1. Prioritize Your Business Objectives.

Every brand on Facebook is on Facebook for one reason – to (eventually) get more business. Getting more business from Facebook means different things to different types of businesses, though, which means different brands will have different objectives, such as:

• Driving in-store sales;
• Increasing online sales;
• Launching a new product;
• Building awareness; or
• Promoting a mobile app.

This guide will primarily be helpful for businesses that want to generate leads or online sales. Even with these objectives in mind, there are a few stepping stones that precede turning fans into customers. If you want customers you have to first:

1. Build an audience;
2. Drive inbound traffic to your website;
3. Turn that traffic into qualified leads; and then
4. Nurture those leads into customers.

This guide will give you a playbook for doing just that. First we’ll talk about how to build an audience, and then we’ll dive into how you get that audience to head on over to your website where they can actually do business with you.

2. Build Your Facebook Audience

To grow your Facebook fan base, you need to make your Page and your posts as discoverable as possible both online and off. No one can connect with you on Facebook if they don’t know you exist, so let’s talk about 5 ways to get noticed.

1) Make Sure Your Page Is Properly Filled Out With Searchable Information.

After you’ve created your Facebook page, make sure the About section of your Page includes:

• An overview of what your business has to offer;
• A link to your website; and
• Any other information that will help prospects understand your business better.

2) Invite Existing Contacts To Like Your Page.

Chances are you already have existing customers, friends, and family who would be more than willing to connect with your business on Facebook if you simply asked them to. Whether in person, via email, or via Facebook, try asking for Likes (fans) and positive reviews. Within the Page Manager section of your page under the “Build Audience” menu, you have the option to invite your personal Facebook friends to like the page, share your page with your Facebook friends through the News Feed, or upload a list of email contacts to encourage existing contacts to connect. Use one or more of the three options as long as you’re cautious about overpromoting to uninterested connections.

3) Incorporate Facebook Into Your Online And Offline Communication Channels.

Making your Facebook Page as discoverable as possible includes promoting your Facebook presence using what online and offline marketing channels you already have, and removing any barriers for existing contacts to like your Page. If you have a physical storefront, place stickers in your front windows promoting your Page and include your Facebook URL on your receipts. If you have a website, blog, or email newsletter, utilize Facebook’s various social plugins – especially the Like Button or Like Box – to get people to like your Page on the spot and without having to head over to Facebook.com.

4) Create Value.

Creating value really comes into play with the content you create and share with your fans and how you interact with them (more on that later). If you’re in tune with your buyer personas, you’ll have a good idea what types of content to publish. If not, or if you just need some inspiration, consider spending a week taking note of anything in your own News Feed that compels you click, comment, or share. What inspired you? Use your observations to inform future posts.

5) Pay For New Likes (fans) Using Facebook Advertising

One of the ad types that Facebook offers is a “Page Like Ad” that contains a call-to-action to “Like Page,” and can appear in the News Feed as a page post or as a display ad on the right hand column of the News Feed. If you’ve exhausted your existing contacts and want to reach people who don’t know about your Page yet, you can use Facebook’s granular targeting capabilities to reach your ideal buyer persona(s) and spur audience growth.

To give you an idea of what a “Page Like Ad” looks like in the News Feed, here’s an example from Twix. (We’ll also talk more about how to bolster your organic Facebook efforts with ads later).

3. Build Your Facebook Audience By Making Your Page As Discoverable As Possible, By Encouraging Your Existing Contacts To Like Your Page, And By Advertising.

We’re a B2B all-in-one marketing software company that – without magic – has amassed nearly 700,000 Facebook fans and generated nearly 200,000 leads from Facebook. We thrive on creating content that makes the jobs of marketers easier, so when it comes to Facebook, we focus first on creating useful content (like blog posts, presentations, templates, and ebooks) that our audience of marketers will find valuable.

All this content creation arms our social media manager with a library of resources to promote in unique ways on Facebook.

For example, she creates Page posts that hone in on a specific point from a longer piece of content, or gives our audience an idea of what they’ll learn from it.

Most times this means creating custom images in PowerPoint or Photoshop so we can catch a prospect’s eye when they’re perusing their News Feed.

You see, our Facebook posts are the digital breadcrumbs that draw our audience down a trail toward a much more substantial piece of content they can download after filling out a form.

We use Facebook to drive traffic to landing pages where we can convert visitors into leads.

Without creating content aimed at solving problems for marketers, we'd simply have nothing interesting to post or advertise on Facebook, and we sure as heck wouldn't generate any leads!

4. Champion Value Creation: What Content To Create & Share On Facebook

To attract customers, you can’t only post sales-driven content. It’s true. Here’s why.

The key to generating leads on Facebook is to post a variety of content that aligns with goals other than generating leads or driving sales.

Aiming for “fluffier” goals like reach, awareness, buzz, customer satisfaction, and engagement (comments, likes, shares) are just as important as rigid lead gen or sales goals. They’re the stepping stones to what you really want: more business.

In fact, it’s vital to aim first to get your audience to interact with your posts. That’s why a balance of direct and indirect lead gen content is so important. Without eyeballs, you can’t get clicks, which means you can’t get traffic, leads, or customers!

Example 1: A Direct Lead Gen Post

• Provides members of our audience with a value proposition
• Has a clear call-to-action: “download”
• Contains a short URL linking to a landing page with a form

Example 2: An Indirect Lead Gen Post.

• Does not have a clear call-to-action
• Does not contain a short URL linking to a landing page with a form

If we only published posts about registering for a software demo, signing up for a trial, or getting an inbound marketing assessment (our 3 most desired conversion actions), we’d totally bore our fan base.

When we post product-focused content with sales-focused calls-to-action, we may generate qualified leads, but we only generate a handful. When we post educational or entertaining content about inbound marketing as a whole, we generate tons of leads, because we reach more people, and give ourselves the opportunity to warm them up to the idea of doing business with us without shoving our software down their throats.”

- Brittany Leaning, Social Media Manager, HubSpot

Let’s Talk About Those “Fluffy” Goals Again.

Although our ultimate goal on Facebook is to generate leads that become customers, we have immediate engagement goals for each post we publish, and those goals vary. Sometimes we really want to encourage comments because we want feedback. Other times, we may strive to for a high volume of shares because we want a particular message to spread as far and wide as possible.

The point is, by striving for comments, likes, and shares, we garner more visibility in the Facebook News Feed, which ultimately increases our chances for clickthroughs (traffic) and conversions (generated leads). You need leads to get customers

Believe it or not, some of our most successful posts in terms of interaction were not direct lead gen posts.

Let’s examine the approach behind some of HubSpot’s top performing Page posts, shall we?

Here’s another little secret: No matter what we’re trying to communicate, we try to do it visually. If our social media manager doesn’t have a pre-made image to work with, she’ll spend the time creating one.

We may not always be sure what we’re posting will incite the interaction we desire, but one thing can be sure of is we’re better off by posting a photo as opposed to a link, video, or plain ol’ status update.

In a 30-day experiment, we found that the clickthrough rate of posts containing photos is 128% higher than the CTR of posts containing videos or links.

We also know photos on Facebook generate 53% more Likes than the average post.

That’s Why, In General, Hubspot’s Facebook Post Forumula Consists Of:

1. A custom-designed 960 x 960 pixel image
2. A brief text caption
3. A short URL to a landing page

Rarely do we ever publish a post without an image. In any given 90 days, 77% of all posts we published contain a photo on average.

5. Maximize Customer Acquisition With Advertising

Unfortunately, there’s no longer such a thing as a free lunch on Facebook. Marketers used to be able to reach the majority of their fans for free (without advertising), but that’s changing.

Facebook is evolving to become more of a paid marketing platform than an organic one. A brand’s ability to reach their fan base organically has diminished as more brands and content compete to appear in users’ News Feeds.

At any given moment, there are approximately 1,500 News Feed stories competing against one another. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes only about 300 – one fifth – of them. The brands that want to get noticed have to pay to play.

Why Marketers Aren’t Pleased

Organic reach wasn’t always so miniscule, but it’s been heading this direction for awhile. In late 2012, the industry found out only about 16% of a Facebook page’s fans would see a post from that page. In October 2013, that number dropped to about 12%. In February 2014, it was 6%, and as little as 2% for pages having over 500,000 fans. Of course, this has upset many marketers who already paid for ads to grow their fan base, thinking they’d be able to broadcast to those fans for free.

We Might Not Like It, But It Is What It Is

The reality is that Facebook is a business just like yours, and the company encourages marketers to look at their fan bases as a way to make paid advertising more effective rather than using it as a free broadcast channel. Additionally, Facebook says you should assume organic reach will eventually arrive at zero. So, if you really want to reach your target audience on Facebook, you’ll need to supplement your organic efforts with some paid advertising.

Besides, A Facebook Fan Does Not Make A Qualified Lead, But Those Leads Exist.

The people who like your page already know about you, but that doesn’t mean they’re ideal future customers. Even though HubSpot is approaching 700,000 fans, only a fraction of those people actually have the need and authority to buy our all-in-one software. That’s why we pay to reach marketers who fit our target and are not yet connected to our page using Facebook Page Post Link Ads.

What To Advertise

If you’re trying to drive traffic, leads, and customers, you probably want to advertise posts that contain a link back to your website, but you can also create different types of ads depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. With Facebook Ads, you can …

• Grow your audience through new ‘Likes;’
• Drive traffic to your site;
• Drive people in-store with a redeemable offer;
• Drive event attendance;
• Create awareness with an image or video; and
• Drive installs of an app.

Use Ads To Test The Effectiveness Of Content, Too.

Did you know Facebook actually lets you create unpublished posts to test your messaging? These “dark posts” appear in the News Feed, but not on your Facebook Page. Since these “dark posts” don’t appear on your Page, you can create as many targeted ads as you like to determine which ad copy and creative resonates best without disturbing your entire fan base. To learn more about all of Facebook’s various ad types and the appropriate specs for each, check out the latest Facebook Ads Product Guide.

5. Wrap Up & Takeaways

Remember To:

• Focus on helping people. B2B is still P2P – person to person.
• Create content that makes your target audience’s job easier. Then, create interesting posts to promote that content on Facebook.
• Post a balance of direct and indirect lead gen content.
• Have an engagement goal for each post.
• Tell your audience what to do by including a clear call-to-action in your posts.
• Experiment. Some of our most engaging posts were unexpected.
• Create tracking URLs so you can measure the clicks and leads your content generates.
• Take the time to create great visuals. It pays off in engagement and clickthrough rates
• Ensure landing pages are optimized with appealing copy, visuals, and clear calls-to-action.
• Keep post copy short and sweet – ideally fewer than 90 characters.
• Utilize Facebook Advertising, including “dark posts” to test and boost effective lead gen content.