Don’t be dismissive of that familiar presence at the top of your Facebook page. The humble Facebook cover (or ‘banner’, as it’s otherwise known) is valuable marketing real estate. Why, you ask? Well, to state the obvious, it’s approximately eight times the square footage of your profile pic. It’s the very first thing that meets the eye when someone lands on your page, and an oblong-shaped opportunity to set your offering apart from the other 60 million active business pages elbowing for attention on the platform.
It’s also ‘clickable’—directing interested parties to an image description. That image description can be loaded up with links to drive traffic to your website, e-shop, blog post, event page, newsletter sign-up form… wherever you fancy. So think of your Facebook cover as the concierge of your brand. It should be welcoming, engaging and quick to guide visitors to places of note.
Here we’ll explore some tricks and tips to help you master your Facebook cover marketing.
But first, the basics:
What size should a Facebook cover be?
The dimensions of a Facebook cover image are 820 pixels wide and 312 pixels tall for desktop and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall for mobile. Facebook will stretch to fit anything smaller—and that’s when things can get blurry. Many content creating websites will help out here by providing the option to resize any template to precise ‘Facebook cover’ proportions.
Take note of the blind spots that emerge when someone views your Facebook page on a mobile device, and keep this in mind when placing important elements of your Facebook cover design.
What design elements should be considered when creating a Facebook cover?
Place key elements and messages away from the edges of your cover so they can clearly be seen on both desktop and mobile devices (for what it’s worth, a whopping 96% of Facebook users access the social platform from their mobile device).
Remember it will sit beside your profile picture, and consider balancing the bigger picture by positioning the focus of your Facebook cover to the right side of your design. If you’re using words on your cover, do so sparingly. Keep things primarily visual with simple, short copy, and make sure the color palette and fonts featured on your Facebook cover are consistent with your overall brand aesthetic.
Now we’ll explore some ways to use your Facebook cover as a marketing tool:
Showcase your offering
What better place to strut your stuff than front-and-center on your Facebook cover? Treat this prominent space as a (totally free) opportunity to showcase your product or service—and if you’ve got design, illustration, or word skills, put them to use!
Facebook allows you to have an animated cover, so consider putting together a slideshow-style series of images or showing off your latest video content or campaign, as millennial-focussed brands such as The Iconic and Pedestrian TV have done.
Share your brand mission
Your Facebook cover could be a potential new customer’s first introduction to your brand, so budding brands might consider using this space to clearly communicate who they are and what they do. This can be achieved by incorporating a brand mission, slogan, tagline or even a testimonial from a happy client into your Facebook cover design.
Keep in mind that new visitors to your page will judge it within seconds, so you’ll want to get straight to the point. Sum up your offering quick-smart with something along the lines of: ‘I/we work with (your target audience) to (a couple of words describing what you do) so that they (value your client gets)’.
Draw attention to your CTA buttons
Sure, it’s nice to be admired. But what you really want is for your fans and new visitors to take action. Facebook allows businesses to choose from a selection of call-to-action buttons—such as ‘Contact Us’, ‘Learn More’, ‘Shop’, ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Sign Up’—that can appear on their page.
Pay attention to where your particular CTA buttons are positioned in relation to your cover and compose your design with the goal of drawing eyes (and clicks) to them.
Steer visitors toward your CTAs by positioning strong visual elements nearby.
Use Facebook covers to promote an event, special offer or competition
A Facebook cover needn’t be static—and your Facebook page will be all the more dynamic if you change it up every month or so. Try using your Facebook cover as a noticeboard for upcoming events, sales, competitions, store openings, pop-ups, collaborations, clam bakes… whatever gets your audience good and engaged.
A little hack to get more click-through from your Facebook cover is to include a CTA in its design, and feature links to the relevant sites, ticket sellers and landing pages in your image description.
Introduce a new product on Facebook
Spread the word about your latest product launch by giving it pride of place on your Facebook page. Fans can respond to and write comments on your Facebook cover, so be sure to engage with their chats, feedback and questions.
Nothing new to announce? No problem. You can use your cover to highlight an existing product and give it some fresh love and attention.
Create buzz around a campaign
Your Facebook cover should be a key marketing tool when it comes to building awareness around new campaigns, so keep its design aesthetic and messaging aligned with your brand’s latest collections, hashtags, collaborations, tours… whatever the focus of your current marketing push happens to be.
Generally speaking, it’s worth staying timely and relevant by reflecting seasonal changes and popular holidays in your cover (hint: look to Google’s Doodles for inspiration).
Grow your membership or email newsletter subscriber base
The question on every modern-day marketer’s lips is: How do I grow my subscriber list? Letting people know about your brand’s newsletter, membership options, petition, loyalty club, survey, and any other sign-up and opt-in opportunity via your Facebook cover is a savvy way to grow your community. Don’t forget to include links to the relevant places in your image description.
Celebrate business milestones and your team
Customers don’t engage with brands. They engage with stories, so bring your followers along for the ride by celebrating business birthdays, milestones and achievements on your Facebook cover. You can also use this space to celebrate your team and give due credit to the talented folk who are working away behind the scenes.
Cross-promote your other social channels
You can invite your Facebook following to hang with you across all of your social channels by incorporating various handles (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat…) into your cover design. Here might also be the place to promote your podcast, webinar or upcoming Facebook live event, or display a hashtag you’d like to start trending.
Drive home your brand aesthetic
If your business is known for its logo, signature color or pattern, spread that special thing around like confetti! A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, and a high-impact, purely visual Facebook cover is a sure-fire way to make an on-brand splash.
We hope these tips and tricks can help you to market your business on Facebook in new and exciting ways! By using even just one of these suggestions it could completely change the dynamic of your page, in turn allowing your business to engage with new clients and make more sales!
Check out our Facebook page and see how we market ourselves to get a better hint at what you can do! You can also visit us at our website and see more of we do that can help you market your business in the best possible ways!