Facebook Business Pages are designed for businesses to access all the features of targeting their audience in a digital space. Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has many opportunities for small businesses to connect with their audience. Facebook is used by companies to provide content, updates, and engage with their audience. If you aren’t on Facebook, you are missing out!
Facebook for Small Businesses
Facebook is making new updates for those who run small businesses to save time, optimize your advertising spend, and help you get the most out of your business page.
We’re going to cover three new, exciting updates that Facebook recently released. These updates are:
- Automated ads
- Scheduling appointments
- 3 video editing tools
Let's dive into what specifically these new updates have to offer and how they will benefit you and your business.
Automated Ads
With over 2 billion active monthly users on Facebook, it makes sense to advertise your business on Facebook! Think of the mass amount of people you can reach. For example, local businesses mostly reach locals, but with Facebook and the ads they could be creating, they can target a wider audience across the country.
Facebook is taking the guesswork out of creating ads that can run on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
With the variety of settings that are available to you, you can narrow in on your audience and optimize your ads. However, there may be significant drawbacks to managing your ads, like time! And we know that one thing small business owners don’t have is…time! Are you busy running your business, and don't have that extra time to create and monitor Facebook ads? Well, Facebook created a solution with you in mind: Automated ads! You can now save time and still optimize your Facebook ads to get your brand in front of the right people. Want to know the best part? It is simple to do!
If you are already using Facebook to create ads, the process to create an automated ad is a bit different than how you are creating ads now.
How automated ads are different:
- Facebook will create a custom advertising plan for your business.
- Based off this plan, Facebook will create ads that can run on an ongoing basis. They walk you through the entire ad process, so you take the guessing game out of your strategy.
- After asking a few simple questions about your business, Facebook will create a campaign based on the goals or objectives of your campaign.
- Next, they will suggest images, an audience, and a budget that will help you get your ads in front of the right people.
- Finally! The ad creation process is simplified, phew! With the click of a few buttons, an ad campaign is up and running for your business.
- Your ads will run continuously over time, and Facebook will help you adjust your settings, so your ads will perform at their very best!
Appointments on Facebook & Instagram
Ever dream of being able to make an appointment right on a business’s Facebook page? Your wish is now a reality!
Facebook is taking away all that extra work your customers have to do to book a time to see you. With appointments, you can now:
- Allow customers to book and manage appointments from your Facebook & Instagram page
- Set your availability to display open appointments
- Accept and manage all appointments directly from your company page
This feature may not seem like a big deal to you but think about the current experience that a potential customer would go through to book an appointment with you. If they are on your Facebook page, they have to find your website and either book there or submit a form and wait to hear from you. The more clicks or sites they need to visit to perform an action, the fewer customers you have come through your door. Facebook and Instagram's new appointment management includes a couple of clicks. Much easier!
Not only do your customers love this easy process to make an appointment, but your business will benefit from this new feature as well. Some of the benefits are syncing appointments with your google calendar and sending automated reminders to your customer. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free! Enough said.
Facebook appointments are effortless when implementing them in your business. You can have someone make a reservation, book a meeting, schedule a time for a demo, or even a consultation right from your social page.
New Video Editing Tools
Let's face it; we all aren't professional videographers and editors. Thankfully, we don't have to be to create engaging video ads on Facebook.
Facebook has added three new editing tools that are extremely easy to use. Even for people like me, who are beginners when it comes to video editing!
The three new features are:
- Automatic cropping
- Video trimming
- Image & text overlays
Automatic cropping
When cropping the ratio of a video ad (like changing it from horizontal to vertical), you can now let Facebook do the work for you. Facebook has a “scene detection technology” to determine the best focal point for your ad on a frame-by-frame and scene-by-scene basis. This feature determines the best place to crop each frame to the scene for you in that ratio. Sounds fancy, right?
Video trimming
Trimming your video is relatively self-explanatory, but wasn’t available in ads manager before. Even though you can go up to 31 seconds of video time for your ad, keep in mind that Facebook recommends a video length or 5 to 15 seconds. The most successful video ads are between that length. So, keep in mind when you are trimming your video with this new, handy tool.
Image & text overlays
Text in your ad image catches your audience eye more often than a picture alone. When creating your image on Facebook, you can include text, a logo, watermarks, or illustrations on top of the photo. Not only does it add text to images, but it includes adding text in the thumbnail of videos. Even though this tool sounds simple and you can do this on another app, remember that it is all done through Facebook. Create your entire ad in one place today!
One downside to these features is that they are only available in Ads Manager, which means you can only use them to create an ad and not a regular post on your page.
Relax, unwind, and let Facebook take over
Try them out! That’s the best way to see how easy these tools are to use. Start by testing out a small video ad. You can even make it an automated ad!
Facebook is regularly releasing new, helpful features for small businesses; and with these three new features, Facebook is improving the ad game. We can't stop talking about it! Using Facebook Business Page, you are giving your company a chance to grow and reach people you otherwise would never meet. Start reaching out to your customers today!
