“How to Develop an Effective Facebook

Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

Video 1: Aligning Your Facebook Strategy With Your Goals

Despite what many people say, Facebook marketing is not dead.

While in recent years we've seen the rise of Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter in the marketing world, none of
them have beat out Facebook. 94% of businesses still both use Facebook and are currently active on it — that's higher
than any other social media network.

That said, marketing on Facebook has become significantly more challenging. Organic reach is harder to come by,
advertising is more important than ever, the amount of competition is overwhelming, and the tactics and methods like
posting frequently or asking users to like comment or share your content don't seem to work anymore.

That’s why you need to have a dedicated strategy if you're going to be successful on Facebook.

Research shows that marketers who document their strategy are over 300% more likely to report being successful. And
because Facebook changes its algorithm regularly, not only do you need to have a strategy, but it needs to be clear,
specific to your audience, and flexible enough to adjust to the platform's ever-changing algorithm.

But that’s why you’re here, right? Well, let’s get started.

When you’re thinking about your strategy, you need to align your Facebook goals with your broader business goals.

Tammy Duggan-Herd, HubSpot Academy, Principal Inbound Strategist

"So, what I often see businesses doing wrong when it comes to social media is that they're not focused on how
social media affects business objectives. So, we need a strategy in place and it starts with business objectives
like shares, comments. These vanity metrics may make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but at the end of the
day, it's really about business objectives. How is social media getting there? Start with your business objectives.
Then, identify your target market. You should know this, but you need to figure out where your target market
lives on social and then you determine those channels so that everything is tying back to those business
objectives. If you're just going towards social media objectives like increasing Likes or followers, you're probably
not going to see, like I said, any effect on your bottom line. So, start there: business objectives, whether that's
conversions, whether that is sales, whatever it is. This is not shares, follows, but real business objectives."

As we just heard, the most effective strategies are tied directly to your business goals. For example, if you have specific
revenue goals to hit on sales for a B2C product, you'll likely want to share content that's targeted at driving users back to
a site to buy. But if you're a B2B organization that has a long sales cycle, your focus might be on education and delivering
multiple touch points that help engage users.

With business goals in hand, you can then determine how you want to use Facebook. The most common ways that
businesses use the platform are for brand awareness, customer retention, referrals to a website or other marketing
efforts, community building, customer service, and lead generation.

Some companies might use Facebook to do all of these things, but that's not true for everyone. What works for one
business might not work for yours.

Align your strategy with your audience and your business goals.
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

Video 2: Knowing Your Facebook Audience

Often, I hear marketers ask questions like “What content should we be creating?” or “What content should we be
posting to Facebook? Should we focus on video or images, maybe even blogs?” They all want to know what content
works. So, yes, while there are certain types of content that perform better on certain platforms, there’s nothing truer
than this:

When it comes to creating great content on Facebook, it helps to know who you're talking to.

Understanding the people who are currently interacting with your Page will help you not only create great content, but
create the right content, too.

Facebook can help you gain a deeper understanding of your buyer persona through Audience Insights, which is the free
analytics tool that’s part of Facebook’s Ads platform and is very powerful.

JD Prater, Ads Evangelist, Quora

“Facebook Audience Insights are an amazing wealth of information and data for marketers no matter if it’s
organic or if it’s paid. So, I love to dive in to understand what is going on with my audience. So you can go into
Facebook audience insights, you can start creating some filters, some criteria. And really start to understand
who these personas are. What are these people doing? What do they like? And now you can actually start to use
that information to start catering your content around them because now you're going to be proving a more
holistic strategy whenever you think through your content.“

Through aggregate information about geography, demographics, purchase behavior, and more the tool really helps you
learn more about your target audience and their behavior on Facebook. Let’s take my up-and-coming surf apparel
company for example. If I were targeting women between the ages of 18 and 35 in the United States, I could set this
criteria or segment in Audience Insights and find out what my target personas are doing, what they like, or what other
interests they have — this information is critical when thinking about what content to create.

To access Audience Insights, go to the Facebook Ad Manager. In the upper-left corner, click the menu. Audience Insights
is located under the Plan section.

Once you’re there, you’ll have to choose between analyzing everyone on Facebook or just people connected to your
Page. For the purpose of these instructions, let’s look at Everyone on Facebook, but you can always change this later.

Next, look at the Create Audience column on the left side to determine the segment you want to analyze. Here you can
create an audience segment based on their location, age and gender, interests, connections, and more detailed
information like education, relationship status, or what they do for work.

The Interests section is a great way to uncover industry information. You can add general interests or the names of
specific Pages. However, be warned that not every Page will be available to analyze if they don’t have a substantial
number of Likes.

In the example here, using the fields and dropdowns on the left, for my surf apparel company, I’ve chosen to analyze
women in the United States between the ages of 18 and 35 who are interested in surfing and the apparel company Rip
Curl. The results display on the right.

When you explore the data in the demographics section, you can see the breakdown of age and gender, relationship
status, and education level.
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

Under the Page Likes tab, you can get a glimpse into the other Pages they turn to for content. This is a great way to
discover companies you never even knew existed that appeal to your target audience. Some of them will be your direct
competition, while others will be places your customers consume content.

This is just the beginning, there is so much more that you can do with Facebook Audience Insights.

At HubSpot, we use Insights to determine the types of content to create that resonate best not just on Facebook, but
also on other channels. It helps us find the right interests within a wide group of people. It helps us discover what
they’re talking about and how we can create the right content for the right conversation.

Together, all of this data serves as a valuable starting place to evaluate your existing Facebook audience, look at your
competitors, and brainstorm content ideas.

Video 3: Evaluating Your Current Facebook Strategy

Most of you have been using a personal profile on Facebook for years at this point. And it’s possible that some of you
have even had your Business Page for years, too. But, let me ask you this, how often do you review your Page’s
performance? More specifically, how often do you review the content you post to your Page? When it comes to knowing
what content performs best and what engages your audience, a great place to start is to assess the content you’re
currently posting by conducting a content audit.

Conducting a content audit can help you identify areas for improvement, not only in your content, but in your
company’s overall strategy on Facebook, too. Let’s take a look at how to get started with your content audit.

Begin by looking at all the content you've posted in the last 90 days and create a repository of all your high-performing
posts. You can create the repository in a spreadsheet or any notes app that lists out each post; the number of Likes,
shares, and comments; and the link to the post on Facebook. Use this repository to learn what content is likely to
perform well in the future by analyzing what performed well in the past.

Ask yourself questions like; Are videos performing well? If they are, what’s unique about them? Are they short 30-
second videos, or lengthy three-minute videos? When you’re trying to understand if your videos are performing, it’s
important to have benchmarks. Establish benchmarks based on historical performance, and then compare the last 90
days of performance to those benchmarks. Take a look at the resources section for a guide on benchmarking. If you
don't have any videos, consider creating some and test to see if they suit your audience.

Are you posting Facebook content with images? How are they performing? Do high-performing image posts have
anything in common? Maybe they have text over the image, or maybe they don't? When it comes to images, a high
number of Likes, shares, and comments are a key indicator of performance.

Does your Facebook text content resonate with your audience? Align your copy and writing style with your brand and
your audience. Do humorous posts resonate with your audience, or do serious posts drive more engagement?

While conducting a content audit is a very important step in evaluating your current Facebook strategy, there is another
— conducting a competitive analysis.

It’s very likely that there are other companies with similar Pages and content to yours. You’ll want to know who your
biggest competitors on Facebook are. Who are you up against? What are they posting? And is there anything you can
learn from them?
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

Not only will conducting a competitive analysis help you see what your competitors' fans are like and what's working in
your space, but it will also give you an indication of where and how you can differentiate your business.

You can do this analysis manually by searching for competitors’ Pages using the search functionality and asking the same
questions you asked when auditing your content and Page. Or, you can use Facebook's Pages to Watch feature in
Facebook Insights. This allows you to watch other Facebook Pages so you can compare their activity, engagement, and
audience growth to your own.

Pages to Watch is a really great feature because it lets you see what content your competitors are posting, how often
they're posting it, when they're posting, and the engagement those posts are receiving. It's a great place to keep track of
your competitors or brands you admire.

To set up Pages to Watch, go to your business page and click on the tab called Insights, then click Overview.

Scroll down until you see Pages to Watch and click "Add Pages." Type the name of the Page you're looking for and then
click watch to add it to your list. .

Looking at other Pages and watching to see how their engagement levels increase or decrease can be a valuable tool.
Ask yourself: How often are your competitors posting, what’s unique about their content, and what can you do to
distinguish yourself from them? Comparing what's working for others can help you adjust your strategy and adapt your
tactics accordingly.

Don’t forget to make sure you track and measure your performance. Facebook delivers some robust statistics that you
can use to do a variety of things including understanding the demographics of your audience, determining the best mix
of content and the best times for that content, audience engagement such as clicks, Likes, and re-shares, and how many
followers you’ve gained or lost that month.

If you’re advertising with Facebook, there’s another set of analytics that you can tap into as well. Having all these
analytics is one thing, but you should determine early on what you want to measure – and which KPIs you plan to track.
See the resources section for a link to a lesson about building KPIs.

There’s a lot to consider when you’re evaluating your Facebook strategy, and you won’t be able to tackle it all at once.
Mapping these components out will help you do a full evaluation of your current Facebook strategy, so you can go on to
create better content, get more engagement from your target audience, and create Facebook ads that actually convert.

Video 4: Understanding the Facebook Algorithm

Algorithms can often be the cause of many headaches for marketers and brands. Just when you thought you had your
strategy locked in, the algorithm changes, and you're left scratching your head, wondering what to do next.

Facebook is no exception here. The social giant loves to change things up, and you need to be ready to shift your
strategy when that happens.

To give your Facebook strategy the best chance of success, you'll want to understand how Facebook prioritizes, scores,
and displays content to its users. In this video, we’ll take a look at how the algorithm works at its most basic level so you
have the foundation you need to get your content seen.

In a nutshell, the algorithm's number one goal is to serve the most relevant content to Facebook users. It does this by
ranking content according to these four factors:
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

Inventory, as the term suggests, refers to all the content Facebook is looking at to help it decide what to show your
audience, whether it’s posts from their friends, family, groups they’ve joined, or Pages they’ve liked.

Signals are things like comments, Likes, and shares that Facebook uses to choose which content gets shown. Facebook
weighs some of these more than others. For example Likes, shares, comments, and overall engagement are weighted
more heavily than little things like what type of phone a user is on and how fast their internet connection is at the time
to help the algorithm rank content.

Next, the algorithm then uses all these signals to make predictions. Facebook looks at a user's previous behavior and
profile data to show content they’re most likely to interact with. For example, if a user consistently posts about football
and engages with content related to football, Facebook will take note and prioritize football-related content in that
user's feed.

The algorithm also attributes a score to each post based on those predictions. A score is a number given to a post that
indicates how relevant that post is to a user. Each post will have a different score unique to each user, and the algorithm
will serve up those posts in a user's News Feed according to that score.

You may have guessed it: The higher the score, the more likely the content will be shown in the News Feed. Facebook
does this for each user and each piece of content.

Let's take a look at a high-scoring example from Tasty – you know, the brand owned by BuzzFeed with the really short
videos about making tasty food items.

Let's take Joe, a regular Facebook user, for example. Joe’s friend posts a video from Tasty about a new recipe with their
own thoughts and opinions in the status. They might express how excited they are to try this recipe.

It then grabs the attention of other friends, and they begin to comment, respond, and like, and some may even share
the recipe themselves, too.

Lastly, Joe’s spouse sends him the very same link through Facebook Messenger, suggesting they try the recipe
themselves for dinner. The Facebook algorithm sees all these interactions — the user's friends sharing and engaging
with Tasty's content, and a family member sharing this post as well. Facebook will probably give a high score to this
content because it “thinks” this is something the user will likely interact with. So now, the post about Tasty's recipe
appears at the top of the user's News Feed.

But what about a low-scoring example?

Let’s say a Page Joe hasn’t interacted with in three years posts a deal for a discount of their product. No one shares,
comments, or responds to the post except five folks who work at the company. The Page may have a significant amount
of fans, but very few, if any, have engaged with the post. Facebook would probably not give this post a high score, so it’s
unlikely that it will feature in Joe's News Feed.

It’s clear that there are many factors at play when the algorithm decides which content to show. But there is no factor
more important than engagement in your Facebook strategy.

Mari Smith, Premier Facebook Marketing Expert

"There's so many factors that go into the Facebook News Feed algorithm. In fact, there are over a hundred
thousand weights or points or signals that go into determining what content is shown to which of the 2.3 billion
users. So some of those are type of content. Video definitely gets the best reach in the News Feed. The timing,
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

so how quickly people are responding. How recent your post is one timing aspect, but also the speed at which
people are responding. The faster people comment on your posts, the more likely it is to be surfaced in the
newsfeed."

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the algorithm its that while it is essential to know how the algorithm works and
how it affects your content, more time should be spent focusing on understanding and engaging your target audience
and posting content that is most relevant and exciting to them. Now that you know this, think about what types of
content will drive the most engagement from your audience. The algorithm will reward you for it.

Video 5: Building an Engaged Community

Historically, businesses have depended heavily on their Facebook Business Page to grow their audience and community.
But with the consistent decline in organic reach, that’s becoming more and more difficult. You need to consider
alternative methods to engage your target audience and build community.

Cara Meiselman, ClassPass, Director of Content and Community

"When it comes to building a community on Facebook, I think your greatest asset is going to be Facebook
groups. It's obviously an area they're really investing in and they're building up bigger than Pages, and I think a
lot of brands are taking to Facebook groups as opposed to Pages so that way they can connect with their
community members a little bit better."

At the Facebook Developer Conference in 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Groups "the heart of the
experience, just as much as your friends and family are."

More than 400 million people belong to at least one Facebook Group. And more than 100 million people see Groups as
the most important part of their Facebook experience. It comes as no surprise then that Facebook has made groups and
communities a central focus of the platform. In Facebook’s redesigned app, groups has its own tab, and they now
include group notifications alongside all other notifications. This is an intentional shift by Facebook to make groups a
more prominent feature. It also shows that the algorithm favors groups and wants people to use them more.

But what does this mean for marketers? Do you need to rethink your approach?

In short, yes. Content and posts from your Facebook Business Page are seen as one-way communication with the sole
purpose of sending out information for consumption. Facebook Groups give you the chance to engage with users in a
more meaningful and authentic way – and, even more importantly, they leverage the power of Facebook’s network to
connect them to each other.

This doesn't mean that you should focus all your attention on Groups, but it does mean that you need to think
differently about how you engage with your customers and prospects, create awareness about your brand, and build
community. After all, engaging with your customers and prospects is at the heart of the inbound methodology.

Larry Kim says, "Groups are nothing new to the marketing world, but it is more important now than ever before for
marketers to consider how to leverage this unique tool. They operate very differently in comparison to Pages, and their
focus is not promoting your business. Your group doesn't even have to be about your business, but it needs to be a place
where your target audience can interact, communicate with others about a shared interest, and feel safe."

One of the best parts about Groups is that they’re an easy way to regularly reach and interact with an audience that’s
bigger than that of your Page. Take a look at this example. Online magazine The Cook's Cook was looking for a way to
 “How to Develop an Effective Facebook
Marketing Strategy” – Lesson Transcript

reach more people and started a Facebook Group. Their main Page, as of this recording, has over 8,500 followers, but
their Facebook Group has over 90,000 members.

There are many reasons for starting your own Group. You may be looking for specific feedback on an existing offering or
creating a community forum for customers to share their thoughts and strategies.

Keep in mind; you want to have a specific purpose for your Group before you get started.

Mari Smith, Premier Facebook Marketing Expert

“Facebook groups can be really, really useful for companies if you're looking to start one. I definitely recommend
starting with a clear purpose. “

“Don't just start a group because someone said you should start a group. It could be a pop-up group. I've seen
this be very, very successful. It might only be open for a week or 30 days. It might be for a specific challenge or
to support a certain event. Certainly you could have an ongoing group as a separate group, as a user group, a
mastermind, a support group, many different ways you can use groups. Another great way is a testimony group
so that you have existing customers just raving about the value that they get from your product or service and
you can certainly bring prospects in there as well.”

Creating your own Group has the potential to drive significantly more engagement than your Business Page because it
has a target audience.

Take a look at Elementor, a Wordpress Page Builder, for example. Their Group has over 50,000 members, but what’s
even more impressive is that the Group, on average, sees just over 3,000 posts between members each month. Three
thousand. Let that sink in for a second. Building that level of engagement on your Page alone is unheard of.

If you don't quite know how Groups apply to your strategy, chances are someone has already created a Group that fits
your industry and target audience. You can request to be a part of that group and join the conversation.

If you're wondering why joining an existing Group is a smart idea, consider the fact that an established Group already
has members. You can reach potential customers without having to source them yourself. Keep in mind that when you
join a group, you’ll want to avoid using that group just to promote your own brand, rather use it to engage in genuine,
human-to-human conversation.

Participate in the conversation, whether it’s a Group you’ve created or a Group you’ve joined. Engage with your
audience, answer questions, create value through rich conversation, and establish your account as an authority.

Take a look at the popular electric cooker brand, InstantPot, for example. They use their Facebook Group as a place
where members can interact with the international community of InstantPot users to ask questions, post unique recipes,
and share the joy of cooking with their products. Through the community, InstantPot also offers limited initial “trouble-
shooting” in the case that any customers experience any issues or have questions. The brand rarely ever promotes its
products outside of InstantPot giveaways where members enter to win prizes to use with their electric cooker.

The way people are interacting with Facebook is shifting. When it comes to building a community on Facebook, think of
it as a resource that you're providing to your customers and prospects.