It is fair to say that most small to medium sized businesses out there now have a professional Facebook page. Establishing a presence on the social media giant is simply essential in today’s market. However, it’s not enough to simply have a page; once you’ve set one up, you need to think about making it stand out from the competition. This is important if you wish to increase the traffic to your website and thrive in the competitive online arena.
The Facebook pages of many brands and small businesses often appear too similar, which can make it difficult to generate leads and attract new customers. September saw Facebook revisit its Pages section for the first time in three years in order to revamp it with exciting new designs and features. The aim was to prove to businesses that vibrant, dynamic and functional pages can drive conversions and generate leads while enhancing the experience for mobile users.
Facebook’s director of Product Marketing for Pages stated that the website is seeing a revolution in consumer behaviour on its platform. As the popularity of mobile apps has grown, people are now regularly interacting with businesses over social media.
The most noticeable change is the addition of a call to action button beneath a brand’s cover photo. Marketers are able to promote three separate actions which are call now, contact us and send message. This enables Facebook to be the middleman between the sales lead and shopper in all three cases.
The changes also allow you to add extra information about services and shopping facilities. This enables businesses with several different services to list them all in detail and feature particular buttons more prominently, such as the Shopify-powered Buy Button.
It’s unsurprising that Facebook is structuring its app as the central platform for small to medium sized businesses. A Forrester report commissioned earlier this year revealed that almost 80% of the time spent on mobile devices takes place within apps. March of this year also saw Facebook introduce communication between brands and customers via its private Messenger app in order to fully optimise the mobile experience for the consumer. If you need help getting the most out of your social media accounts, call us and we will be happy to help you with design, construction and effective media management.