Using Facebook to advertise has become the top choice of digital marketers especially when it comes to Canadian businesses. You may seem to think that using Facebook for advertising Canadian businesses can only provide limited benefits such as those already accessible by having a website, but the reality is quite the contrary.
Despite the strict regulations on Facebook ads and advertising in Canada, advertising Canadian business on Facebook offer a variety of benefits including low costs, allowing a business to post the latest updates about their products and services, updating customer-relevant information as soon as there is some change, etc. Not only these, but Canadian businesses have also used Facebook to generate word of mouth buzz, offer online customer support, and eventually steer traffic to their website.
Why Facebook for Promoting Canadian Business?
Facebook has become a top choice for promoting Canadian businesses because of a multitude of reasons. The latest is how Facebook Canada has launched programs especially for advertising of Canadian businesses on its platform as it is having grants up for grabs, additional enhanced features as well as the availability of virtual training sessions.
Not only this, but Facebook Canada has also developed specific features and options, across its portfolio of applications keeping the Canadian market in focus for advertising of businesses. If you want to explore these options for your budding business right now, check out our guide.
Here’s How to Promote your Canadian Small Business Effectively on Facebook]
Let us now look at the steps that you as a Canadian small business owner can take to ensure effective promotion of your business and its products and services on Facebook.
1. Create a Facebook page
2. Invite users to like your page
3. Post content regularly
4. Dive into Facebook ads
Now we will look at these options in detail.
1. Create a Facebook page
First and foremost, when utilizing Facebook as a promotion mechanism you need to create a Facebook page. This would mark your official presence on the platform and be your main contact point to interact with your customer and clients on the same.
Your Facebook page will have a multitude of options to display information relevant to your business, from your business’s official name to the type of industry it operates in, its address, working hours, etc., each and everything that you can think of that a client should know about you has a place on Facebook pages.
2. Invite users to like your page
Once you have created a Facebook page, now comes the step where you need to reach out to your people, create a market, and to do that you need likes. You can send out invites to people on Facebook using a demographic analysis, but to a limited extent due to limitations placed in Canada on Facebook advertising but once the invite to like the page is sent out using a social circle of friends and family, it’s now time to leverage them and create buzz.
3. Post content regularly
The page is created, the likes are pouring in, so what’s the next step? You must keep the likes coming in by creating reach and interaction. Reach can only be created once the interaction is up and to do that you need to post content i.e., videos, pictures, engaging questions, and polls to have your target market interact with you.
The quality of this content is judged by how engaging it is. You might put out a video regarding your business that has cost you thousands of dollars to produce but if it’s not generating enough buzz and engagement in the forms of comments, likes, and shares on the post and thus not reaching out to increase the range of likes of your Facebook page, then it’s not worth the effort being put in. Therefore, by taking help from Canadian digital marketing agency such as Think Orion, you can develop a targeted content strategy for your Facebook page.
4. Dive into Facebook ads
Another major step that you can take after you have your page up and running and have reached a plateau when it comes to engagement and likes is using Facebook ads. You might be wondering why Facebook ads when you have options like Google ads available as well.
Industry experts suggest that Facebook ads have an edge over Google ads especially when it comes to promoting Canadian businesses with Facebook as the main promotion point.
Once you use Facebook ads you will not only be able to see different types of analysis for your regional engagement but also understand which content has sparked interest in your target segment the most and has resulted in the highest number of sales, just one of the insights that make Facebook ads not only the right choice but worth investing in. There are different types of Facebook ads appropriate for different campaigns such as Facebook Lead Ads, Facebook Carousel Ads, Facebook Offer Ads, Facebook messenger ads and more.
How to Use Facebook ads for Promoting Canadian Small Businesses
Let us now look at a step-by-step approach for using Facebook ads to create an ad campaign for promoting small Canadian businesses.
1. Identify your marketing goal
The first step to creating a successful Facebook ad campaign to promote your Canadian small business is to know your marketing goals. You need to know which goal or target is right for you and how one result might seem attractive, but it might not be the right match for your business. To help with this Facebook has created a tool that will aid in determining your marketing goal that is right for you.
2. What is your objective?
As the next step in using the Facebook ads manager to create a campaign, you need to define your marketing campaign’s objective. In this step, you must choose from options layered under three tiers that are awareness, consideration, and conversion. Depending on what you want to get as an end product of running a Facebook ad campaign, you need to make a careful selection out of these options to promote your small Canadian business.
3. Define your target audience
Now define your target audience. This means determining the age, interests, geographical location, gender, etc. of your target market. The step is very crucial and requires external market research because you might have the right ad in place and a strong strategy to execute it but if it does not reach out to the right people, then the results will not only be mediocre but can be misleading as well.
4. Choosing the platform
In this step, you need to choose the platforms where you want your ad to run. You can choose between Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Audience Network, or across all these available options. It all depends on the actual concentration of your target audience on these platforms, which will help you in making the right choice.
5. Determining your budget and schedule
Now comes the budgeting and scheduling part. One of the great features of Facebook ads is that it helps you in choosing the right schedule for your ads keeping in view your budget. In this step, you determine that whether you want to budget your ads on a daily or a lifetime basis, and then you select the schedule or lifetime range accordingly.
6. Selecting the right format
Now choose the right format for your ad. You can have a single image or maybe a video or you can put up different collections of images as well. It all depends on what will be the most attractive and reasonable option for your target audience.
7. Finalizing the ad
Now that you have finalized your ad, it goes to the Facebook ad auction, which based on an objective formula helps your ad in reaching the right people, at the right time.
8. Managing and measuring
In the last step, you not only manage your Facebook ad campaign but also measure the outcomes. Using the Facebook ads manager, you can understand using different insights and reports, the reach of your ads, which ads are doing better, and which are not. This will help you in improving your Facebook ad campaign while it runs, by making relevant changes.
Does Facebook advertising work for small businesses?
Yes. Not only does Facebook advertising work efficiently for small businesses, but it is also one of the most powerful tools for small businesses especially in Canada to reach out to their target market. The edge that Facebook advertising provides to small business owners in Canada is that it helps them to define their market while also respecting their limited budgets, which is one of the biggest selling points of running a Facebook ad campaign to achieve your promotional and marketing goals.
Conclusion
With a simple approach and easy-to-use interface, Facebook ads can take your small business to greater heights by filtering out the unnecessary sparkle that is often associated with marketing and promotions, helping you reach the right market for your small Canadian business and putting it on track for exponential growth.
