By Marcelle Dibrell
Businesses looking to market their brand have a major tool at their disposal: the Facebook Page. Not only does a Facebook Page provide a great way for businesses to reach their audience — they are also free. And while Facebook profiles can be private, Facebook Pages are public, and Google can index the page, making it that much easier for people to find you.
The benefits of Facebook Pages are numerous.
First, they are free — and simple to create. It takes just minutes to create a page, and the platform offers several features to manage it.
Second, it is highly versatile. For example, it can be used to book appointments. You can use their appointment tool to see appointment records and manage your calendar.
You can schedule events. You can post a sale or a new product or service you are promoting, and if a follower marks that they are interested in an upcoming event, Facebook will remind them of the day of the event.
You can post job listings on a Facebook Page. This tool may help you reach and engage with the best candidates.
There’s also a Facebook Shops tool, where you can share your inventory or services with customers to simplify the buying process. And your audience can buy directly through their computer or mobile device.
Some of the top features of a Facebook Page are that you can share your business location and service area, your phone number, hours of operation, and more.
The Page comes with an inbox, which lets you communicate with people on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.
The Facebook Page also offers insights to help you understand what content your audience interacts with the most. Here, you can note “likes,” “views,” reach, and access information about your audience’s demographics.
The only thing that’s not free on a Facebook Page is advertising. When you’ve optimized your Facebook Page for success, you can use Facebook advertising to reach more people you care about if you are in a growth mindset.
Facebook offers advertising tools to fit the needs of all advertisers, from those brand-new to digital advertising, to the more experienced. Facebook offers easy-to-use ad creation tools that allow you to create, manage, and track the success of your ads directly from your Facebook Page.
Facebook Ads also have a customer “Lookalike Audience,” which is a neat tool that can help you find new customers based on similarities to existing fans of your Facebook Page. Then, you can target your ads to these Lookalike Audiences to expand your reach.
When you run ads on Facebook, you will get access to ad insights to see how well your ad is performing.
Here’s an example of how you could use Facebook ads for your business.
Say you work in a region of the country that experiences wide seasonal variation and you want to promote your services for opening or closing a pool for the season.
Your business could create a series of video ads showing real-life scenarios that people experience during the spring when their pools are not closed properly for the winter.
For spring openings, you could also create photo ads of a swampy pool with the message, “I’ve got you covered come spring.”
Facebook has a lot to offer for people trying to grow their businesses. This issue of Service Industry News will illustrate other ways pool service companies are using Facebook in their businesses.