The Basics of Running a Facebook Campaign

So you started your small food catering business and now want to advertise for clients and exposure on facebook right???

In this article, we explore how social media, especially facebook can impact small food businesses for the better in Port Moresby, when done right. Using relatable examples of working small businesses, we break down the mechanics for you in digestible, bite sized pieces; to help your small food venture use social media, especially facebook, for marketing.

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Now, let’s ask ourselves –
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA and more importantly, WHY FACEBOOK to advertise?

For many small businesses, a marketing budget does not generally get the bigger or biggest chunk of the pie. Expensive newspaper ads and radio mentions are just not within the budget range for now. But that’s OK! That’s why many businesses in 2019, 2020 and the foreseeable future are choosing to invest in to social media for their marketing campaigns and so should you!

Social media, especially facebook, cuts down the cost for advertising and gives you an extensive reach, with more command of how and where you want your specific campaign to go. With only a fraction of the budget in comparison to traditional media, but don’t get it wrong, that doesn’t mean that traditional or mainstream media is outdated, it is still very effective to use. However, the benefits of social media marketing and advertising have made it a powerful tool and force to be reckoned with today.

One of the main advantages of using social media for marketing is the cost of it and the measureable results of the campaign.
Facebook algorithms will tell you in comprehensive analysis reports how your campaign ran, who it reached, in detail, down to the digit and for a fraction of the cost compared to traditional media. In addition to that, with the accessibility of the global population to smartphones, you really should have a facebook, or some type of social media presence as a business, whether large or small.

So how do you start?

Well most people usually create a facebook page for business, which is completely FREE to create, this page is monitored and administered by the account that created it. Therefore, if you logged on from your personal facebook account to create your facebook business page, then you’re by default, the administrator of the page.

Many times, a lot of page administrators overlook the tiny but essential details when creating their page. Details like

• Daily trading or operating hours
• Physical address
• Postal address
• Current or updated email and Phone numbers;
  These all contribute to the page visibility on the platform. And let’s face it, on a platform that manages a billion users and counting, in order for any business to stay highly visible, every detail counts! So make sure to get those tidbit details covered!

Now, how do you run an effective marketing campaign on facebook for your small business?

Is it through sponsored ads? Well, yes and no!

To be honest, sponsored ads only does a small percentage of the “marketing” for your campaign. An effective social media marketing campaign is a combination of

• Creating engaging content;
• Planning strategic timing for posting;
• Identifying your target audience for the specific campaign
  AND
• Sponsored ads

1. ENGAGING CONTENT.
   What is engaging content?
   Well basically content that CAPTURES THE ATTENTION of the viewer whilst scrolling through their newsfeed on facebook. It can be engaging from the start, beginning with a

• Catchy headline or name of business that captures essence of business
• Vibrant themes in graphics
• Original and quality high resolution image
• Equally interesting caption and sub story
• Call to action

Engaging content is anything that captures the attention of the viewer for over 5seconds of their scrolling time on their newsfeed.

So let’s apply this to our new small catering business that we want to advertise for on facebook for exposure and clients.
How do we apply “engaging content” in this context?

Many people will tell you to take many photos of your products and catering services and post them on your facebook page with your contact number and a copy of your menu.

DON’T DO IT!!!

If you want to create engaging content, be ready to stand out from the crowd of catering businesses that are all advertising on facbeook JUST LIKE YOU!
And if you’re a newbie to campaigning on facebook, take your time to plan and execute your campaign before doing it.

DO NOT POST ON IMPULSE

What you put out there is your brand and your brand is YOU.

Posts can be deleted but screenshots are at the mercy of the receiver. Don’t give anyone the ammunition to hurt your brand before it’s even born.

So take your time to research the styles of your direct and indirect competitors and see how you and where your brand can stand out from that.

Now, after spending a few days researching your competitor’s social media handles, you’ve had the time to see and learn their style of campaigning. What were some of the first things you noticed?
Make a mental or written note of their handles, their engagement reach on their handles, engagement reach per post for the last five posts, the product they advertise, services they provide, what caught your attention?
Anything?

Think about your facebook page and what you could share on it that would drive engagement and stand out from these competitors.

Start with a short and catchy headline in bold font that grabs attention of the viewer and that could also be the name of your facebook page and your catering business.
Many catering businesses are available for miles, so think about your menu, what’s on your menu that could go on your headline, give an indication of the type of catering you do and stand out from other service providers in your niche area?

A great example of this is Pig Roasters http://www.facebook.com//pigroasters located at Kone, off Lawes road and Seafood Haus http://www.facebook.com//seafoodhaus ; a mobile seafood catering and delivery service.

Once you’ve figured out that first detail, you need a theme, this theme will be like your uniform, your brand identity, so pick wisely. If you can’t decide yet, then stick to one bold color, such as white or black and do not deviate. Your aim is to build a flow of things in the viewer’s mind, do not create too much noise otherwise they’ll get distracted and keep scrolling.

Your menu should have this theme, your captions should incorporate this, your emails, your business cards and other labels for your catering business as well.

The idea is to create the flow and relationship in the viewer’s mind. Whenever they see that theme with that specific color combination, they should automatically think of your business. For example, when you see black and yellow in most parts of town, you will most likely relate the colors by association to NCD. Another example is green with BSP; green and yellow with SP Brewery; red with Coca Cola and so forth.

The next thing is to integrate original and high resolution images in to the content you post.
A quality digital camera, canon and other brands like Nikon do well. Otherwise, smartphones can alsogive you high resolution images, especially iphones, the trick is to upload the image to your post straight from the phone, avoid transferring the image through mediums such as whatsapp and shareit before uploading as it reduces the resolution of the images, thus reducing the quality of the image.

Check out instagram and facebook popular the http://www.facebook.com//nanguchef http://www.instagram.com//nanguchef for creative ideas on quality image captures.
Singular images are more engaging than multiple images in one post as multiple images per post tend to make noise and distract the viewer’s attention. Select one original and high resolution image of your product to post per day.
The images should be along the same theme. For example, if you want to drive a campaign about your new catering business and showcase the new range of cupcakes you’ve added to your menu, then post images of this new range in single shot posts, doing only one per day, for a number of days.
Your caption on these posts could be the name of the flavor of the cupcake, or a meme, or funny joke.
Keep it same and simple.

Now, before we continue further on this article, a lot of you may be thinking, well………………it’s only facebook, why so many instructions and so many details, I post, I tag, I share, enough said, enough done.

RIGHT??

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you can’t afford the expensive mainstream media marketing campaign mediums like, newspaper ads and radio mentions; and social media really is your ONLY campaign platform to market your business, then yes, you really need to invest the time and effort to create strategic social media marketing campaigns to grow your business reach and hit your target and goals.

Moving on…………

Captions and sub-stories
This is one of your opportunities to grab those first impression 5 seconds of viewer attention, so be creative with those captions and endings.
One of the things NOT TO DO is to post your price range of the product right on your image as the caption.
Viewers don’t want to feel like all you want from them is their money, be creative with your selling point, keep the money topic to a minimum on social media and keep it fun friendly and creative.

Follow the 80/20 rule.
80% fun and engaging; 20% sales and pitching. That means, 80% of your content on social media is for fun and interacting with your followers and customers, while 20% of your content on social media is for the serious business stuff.

So your captions should also be in line with the rule.

Or tell a fun and interesting story about your brand or your staff, or why you do what you do, social media loves humanity stories; and that really is the essence of why social media is so popular, it gives the accessibility of connecting on a personal level as humans through the convenience of technology. So tap in to it, and use that vantage point to drive your campaign too.

Lastly on engaging content is the CTA or “call to action”
What is a call to action on social media?

A CTA – call to action; is the end action the viewer should do after scrolling through the content of the campaign.

Most CTA’s are simple recommendations such as

• “subscribe” to our page
• “like, share and follow”
• “email us” to receive weekly updates
• “order now”

The more engaging your content is, the most likely the viewer will follow your CTA.

It’s very important to include a CTA that is relevant to your specific campaign goal.

For example; if you want more people to know about your new catering business, after posting a highly engaging image with a catchy caption, the best option for a CTA would be “like, follow and share”; this is because you want to spread the word about your new catering business, thus like sharing and following would increase your page’s engagement reach and bring more awareness about your business to users and potential customers.

2. PLANNING STRATEGIC TIMING FOR POSTING CONTENT

So you researched your competitors and created your engaging content to post on your facebook business page and now you’re ready to post.

What’s next?

Post the content right?

WRONG!!!

Many users and page administrators make the initial mistake of thinking that content is meant to be posted right after it’s created.

Well, technically, YES, and also NO.

Now you’re thinking, what do you mean, yes and no??

Well, yes, meaning, some content can be posted on your page right after you create it; and no, meaning, not all content can be posted right after you create it.

Check out http://www.hootesuite.com – your ultimate social media content planner and calendar; providing you the tools to create and schedule content for your social media pages on various platforms.

Back to the topic at hand…… as a content creator and page administrator, you must be able to discern what content can be posted right after creating it and what content needs to be scheduled.

For marketing campaigns, page administrators (you – in this case); must always schedule when the content should be posted and use the tools on facebook to schedule content posting.

For regular posts such as a quick shout out to an event that you’re live on location at, well, you obviously need to post that content while you’re at the event or on your page’s story.

So let’s get back to the marketing campaign aspect of it.

Why should you schedule your content to be posted at specific times instead of posting right after creating it or at any time you want to post it?
The idea is to have your content viewed by the relevant audience, what we call the “target audience”. You need to know when your target audience is online on social media, specifically on facebook and release your content at those times so that the content has a good possibility of being viewed and engaged with by your target audience.
Every post in a specific campaign should be scheduled. You will see the “schedule post” tool on your facebook page in the “post” options.

Scheduling your content for posting also allows you to measure your results more effectively against your campaign goals and analyze your campaign’s performance on a specific day or on average in a week, etc.
For example, if you post every day at 9am; 2pm and 7pm for a specific campaign, you are in a better position to monitor and measure trends in audience because of the routine of timing, as opposed to posting every day but at any time of the day.

So take for example, you want to grow your new catering business’s brand awareness in Port Moresby on facebook. You’ve created the engaging content and you’re ready to post. How do you plan the “strategic timing” to post your engaging content on your facebook page?

In order to plan the strategic timing to post, you will need to understand your target audience for this campaign.

But how do you know who your target audience is and how do you know when that target audience is online?

And that leads us to the next point in this article…………………..

3. IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THE SPECIFIC CAMPAIGN.
   This is simply a follow through from the second point discussed – planning strategic timing to post content.
   Your engaging content is ready for posting and you want to identify your target audience for your campaign so you can plan that strategic timing for your content to be posted in order to be viewed by the target audience.

Let’s use the same example from the previous point.

You created your page, you want to increase your business’s brand awareness on social media, you’ve created the engaging content, you’re ready to post.

To understand your target audience, you need to understand your marketing campaign goal.
In this example, the goal is simple – INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS ON FACEBOOK FOR YOUR NEW FOOD CATERING BUSINESS IN PORT MORESBY.

So ………………

1. You established that your business wants to grow in Port Moresby, that means, we should be looking at audience that’s primarily in Port Moresby, as they would be the one with the main need of our business’s service.
2. Your audience would mainly be people who are in charge of organizing activities/ events that include meals for large groups of people. That means, event managers, event organizers, workplace activity organizers – a personal assistant, etc.
3. What type of events have large groups of people? Typically – seminars, weddings, conferences, birthday parties, board meetings, staff meetings,
4. Who typically organizes these types of events?
5. What would people that organize such activities be normally interested in? Hobbies, TV shows, sports teams, music genres, etc.
6. What would their typical age be?
7. Typically male or typically female?
8. Typical relationship status? Married/ single/ de facto/ engaged/ etc
9. What type of work schedules would they have?
10. Based on that typical work schedule, what times would they typically be on social media?

Answering these questions, builds the typical profile of your target audience. We call this a “buyer persona”.
From the buyer persona, we then are able to identify our target audience for our campaign, hence post the content at the time our buyer persona is most likely to be on facebook to see our content.
So now we have the buyer persona, we know our typical target audience for this specific campaign, we know the times they’re most likely to be online, we can then tweak our engaging content to correspond to our buyer persona’s preferences to really build that conversion in our audience.

This brings us to our last point in how to run an effective campaign; and that is

4. SPONSORED ADS
   This is the glue to the different components we’ve already discussed.

Take this example – You want to put your new food catering small business on facebook to market for exposure and potential clients.
That makes your marketing goal in this example – Grow brand awareness
So you start to create your content toward this goal.
Catchy, creative and high resolution images of your product and service ready to post.
Using your buyer persona, go to Facebook ads on your page and start to create a campaign to sponsor on your page with the prerequisites set according to the buyer persona you’ve created.

Invest according to how long you would like to run this campaign. Although a campaign normally is expected to run for no longer than 30 days, you should aim to spend no more than K3 per day if this is your first campaign.

This buyer persona will drive the sponsored ad toward those most likely to make an “action” (remember your CTA – CALL TO ACTION) on this campaign.

With that, I hope this article was informative for your small business and remember, social media is not the only tool for marketing but when used right, can be a major player in marketing as a tool for your small business.