If you have a retail store or bricks and mortar location, you may have thought about what types of Facebook strategies would be helpful for you. Getting traction can take time. Try some of these tips to help your retail page grow faster:

1. Mixing Up/Expanding Types of Content

While Facebook is a common outlet for companies to reveal their blogs, blogs and text-based posts are not the only forms of content that you should be publishing on the world’s most popular social media platform. Take advantage of Facebook and the fact that most of your customer base is, more likely than not, using it! Facebook’s algorithm is very friendly to photo and video posts that get higher engagement. Post videos of your store or workplace, showing what your company and employees are all about. Show how happy your customers are when they are using your product or service through interview testimonials on camera. Written testimonials are great to have on your company website, but posting live interview testimonials and customer experiences on Facebook are both great ways to mix up your content. Even a video of your customers talking about their experiences is great content! Podcasts, other media, contests, in-store events and other engaging posts that diversify your post types can help you learn more about what gets the best interaction and results.

2. Researching and Building Relationships with Other Pages who Target Your Audience but Whom Are Non-Competing

If your customers use Facebook consistently, it is probable that they ‘like’ more than just your page on Facebook. That means when they are scrolling down their news feeds, your recently published content is not the only thing they see. For this reason, it might help expose your business and attract new customers (as well as keep current customers interested) if you team up with other companies. Potential segments of customers might like a prospective social media partner’s page on Facebook, but not yours. This strategy works especially well if you partner with a company whose product or service is a non-competing complement to your own. For example, if your company manufactures and sells peanut butter, developing a relationship with a company that makes jelly is smart. Some ways you can foster a social media relationship include content sharing, cross promotions and simple mentions/tags on Facebook. Your business page can even ‘like’ other business pages on Facebook. It’s important to focus on building a relationship with the page first and not spamming or posting on other page’s walls to gain visibility. These tactics, without relationship building, are not good etiquette!

3. Consider Facebook Advertising When Needed to Push a Big Promotion

Like Google, Facebook has its own advertising services that you can use to increase your visibility and marketing strategy. Through Facebook advertising, you can attract new audiences and reach out to people who do not know about your page. You can even ‘boost’ some of your posts to really heighten the chances of your post being seen by as many people as possible. Advertising on Facebook can be very beneficial if you know how to use it and what steps you should be taking. If you know of a certain audience you would like to target through Facebook, you can do so by targeting ads to specific zip codes and/or demographics. This is helpful since Facebook has significantly reduced Reach of your posts. Whereas in the past, almost all of your posts reached your Fans, now on average only 10-15% may. To actually get exposure, sometimes a combination of advertising and organic reach can get you better results.

4. Take One Big Step back Every Week. Identify 3-4 Customer Segments

 While Facebook can be intriguing and entertaining, don’t lose site of why you have a Facebook page in the first place: to appeal to and retain the attention of select audiences. Every week, you should take one step back and ask yourself, “is my company performing on Facebook the way we set out to?” If the answer is no, but you are not sure how to fix the problem, keep the following in mind. Make sure your content ‘portfolio’ provides content for each of your target audiences so as to keep the page relevant to the people you ‘want’ as fans. Once you realize who your target audience is, identify the segment through the creation of a folder. Start a library of content for that audience and begin to understand what types of content it finds exciting and appealing. All content that you post on Facebook should be relevant to that target audience and be posted with the attempt to help them.

5. Capture and Convert ‘In-Store’ Likes

One of the most important audiences you have that can be tapped is your existing customers – the ones that come into your shop all of the time and already love your company. These potential “brand ambassadors” can do wonders for getting the word out about your business to others in their own networks. If you do not have store signage on counters, tables, doors (even electronic signage) that mentions your Facebook page and attempts to get store visitors to Like your page, then you are missing a critical piece of your marketing: marketing to your existing, loyal customers. It’s likely that only a small percentage of them are Fans of your page. If you can give them a good reason to join it, that can be a powerful catalyst to your Facebook Fan Page’s growth. One way to accomplish this is in-store signage. Another is through email blasts. A special promotion never hurts! Be creative and see what you can do.

 6. Create a Facebook Fan Page Exclusive Promo

In truth, timing is very important in marketing. Facebook marketing is no different. But when the time is right, it’s nice to reward your Facebook community and show that you care about them. Thank them for their contributions. In addition, consider a Facebook-only time-limited promotion; maybe put up a coupon that they can display on their phones at the register or even print. The key to this strategy is to make the reward time-limited. This can, temporarily of course, spike sales and interest in your company. A good time to offer this exclusive promo might be when your company has just released a new product line, for example, and you want your customer base to see it.

Try some of these strategies to make sure that you are getting the most out of the hard work you are putting into your Facebook marketing.

If you have any questions or insights about Facebook marketing for retailers, give us a call at (516) 610-0922 or shoot us a note at info@upsidebusiness.com with your questions. We would love to hear from you.