Facebook Marketing: 2024 Strategy Guide

Facebook has almost 3 billion monthly active users, with an average of 2 billion users logging onto the platform every day [1]. Businesses of all sizes worldwide use Facebook’s platform to market their products or services to prospective customers.

With the right strategy, your Facebook page can become a powerful tool for promoting products and penetrating new markets. In this article, we'll offer an overview of what Facebook marketing is and how it works, explore social media strategies for your brand, and provide an introduction to Facebook advertising.

How is Facebook used in marketing?

Through marketing on Facebook, you can use the popular social media platform to promote your business and sustain your brand. Your marketing strategy can incorporate both organic (unpaid) content marketing as well as more traditional paid advertising campaigns.

Businesses that use Facebook and other social media marketing will often hire social media managers or social media marketers to develop and implement an effective strategy unique to their brand, audience, and business goals.

Is Facebook marketing worth it?

In 2022, Facebook’s advertising revenue was over $113 billion [1], demonstrating Facebook's continued importance and profitability to business users worldwide. The platform can deliver high-impact advertising for a lower cost than other types of traditional marketing and advertising because of the targeted capabilities to reach the right potential customer.

Types of Facebook posts

Different post types that you can use to share your brand’s message with the world, each serving its own purpose in marketing a particular product or service. 

Here are some types of posts you can incorporate into your Facebook marketing and content strategy:

• Text post: The simplest of post types, text-only content is rare in Facebook marketing. This is because posts with photos, videos, graphics, or links are more likely to grab users’ attention. Text posts are typically used on personal accounts to source information, ask for recommendations, or share big announcements. 

• Photo post: Photographs can elicit strong emotions. Using one (or a few) high-quality photos in a Facebook post can showcase the available colors of a summer dress, spotlight a restaurant’s best appetizer or cocktail, or promote a tropical beach destination.

• Video post: Videos in Facebook posts can help a business tell its brand story or deliver live updates. According to an analysis from ChatterBlast, 53.5 percent of completed videos are played without sound (which means subtitles are important!) [2].

• Linked content post: Posts can include a link to your website, blog, or news article. Linked content can include a call-to-action (CTA) that may directly lead to sales, brand awareness, or promotions. 

• Facebook story: Facebook stories are photos or short video content that appear on the top of a news feed and remain for 24 hours. These tend to be casual updates, sometimes cross-posted from Instagram.

For all post types, you should use high-quality photos and videos whenever possible, take advantage of holidays, and craft genuine messages that reflect the brand. Preparing media assets like photographs, videos, and graphics requires time, so it is wise to plan ahead. Businesses typically use a social media content calendar to execute a plans in a timely, organized fashion.

You have the option to publish each type of post on your business Facebook page for free. Posting for free will create a public post shown to users navigating to your Facebook page and may show up on the news feeds of people who already like or follow your page. You can also pay to boost your posts using the Ads Manager.

How to start marketing on Facebook

To build your brand on Facebook, you will need to develop a marketing strategy that delivers high-quality content promoting your brand.

First, you will need a Facebook business page, which can be easily created using a personal account. Facebook has comprehensive step-by-step guides if you need assistance creating or setting up your page. This video also provides an introduction for setting up your social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.

Getting likes on Facebook

Once you have your Facebook page, you'll want to start acquiring likes. When people like your page, they're essentially joining your network and will start seeing your posts in their news feeds. The more likes you have, the more visibility your business will have on Facebook.

As you begin to build your Facebook presence, it's important to know who your target audience is. Knowing who you are targeting will enable you to create the right content for your desired customers.

Once you know who your audience is, you can intentionally seek them out on Facebook, either organically, inviting members of your personal network to like your business page, for example, or through paid ads set with parameters that match your target audience. As you build your audience, you can learn more about who they are using the Facebook Insights tool.

How to create a Facebook marketing strategy

Creating your Facebook marketing strategy is similar to creating your general content strategy, only in this case, you'll be focusing on creating compelling content specifically for Facebook users.

The steps for creating a Facebook marketing strategy are:

1. Define your goals.

2. Research your target audience.

3. Conduct a content audit, if relevant.

4. Choose your post types.

5. Create your content plan.

6. Develop a process for content creation.

7. Measure the success of your content.

Learn more about developing a content strategy with this step-by-step guide.

Build your brand with Facebook Ads

Since Facebook launched paid advertising in 2007, it has played a key role in how businesses use social media as a marketing tool. With the influx of content in Facebook news feeds, organic posts can get lost in the algorithm. Paid ads help businesses target specific demographics to get their message out.

After creating an organic brand presence on social media, you can focus on the two types of paid advertising available on Facebook. The first type is a boosted post. This increases your visibility by boosting certain posts, so you can get the most out of your organic content. The second is to create paid advertising campaigns using Facebook Ads Manager.

The fourth course in Meta's Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate is all about Advertising with Meta and guides learners through the processes described below. Watch this video from the course to hear more about your advertising options on Facebook:

Boosting posts

A boosted post is organic content on your business page’s timeline that you pay to boost the likelihood of your target audience seeing it. This is a simple way to advertise on Facebook because it boosts a regular post that otherwise would not have received as much visibility. It helps drive potential customers to your page. 

When a post is boosted, it shows up in your desired audience’s Facebook feed as an ad. You also have the option to select Instagram as ad placement for a boosted post. In boosting a post, you can decide:

• Your audience: target audience(s) based on demographics and location

• Your budget: how much you want to spend for the duration of your campaign

• Campaign duration: when you click “boost” and the ad is approved, your target audience will see your ad on their feed for a specified amount of time

Creating Facebook ads

Unlike boosted posts, Facebook ads are created in Ads Manager. With this tool, you can create, manage, and track ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. Ads Manager has many options for customizing your ads, which makes this an excellent option for conducting A/B testing to reach your marketing goals.

There are four types of Facebook ads you can choose from:

• Image ads: These ads are static images in JPG or PNG format. You are allowed 40 characters for the headline and up to 125 characters for the main message, so you should use this precious ad space for calls to action (CTAs).

• Video ads: With video ads, you can tell stories, such as how a product was made or a customer testimonial, in an impactful and engaging way. 

• Carousel ads: Carousel ads enable viewers to click through several images, usually best for e-commerce brands promoting several complementary products or one product from different angles.

• Collection ads: Like static image ads, image collections can showcase several images with a 125-character message.

How to use Ads Manager

A benefit to Facebook Ads Manager is that it has a user-friendly design, prompting you with options every step of the way. The first thing you’ll do is choose your ad objective from three categories:

1. Awareness: Brand awareness, reach

2. Consideration: Traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, messages

3. Conversion: Conversions, catalog sales, store traffic

After choosing your ad objective, you’ll use Ads Manager to name your campaign, set a budget and schedule, determine your target audience, select your ad placement, and finally, publish your post.

For ad placement, you can select from Messenger, Facebook, Audience, or Instagram. With Ads Manager, you can further customize by selecting options such as Facebook News Feed, Facebook Marketplace, or Instagram Explore.

After publishing your Facebook ad, you can track and monitor it to optimize your ad budget. Some businesses conduct A/B experiments with small sums of money before launching a larger ad campaign.

How to track and monitor your Facebook analytics

When evaluating your Facebook ad success, you’ll want to view and analyze data such as ad impressions and frequency, click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per conversion.

To track and monitor your ads, you can use the three following Facebook tools:

• Ads Manager: Create a report that shows stats on how your ads are performing, such as carousel ad views and website conversions.

• Events Manager: Analyze data on visitors’ actions (“events”) on your website, such as the adding items added to their cart or completing a purchase.

• Facebook Business Suite: View data about your Facebook and Instagram account, such as demographics, content engagement, and paid ad performance.

Additional Facebook marketing tools

Facebook’s three tools are robust enough to gather all the data you need to gauge your Facebook ad performance. However, you may want to take advantage of other tools that you can use to track analytics, organize your content calendar, and manage your posting schedule. Here are some helpful tools for Facebook marketing:

• Google Analytics: An alternative tool for measuring ad conversions and performance.

• Qwaya: For businesses that focus on Facebook and Instagram, Qwaya is a tool you can use to help conduct A/B testing and schedule ads.

• Hootsuite: This tool is comprehensive for managing your marketing on all social media platforms, including scheduling posts, targeting and bidding algorithms, and more.

• Trello: A project management tool that teams can use to manage the Facebook marketing process.

• Google Drive: You can use Google’s host of tools to create and manage a content calendar, assign roles, and store assets like photos and videos.

Keep learning

Whether you want to become an expert in social media marketing for your business or launch your career, you can earn Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate in just seven months. No degree or experience is required, so start your learning journey today at your own pace.

If you’re more interested in the data side of marketing, consider Meta Marketing Analytics Professional Certificate to learn how to drive traffic to your Facebook business page.