A few years ago, many of us were skeptical about how Facebook was going to get marketers to spend a significant amount of time and money on their platform, which is clearly not the case these days. One thing I'm sure of now is that Facebook advertising is here to stay.
According to the State of Inbound report HubSpot put out this year, "42% of marketers say Facebook is critical or important to their business." That percentage has gone up 75% from where it was just a few years ago. Talk about up and to the right!
With all that pickup, one would expect Facebook to have some resources out there to help us market our companies more effectively on Facebook. Never fear, for these resources exist! Unfortunately, they are somewhat hidden. Here are five pages and resources worth exploring if you are looking to drive traffic and sales through Facebook.
Facebook Marketing Page
Say what? Yup. Believe it or not, Facebook runs a page (with over 2 million likes, by the way) that they manage actively to help marketers use Facebook more effectively. They often post about webinars they are holding for marketers, answer specific questions posted to their wall, and spotlight valuable statistics that could help you make the case in-house to dedicate more resources to Facebook.
Facebook Advertising Page
For those of you looking to try your hand at Facebook ads, you might find there aren't a ton of resources out there to help you get set up and running smoothly. Luckily for us, Facebook has been investing in their help documentation. In this section, they outline how things work, show off some success stories, and answer top questions. You can also find some contact information for those nagging questions you can’t quite figure out.
Facebook Business Page
This might be one of the least known resources that Facebook has put together. Instead of just focusing on how you can set up an ad and spend money with Facebook, they have worked to put together information on how you can get the most out of Facebook as a business. The page covers the basics like building a page and conversation etiquette, but it also gives tips on how to engage your audience and influence friends.
Facebook Studio
This is by far my favorite of all the resources Facebook has put together for marketers. Here you will find a gallery of creative Facebook campaigns, explore award-winning campaigns, a directory agencies experience in Facebook marketing campaigns, and more.
Facebook Studio Edge
This is a brand new resource for those looking to take Facebook campaign creation in house. Recently released, Facebook Studio Edge is an online course that walks a user through critical knowledge pieces like measurement, research, resources, and tools to help with Facebook marketing. You can request beta entry and get started today. I’m super excited to see them operationalize this learning curve a bit with the facebook studio edge series.
Whoa, that's a ton of good stuff!
We were fortunate enough to host Facebook in the office a few weeks ago, and we were really impressed (but mainly surprised!) to hear about all of these great resources. As more of our time and budget shifts to Facebook, be sure to lean on the resources above to help steer you in the right direction. Perhaps one of the best advantages of investing in Facebook is that they are home to a community of others trying to do the same thing. Connect with other community members on the pages above, and see how you can help each other succeed. Best of luck to you all!
If I missed any other Facebook marketing resources (they don't have to be hosted on Facebook like the list above) feel free to leave them in the comments below!
If you work in an agency which gets Facebook reps turning up too them on a weekly or monthly basis, you will get them telling you to check these sources a fair bit ;) I know because I have liked all these pages over the years.
I also advise to check sites like, some times they have updates before it even reaches these Facebook pages I have found.
https://www.allfacebook.com
https://www.insidefacebook.com
Another one not Facebook Advertising related but worth checking out is Facebook Stories, its about people who use Facebook in great ways.
https://www.facebookstories.com
allfacebook and insidefacebook are in fact incredible resources! Good call.
If you have a FB rep they can be incredibly helpful. Especially if you're spending enough money :)
Yeah that is true if spend a fair bit they will send you weekly updates from Facebook products and what not, but to be honest you can get most of the information from the sites I listed...
Thanks James & Kristy! Really appreciate the other suggestions on where to go!
Social Media, especially Facebook, is an awesome media for marketing, it has so much more of a potential to go viral because social media is viral in nature. I think that all businesses should at least experiment with these pages.
Thank You for this post, Joanna! I've been checking our Facebook Studio for the past hour ;)
Great info. Thanks for sharing Joanna! The Facebook Studio looks really interesting.
I was never able to drive free traffic from facebook to my website. I often read about stuff like it is a great platform to promote.
Big brands get followers automatically because they are a huge name but what about small websites? All we can do is drive traffic from our website to facebook page but then they have already seen our website. Is there anyway we can do it in reverse way. I guess not. FB is good for huge brands where they can keep promoting their offers. For small business owners paid advertising is the only way :(
Guess you just have to be smart about how you drive traffic, I work on big brands but I have worked on small brands in the past, if you set out something different on Facebook which is going to help users and provide great content then it is possible for sure to gain some good traffic from Facebook.
+1 to James! And this is because i don’t really work with BIG brands...I work with small and mid size businesses
Locally in my city there is a small online story that offer electronic stuff got tons of following just by giving real value to their customers... like for example he was charging the delivery fee but after getting lot of response from facebook here announce that there will be no delivery fee and within just two weeks the likes on the facebook page increased by 45%.
Hi Joanna,
Its really incredible post about facebook marketing. Let me tell you that facebook is one of the most powerful online advertising platform on web. Facebook Advertising has many potential features to gain online sales and users on website. Thanks for writing to us about facebook marketing especially about facebook business page and facebook studio edge...!
Thanks Joanna. I am heading over to Facebook Edge right now! Very cool.
Thanks Joanna for sharing of all these GREAT Facebook tools!
Thought-provoking. Thanks so much, Joanna! you hit the nail on the head. A lot of psychology goes into marketing, and into advertising your business. That is, if you’re doing them correctly! Facebook is one of the most powerful online advertising platform on web.
You have wonderfully gathered up all the latest informative resources and presented before us. Super like for all the points, especially Facebook studio edge, Facebook studio, Facebook Business page.Thanks again for the post.
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"42% of marketers say Facebook is critical or important to their business." That percentage has gone up 75% from where it was just a few years ago.
Errr... I don't think that quite adds up.
I think it actually does. Say something is at 15% now, and it was at 10%. That's a nice 50% increase. I think that's what those percentages are saying.
Different interpretations I guess. I'd argue that's a five per cent rise.
You're talking about percentage points, not a percentage, i.e. inflation went up 1 percentage point from 2% to 3%, which is a 50% increase.
Hi JoannaLord, i also like your white board Friday. This is also a useful post. I was not aware of all these Pages Facebook runs. But a business can really follow these to promote their business. I hope Facebook will introduce a quality page about SEO, and then I will be a regular visitor.
Some great tips here we are still desperately trying to get our Facebook and social media working for us, this article has definitely given us some things to work on.
Darren
Good stuff! The social networks are starting to come out with other resources within their sites to funnel marketing activity through. Even Twitter recently launched a directory feature (https://twitter.com/i/directory/profiles) which they might leverage into a unique direction. A marketer can hope right :/
This is not surprising as people are trusting a brand's FB page than its actual page. Instinctively and personally, I wouldn't engage in a brand if I don't see its FB page. FaceBook has made authority its best friend.
With the new timeline layout I don't see as many people opting for the HTML version...am I correct - has this been phased out?
Hey thanx Joanna for wonderful resources i didn't knew about the face book studio..will try and then share my experience.
Nice overview. I wasn't aware of the Facebook Studio resource. This seems like a nice way to check out successful campaigns and get the creative juices flowing.
Thanks!
Thanks Joanna ,for Facebook Marketing Resources . I know advertising for business on any social media site especially on most popular site facebook is very useful and important for a company or brand. There are more useful" 5 Facebook Marketing Resources" to promote a brand for a company.
Very great comprehensive guide to the tools available on Facebook. I definitely feel like small businesses could utilize Facebook more, but are really unaware of how to do so. Everyone and their grandparents are now on Facebook, so the audience is definitely there for most target markets. These tools would definitely help out those not really sure how to beef up their online presence.
The Best Extension to Select & Invite All Friends (tested on 5000 friends profile) in one click..
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-select-invite-al/copbfkdpaahnhdolfdaohlfggaghfndi
I have read many articles on the subject and this has seemed to me one of the most complete and more understandable than the rest.
I really enjoyed that article. Your use of picture was really helpful. I didn't know of all those ways to advertise on Facebook.
I wrote an article on how to monetize your Facebook page. I'd love to know what you think of it. : ) https://www.katiekleinsmm.com/make-a-facebook-page/
Katie Klein
Social Media Marketer
Thanks Joanna, Edge looks interesting.
I had to laugh at the phrase "operationalize this learning curve" – surely one of the most meaningless bits of jargon said on SEOmoz in a while! :-D
The Facebook Marketing Page is great. They had a very good $100 ad coupon promotion for US local business a while back. Thanks to that I was able to try Facebook Ads first hand, risk free. The other resources, I did not know about, but will look into especially Facebook Studio. Great info, thanks!
Two of these were new to me...off to learn more about them. Thanks for the wonderful share!
Good article. I haven't really looked into Facebook Ads other then trying to make a test advertisement. These article makes me think I have to take Facebook marketing more serious. Thanks for sharing!
Hi thank you for this great content.
I'm Michael Ng from Malaysia.
I never knew there was Facebook Studio and Facebook Studio Edge.
Great to know it!
Regards Michael Ng
Excellent article…I appreciated the way that your article was organized into these points ..Facebook is a social site and all people loved it so that is the plus point .. thanks really for provide this type of information keep it up...
Thank you so much Joanna! This is the kind of information that keeps me coming back to you guys! You have been "tweeted," "shared" and "liked!"
Hey Mark! Thanks so much for this comment, it made our day! :)
Thanks For Sharing me wow Great Article Post .....!
Great tips of Facebook advertising. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the post! I've seen most but FB Studio & Edge are new to me. I agree with the comments above about allfacebook as well. It's in my Flipboard and I read it regularly.
StudioEdge was the only one of those I didn't know about. I've requested access. Thanks for the heads up!
Awesome, keep us posted on how it does for you! :)
You are right, Facebook is adding more good stuff for their space. I was aware of a couple of these, but not all. I'll have to check out the Studio pages when I have time. Thanks for sharing!
Even with all the microtargetting power that Facebook offers, it still offers the worst ROI of all of the online marketing channels available (at least from an ecommerce perspective). Adwords, MSN/Yahoo ads (whatever they're calling themselves this week) and remarketing/retargeting all offer much higher returns.
Facebook users have shown over and over again that they're not interested in buying. Now if you have a business model that can take advantage of lolcats, pictures of food and social bragging, I suppose this channel represents value.
Depends what you are selling I guess, I agree it is not the best channel for ROI that is for sute. Yet I have seen good results if you do things which attract the right markets. Facebook is also pushing out new formats I mean news feed ads and search result ads are interesting, but I guess that is the share holders wanting to see more hehe
Agreed. We've had great results with a few local restaurant clients by running fun video ads.
If you're approaching Facebook as a bottom of the funnel, conversion-generating source, then you're going to see low ROI. Facebook is much better suited for top-mid funnel approaches, generating awareness and establishing context with your audience way before you can expect to close a sale.
I would agree Gary. We've seen more success with it as a top/mid funnel filler. With that said we've also seen straight conversions as well. I think the demographic info you can gain from promoting via FB ads is also super valuable. Lots of great options really. But you are right, its a great first "wave hello" and engagement driven platform.
@ Gary Very well put.
I believe we need to look different at Facebook then we do at other marketing channels. Learn to see in what specific way Facebook can be of your use. Dont look at it with a standard ROI mind.
Facebook is the nr 1 exponent on persuasion profiling. When making use of Facebook, your marketing goals should be based on community building and social proof, rather then looking at how much money will come in. Take it for the long run. Use it as a platform for customer service. Build great interaction. Its your fresh and trustable image that eventually will give you the ROI.
Unfortunately , this is hard to messure since it represents the good old worth of mouth.
Wow, how many Facebook services you didn't know, thanks!
Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't know all of these existed.
Thanks for the information. I've always struggled with Facebook advertising.
How about Facebook sweepstakes and contests?
I've seen some people have huge success building a large following using contests and giveaways but how do you setup this?
Are there any resources which provide a step by step tutorial on how anyone can get this underway?
Thank you for posting the great content. I was looking for something like this. I found it quiet interesting, hopefully you will keep posting such blogs. Keep sharing
Thanks Joanna
I wasn't aware of all these Facebook resources
Good resources. I didn't know about studio edge so have requested access. We don't have a "agency email" that FB would be aware of though, so who knows if we'll get access.
It does seem surprising that these resources are so distributed.
That's great post Joanna, Facebook is great way to advertise your business. It's one of my favorite social networking platform that I use to get traffic and visitors to my website. :) Thank
Great list of resources!
Thanks Joanna, I wasn't aware of Facebook Studio or the Facebook Marketing page.
Great information . Thanks a ton : )
Day by Day facebook marketing becomes more popular it creates helpful features as Google. These all facebook marketing resources are fabulous, i think this will create my facebook marketing more reliable and valuable. Thanks for sharing these all resources with us ..
Yup! I was facebook advertising and business page before, by the way now a days facebook going more to more popular...But I don't think it's only one way to promote all business, As per my knowledge it's depend how and what business you have.
Thanks Joanna ... It's really great information about facebook marketing tactics. specially I like facebook studio and facebook studio edge point most... :)
Yep - I wasn't aware of any of these. Thanks for sharing (will make the spare time I've got at the airport fly by)!