’ve decided what to post, deciding when to post is the last puzzle piece.
As mentioned earlier, Facebook Audience Insights can help here, although our research has found the best time to post on Facebook is 7 a.m. PST on Tuesdays.
Of course, that’s a massive generalization. Like everything else in your strategy, experiment! Try different times and see when you get the most engagement.
Or, use Hootsuite’s powerful analytics to tell you when the best times to post are, based on your personalized data, and you can auto-schedule your posts for these magic times with one click. Magic.
Start free 30-day trial
5. Establish your Facebook marketing budget
Depending on your other marketing activities and what you want to achieve with Facebook, you may want to pursue ads, influencer partnerships, or other types of paid Facebook marketing.
While you can set your budget however you like, research shows that most companies spend 27.1% of their total marketing budget on social media ads.
Want some help? Read how to set your Facebook ads budget, then use our free Facebook ads budget calculator as a starting point or to evaluate your current budget.
Download the free calculator
6. Engage with your audience (like, all the time!)
Facebook isn’t a one way street. Postin’ and peacin’ out won’t get you very far. To grow your audience and encourage people to take action, you need to actually be… y’know, social.
Set aside time every day to reply to comments and messages and moderate any spam on your Page.
Every. Day? Really?!
Yep, but don’t sweat it: You can do this manually, but chances are you have other platforms to manage besides Facebook. Switching between them and engaging with everyone can quickly turn into its own full-time job.
Enter: Hootsuite Inbox.
Picture this: one place to view and reply to all comments and private messages across multiple social profiles, plus everything else you need to do on your social media channels in the same app. Easily see which messages have been replied to and who’s still waiting, plus assign conversations to colleagues so everyone knows who they need to engage with at a glance.
Check out Hootsuite Inbox in action to see how much time it can save your team:
7. Scale up your Facebook marketing with AI and other tools
Facebook Messenger chatbots
Over one billion people message businesses on Facebook every single week. How can you get more leads or inquiries from Facebook Messenger? Use the power of automation to serve customers without taking up more time.
Besides using Hootsuite Inbox to personally reply to Facebook comments and messages right inside Hootsuite, you can set up a chatbot to automatically answer incoming Facebook Messages. Hootsuite’s chatbot can reduce your customer service team’s workload by 80% while improving productivity by 25%… and help your customers much, much faster.
Source: 1-800-Flowers on Facebook
Learn how to set up your own automated DMs on Facebook (including a free option from Meta!).
Facebook Marketplace
If you sell products or services locally, consider listing on Facebook Marketplace. Over 1.2 billion people use Facebook Marketplace each month, and 16% of Facebook users are on the platform only to shop on Marketplace.
You can either create a regular, free listing or run a Facebook Marketplace specific ad. These highly targeted ads can have a big impact: 54.2% of Marketplace users who click on an ad end up making a purchase from the platform.
Marketplace ads are shown alongside relevant organic listings and are noted by a small “Sponsored” text underneath them.
Source: Facebook
You can also include Marketplace ads within a larger campaign, using Meta’s automatic Advantage+ placements. For more on ad placements, read our complete guide to Facebook advertising.
Facebook Groups
Over 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. Groups can be public or private. While many Groups are managed by people and simply a way to connect with others over shared interests, Groups offer some unique benefits for organizations.
A private group is a much more intimate way to connect with your top customers. It’s a great way to bypass the unpredictable Facebook algorithm and get your posts in front of your ideal audience of people who want to see more from you.
A Facebook Group can:
* Foster brand loyalty by offering exclusive discounts or content.
* Provide valuable customer feedback.
* Inspire new marketing ideas.
* Help refine your brand voice and tone.
However, Facebook Groups require regular moderation and effort to keep users engaged, so weigh the benefits of having one against the amount of time it will take you to manage.
OwlyWriter AI
Save time writing content? Uh, yes, please!
Hootsuite includes OwlyWriter AI, our unique AI creative tool to help you draft, repurpose, and inspire awesome content. More than a basic AI copywriting tool, OwlyWriter combines our proprietary social media expertise as the world’s #1 social media marketing platform with the best custom AI model.
Use OwlyWriter to:
* Instantly generate new social media posts—and ads!
* Generate posts based on a link, like a blog post or product page.
* Brainstorm post ideas then generate options based on them.
* Repurpose your top performing social content into new, high quality posts you can schedule with just a few clicks.
* Identify upcoming holidays and write appropriate captions.
* Edit and proofread content.
Check out OwlyWriter in action:
Craft perfect posts in seconds
http://dlvr.it/TCZqGY
No comments