Facebook is a social media powerhouse. With over three billion users, it's the biggest social media platform in the world and gives businesses access to massive audiences.
Marketing on Facebook is a cost-effective and efficient way to improve brand awareness, sell your products or services, and engage your loyal customers.
Importance of Facebook marketing for businesses
With more than a third of the world's population accessing Facebook, it's an obvious must-use for any large business or brand. Facebook also boasts a highly engaged audience that interacts directly with companies on their feeds at least once a day on average.
Facebook marketing not only offers unparalleled access to audiences, but it also helps brands build communities and get real-world feedback on their products or services.
Reaching your target market on Facebook has become more difficult lately, as the platform's algorithms often prioritize paid services over organic marketing efforts.
Finding the right social media management tools to use in your Facebook marketing strategy can help you identify the right mix of paid content versus organic and help you develop your Facebook presence more efficiently.
Top 12 Facebook marketing tools
Let's take a look at 12 great tools for social media marketing professionals on Facebook.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media marketing tool that offers powerful reporting, simple-to-use dashboards, and artificial intelligence (AI-based) analysis.
Marketing managers use Brandwatch to glean actionable insights from a wide array of social media metrics and data points, as well as competitive analysis and social listening. It's a one-stop social media tool that helps professionals streamline their efforts, uncover trends, and make data-driven decisions for effective Facebook marketing.
Here's a quick run-down of some of Brandwatch's key Facebook marketing tools:
- Post scheduling with Publish: Publish is a social media scheduling tool that lets users create, schedule, and manage posts on their Facebook business page as well as other social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram.
- Community management with Engage: Engage puts audience engagement in one convenient dashboard, so you can respond to customers on Facebook Messenger or react to comments quickly and efficiently.
- Track performance with Measure and Benchmark: Brandwatch tracks over 500 days of comments, posts, and mentions for both your owned Facebook accounts and competitor Facebook pages. Users can measure the performance of their own social media strategy and that of competitors in a user-friendly, customizable dashboard.
- Manage Facebook ads with Advertise: The Brandwatch ad manager tool makes managing Facebook ad campaigns simple. Facebook marketers can create, build, and track ads across multiple social media accounts.
- Run influencer marketing campaigns with Influence: This Brandwatch module connects brands with the right social media influencers for their target audience. Influencer campaigns are a powerful way to multiply your Facebook marketing efforts.
Brandwatch's comprehensive suite of Facebook management tools touches every aspect of the platform, providing valuable insights and a convenient platform to manage your Facebook strategy. It also extends beyond Facebook and into your other social media channels across multiple platforms.
2. Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Suite is the in-house Facebook analytics platform. This free tool offers a wide range of features to help you track your Facebook content success, see incoming Facebook comments, and interact with your audience.
Meta Business Suite provides insights into key metrics for your Facebook posts, your audience, and also your ad campaign. It offers publishing tools for scheduling content and lets you collaborate with other users.
Facebook Ad Manager is linked in Meta Business Suite too, but you have to jump out to that tool to perform ad creation and manage your ad spend.
One common complaint about Meta Business Suite is its challenging navigation and frequent UX changes, which make consistent, straightforward reporting difficult.
It does, however, offer accessible, historical data on Facebook content including impressions, reach, engagement, and clicks. There's also a good amount of demographic information like age and location.
This free tool is best used for small to medium businesses with straightforward campaigns.
3. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media scheduling tool that streamlines Facebook content creation. You can use SocialPilot to bulk schedule 500 posts across Facebook and other social media accounts in one go. Post options include Stories, wall posts, and Instagram Reels.
The biggest draw to SocialPilot is its automated posting features. This tool will automatically repeat evergreen content for you, plus you can automate staggered posts across multiple platforms and accounts.
It offers customizable reports that show Facebook engagement metrics as well as audience demographic information and post performance over time. The AI-powered hashtag suggestion tool is another feature SocialPilot offers to help improve your social media posts.
4. Buffer
Buffer helps brands build engaging content with AI-powered content creation tips and ideation. It integrates with graphic apps like Canva and Giphy plus media library tools like Dropbox and Google Drive to make it easier to add multimedia to your Facebook posts.
Like the other social media management tools here, Buffer also offers reporting on key metrics and campaign performance in customizable dashboards. It also allows users in your social media team to collaborate on your Facebook content, streamlining the development process.
Buffer is a good tool for teams who want help adding visual flair to their Facebook marketing campaigns.
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a popular Facebook post scheduling platform that offers tools for collaborative teams who manage accounts across multiple social media platforms. The platform makes it easy to schedule and create a content strategy calendar with input from multiple stakeholders.
It also offers some powerful reporting features and customizable, user-friendly dashboards. Sprout ties in Facebook Messenger, so you can respond to customer requests and manage your community right from the Sprout Social platform. There are also reporting and ad management tools for your paid marketing campaigns.
Sprout Social is a comprehensive tool for social media managers.
6. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is another AI-assisted content-management system for social media channels, including Facebook. It features content queues that you can organize by priority to better execute your brand's overall strategy.
One of its key features is a tool for automatically scheduling first comments on posts. This is useful for campaigns where you want to put important links in the comments and not in the body of the main post. Agorapulse lets you do this while you're scheduling and building your content.
This platform also offers a set of reporting and AI suggestions for content ideas and hashtags.
7. Hootsuite
This scalable social media management tool offers a unified social inbox to handle messages and comments from multiple channels and a robust content scheduling platform. Hootsuite also has its own AI-assistance program to help ideate and generate content, called Owly.
Users like Hootsuite for its versatility and ease of use for larger teams who operate across many different social sites and accounts. Hootsuite offers content performance reports on reach, impressions, engagement, and demographics, plus a range of tools for assessing trends in content like hashtags and popular topics. It also allows you to assess your performance versus competitors.
8. Canva
Canva is a graphic design tool that helps you build images for use in social media campaigns. Its key features include Facebook ad templates and a social media graphics library that makes it easy to create new posts. It also offers a branding kit that helps marketers unify the look and feel of their Facebook marketing campaigns.
9. AdEspresso
Like the name suggestions, this tool is designed specifically to optimize and streamline your paid campaigns. It integrates with Facebook Ad Manager to help you create ads, set up Facebook targeting, and even test different ads to find out which performs better.
AdEspresso offers customizable dashboards for reporting on ad performance, plus downloadable and shareable PDF reports on campaign performance. Each of these reports will identify your best-performing ad campaigns and even suggest ways to optimize them.
Marketers can perform A/B split testing to help you compare marketing strategies side-by-side.
This marketing tool is ideal for companies who use Facebook ads and want to increase performance with the help of a simplified dashboard.
10. Meltwater
Meltwater, a media monitoring company, expanded into social media monitoring by acquiring LikeAlyzer. This formerly free tool allows users to evaluate their Facebook pages independently or against competitor pages to identify areas for improvement.
Meltwater bought the company for its unique tool that taps into the Facebook API to measure reach, likes, comments, and demographics, helping identify which content performs best. Meltwater uses that technology for social listening, where it tracks millions of Facebook posts and posts to measure brand sentiment and awareness.
This social tool is great for users who run marketing campaigns across multiple channels and want to measure the impact on public awareness and perception by tracking social media mentions.
11. Sked Social
Sked Social is a social media management tool that differs from other scheduling platforms with its content approval process. This collaborative social media marketing tool offers a simple workflow for creating, editing, and approving content seamlessly within the dashboard.
It also boasts a unique user-generated content (UGC) manager that looks for mentions and stores UGC for later use on your brand's Facebook page. Additionally, it takes advantage of Facebook features like link stickers, so you can drive more results from Facebook Stories content.
This Facebook tool is great for teams with a structured approvals process and a strong UGC component to their Facebook marketing efforts. It offers simple content management across different platforms through its clever grid planner tool.
12. Customers.ai
Customers.ai is one of the few Facebook marketing tools designed specifically for paid campaigns. This tool features visitor identification so that it can recognize and retarget ads to users who have already visited your Facebook page or web pages.
This tool integrates with Facebook Ads Manager and delivers drip campaigns and retargeted ads to qualified followers, leading to more conversions from your Facebook marketing efforts.
It also integrates with Facebook Messenger and automatically responds to story replies, comments, Facebook messages, and mentions from your followers. Customers.ai isn't the most user-friendly tool on our list, but its powerful features make it one of the most useful business tools for marketers.
How to choose the right Facebook marketing tool?
With so many Facebook tools on the market, it can be daunting to find the right one for your business. The truth is that most businesses benefit from using multiple Facebook marketing tools for different parts of their strategy.
Some of the things you should consider when shopping for a Facebook marketing tool include:
- Your goals: Your Facebook marketing goals will have a big impact on which tool you want to go with in the end. If your goal is to improve your organic performance by improving your consistency with content, then a Facebook scheduling tool will be your biggest priority. If you want to drive direct sales, then a Facebook tool that offers ad optimization will be higher on the list. And, if you want to manage your brand's reputation, then social listening tools that assess the sentiment of posts made about your brand will be useful.
- Your content strategy: Similarly, the way you deliver content and the sort of content you create will impact the usefulness of different tools. If you want to increase the reach of your content, a campaign management tool with detailed reporting on post performance will be important to you. If you need help building compelling content, look for design tools.
- Your workflow: Web apps that let you collaborate with the team in real time will help larger teams work together, while content programs with approvals functions will help you move your Facebook campaigns through that process.
Understanding what you want to achieve with your Facebook campaign and how your Facebook strategy fits with those goals will help you find the right platform to execute and monitor your plans.
No matter which tools you're leaning towards, there are some key aspects that all good social media marketing tools need to have. They are:
- Robust reporting and analytics
- Customizable reports and dashboards
- User-friendly interface
- Publishing and scheduling tools
- A web and mobile app for easy access on the go
More advanced or complicated campaigns have different needs. For example, you might need to run influencer marketing campaigns to drive product awareness and sales. For that, you'll want a tool that helps you assess your audience and suggest creators to work with.
Sometimes, all we need is a little creative guidance. Tools with AI-assisted ideation and content creation are good for that.
If you begin your journey with a clear idea of what you want help with, what sorts of information you need, and what you want to do on your Facebook page, you'll be well-positioned to choose the best possible Facebook tool (or tools) for your needs.
Frequently asked questions
How can I track the return on investment (ROI) of my Facebook ads with these tools?
Facebook marketing tools make it easy to monitor the performance and ROI of your Facebook ads in one convenient dashboard.
These tools track key metrics like reach, engagement, and clicks to show you how well your ads are performing. Some tools integrate with Google Analytics to help track conversions to your website from campaigns.
You can also use ad management tools to track how well ads perform over time, so you know where to improve and when to change up your creative.
How do Facebook marketing tools help with audience targeting?
Facebook tools offer detailed reports into your follower demographics, providing valuable insights into your target audience and helping you determine whom to target. Some tools, like Customers.ai, identify visitors to your landing page or Facebook profile and retarget them with specific ads.
How do Facebook marketing tools help with campaign optimization?
Tools that track post performance using metrics like engagement and reach offer insights into what does and doesn't work in your feed. Many of these tools also analyze the content of your Facebook posts and offer suggestions on the best hashtags to use or content types to get more engagement. Facebook tools can also identify what the best times of the day or week are to post and what makes users more likely to engage.
How do Facebook marketing tools help with ad creatives?
Facebook marketing tools offer numerous features to help you create compelling ad creatives. They can assist with designing engaging visuals using design tools and media libraries, as well as suggesting wording and content themes to craft highly effective Facebook ads.
Some tools even let you test ad creatives side-by-side in A/B split tests to see what the best performing campaign will be.
The ultimate Facebook tool
Facebook marketing is a complicated and multi-faceted world. Finding the best possible tools to help achieve your goals is made more difficult by the sheer number of choices and by the array of different ways in which they help you implement campaigns.
Brandwatch offers a one-stop shop of Facebook marketing tools that's scalable and customizable, so you can use what you need and ignore what you don't. From Influencer campaigns and paid ads to content scheduling and community management, Brandwatch has the right tools for any marketing team.