When you're starting a brand new business or a new project, trying to grow your Facebook Page from ground zero without Ads can be challenging, especially if you don't have a big or engaged audience.
Facebook Ads is a great way to spread brand recognition, but you don't want to blow through your marketing budget to grow your Page. That's why organic growth is your gold mine if you don't have tens of thousands to spend on ads.
Now you might want to join in on the gold mine and start growing organically. But how do you make it work?
In this article, I will show you 7 ways to grow your Facebook Page from scratch.
Tap one of the tips below to jump forward, or you can keep scrolling to read the guide in its entirety (so you don't miss any bonus ideas).
1. Developing a Clear Marketing Strategy
2. Invite Your Friends and Family Members!
3. Promote Your Page on Your Profile
6. Be Strategically Active in Niche Groups
7. Cross-promote with Other Social Media Accounts
As with any marketing platform, it's the equal exchange—you don't gain without giving on Facebook too.
A well-picked Facebook marketing tactic compatible with your business goal will help you build a consistent brand presence on Facebook that will let people know about your brand values and personality. You just need to give your time and effort.
Your strategy should aim at collecting Likes from followers with the greatest potential to bring value to your business through regular and consistent engagement, rather than random one-time likes from people who pass your post while scrolling.
If you still have not yet classified your target audience as part of a broader marketing tactic. I recommend building the audience personas.
These archetypes outline the basic details of your target customers, their objectives, and their desired outcomes.
Your persona should include:
Understanding what to post and how to communicate with your target audience is essential to any brand. So, before you start cooking up another post, you should identify what your competition is. Examining what key competitors are doing helps to find tactics that work in your niche and lets you see what doesn't, so you can take the competitor's success while avoiding the losses.
You'll also start to notice how many Facebook Likes you can aim for—both for your Page and individual posts.
Social listening is an excellent research strategy that can help you gather information on your target audience and your competition.
Going for "more Likes" isn't a great Facebook marketing goal.
How are you going to know when you've achieved it?
Instead, you can create goals based on S.M.A.R.T. principles.
It will allow you to regularly rewind to see if you meet your targets, celebrate your successes, develop new goals, or consider strategic changes to get you back on the game.
Friends are there for the support. It would be a waste not to ask for help when you just kick off your Page.
This gesture is the most organic way to increase your Facebook Page's likes.
For this organic form of getting Page likes, you're going to use the feature "suggest to friends".
To do this, go to your Business/Fan Page, scroll down to the place where the number of likes is placed, and press "suggest to friends", or it might say invite your friend.
After you clicked on invite your friends to like this Page, a list of friends will jump out. Some will have an "invite" button next to their name.
When you invite your friends, ask them with a custom message that has a call-to-action, share, and "like" your Page.
Sending an invite with a single click is easier, but adding a message containing a CTA is what you want to do.
You want someone who will help build engagement on your business Page, So, send a short URL and a note with your CTA.
They're going to feel important that you've reached out to them while doing such a project, asking for help.
Share your Page and its posts to your personal network by sharing them to your profile.
It would be best to ask the staff and partners of your team, your current clients, and even your friends and family to share your company's posts on their Facebook profiles. This way, you can get your content out to new audiences at no cost at all.
You should also add your Facebook business Page to your Work section so any interested peers could find it from your Profile:
1) From your personal profile, click Edit Details below the cover photo.
2) Scroll down to the Work section, and either click Add a Workplace or click the Edit icon next to your current workplace.
3) Begin typing the business into the text box, and the Facebook Page should come up.
If you’re having no luck, type in your precise Page username.
A Facebook giveaway is a simple yet cost-efficient way to generate leads and boost up your followers on social media.
Not only that, but it's also an effective way to:
Setting your giveaway goal is the beginning.
Your goals help you set the best approach for your giveaway and examine the performance in the end.
Choose your goal from the ones listed above.
When you decide on your giveaway goal, the next step is to figure out what prize you will give to the winner.
The prize has to be something worth the potential customer's time to deliver their personal information details or perform required actions. It is essential that your prize aligns with the goal of your giveaway.
Let's take announcing new products as an example. You could give away samples to get people to like your Facebook Page and create hype around your new product before it hits the store.
Facebook groups are popular among companies and people of similar interests.
Why? Just look at these 4 reasons why you should start your own niche group for your Facebook Page:
Creating a Facebook group is very simple. Let's go over it in a few steps here:
1) Start by clicking the group button under the section called Create.
You can find it on Facebook at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar.
2) Moving forward, you should fill out the basic info that's going to appear in the pop-up:
- Choose a name for your Facebook Group
It must be something catchy, but it should also include relevant niche keywords that your target audience would search for.
- Write down the names and emails of friends and people you want to add to your group
3) Choose a privacy setting
Public and closed Facebook Group could be fitting for a community of your clients, while a secret Facebook Group could be great for exclusive groups such as VIP customers.
If you'd like to secure your content or members' privacy, then a closed and a private Group would be the right choice.
However, the private setting is usually the best. Especially when you're teaching something, giving away free value, or want to avoid spammers. Then people have to join your group before they get access to your content.
The essential ones to do here are:
1) Add a cover photo
2) Select a group type to help people understand your niche:
3) Write a brief but actionable description that makes people understand why they need to join your group now (create urgency). It's also essential you use niche keywords and terms, so your group ranks higher in the Facebook search when people type in relevant keywords.
4) Add your business-specific tags to help the right audience to find your group. So when they search the tags you chose, they would discover groups like yours, aka with similar interests.
5) If you are a local group, add your location.
It makes finding your Facebook group easier for people who are
looking for Facebook groups in your area.
If your group is present in several places, you can add multiple locations.
6) When you can—use the custom URL. It looks way more professional. And if you use easy to remember URL, it will make it simpler to share your group with other people while at conferences or live business meetups.
One of the most effective ways to grow as an online business owner is to establish yourself in your niche as an expert.
The aim is to be so convenient and active that people would know your name and think of you when they have questions. 90% of each post should be helpful and valuable when you're promoting in Facebook groups, and the last 10% can be your pitch.
However, the goal is to do it helpfully and genuinely, or else you'll end up looking spammy or even get banned from the group.
That's why you should answer question posts and reply to all comments for quicker growth! Just obviously skip the ones asking for help with 10+ different people giving the same answers.
At the end of your answers, you can tell them if they still don't get something that they can check out your blog article to learn more on this topic.
BONUS IDEA: Promote yourself in niche groups on promo days. Join large niche groups and promote your Page on the days it's allowed. Once a promo post is up, introduce yourself and capture attention in a comment. A little hack I use to get more eyes on my promo is liking all comments under that posts, so people check if that person commented or even check your profile and find the featured image (or the profile cover) leading to your group!
Social media networks offer you the ability to reach more people and give diverse interactions with each target group.
That's why social media cross-promotion is one of the necessary steps for extending your content reach and for gaining more potential buyers.
A social media cross-promotion strategy helps you maximize the particular qualities and strengths of each network and community.
I advise you to use email marketing with social media; it's the combination you will glad you chose.
An excellent way to promote your Facebook posts is by adding them to your weekly newsletter.
There are two ways to do it: adding 'social buttons' to email messages or sending whole messages focused on introducing other channels.
And if you want to promote your email newsletter to grow your email list, you can use social media. To reassure people to subscribe, provide benefits and free resources.
BONUS IDEA: Another great way to promote your Facebook Page is to use your blog/website. There's no question that new visitors will come across your website and blogs via search engine at some point. And you can use those opportunities to promote your social media posts to them when that happens.
If growing your Facebook Page has been a challenge to you, I hope one or two (or 7) of these tactics shed some light on how to do it successfully.
When using these tactics, I'd keep in mind that it might take some time for the results to show. It took me some time to test and find the best applications for the tactics I mention. Don't be hindered if you don't see an improvement in engagement right away.
Okay, that's enough of me. I'm curious to hear about your Facebook Page strategy. What are some of the tactics you attempted and did (or did not) work for you? What are some of the tactics you'd like to try?
