Social Media As Traffic Source: Driving Traffic To Your Website Using Facebook

You might remember Dave. We spoke about him in our article on GEO – he’s the plumber from Chelmsford who looked at me with genuine terror when I mentioned the word “optimisation.”

We got his plumbing business showing up in AI search results, sorted his structured data, and sent him home a somewhat reluctant convert to the world of digital marketing.

A few weeks after that, Dave called me again.

“Right,” he said, with the confidence of a man who has fixed one leaky pipe and now considers himself a plumber. “I want to do the Facebook thing.”

The Facebook thing. I’ve heard it described many ways, but that’s a new one – maybe even a better one. What Dave meant – what a lot of small business owners mean – is that they’ve heard Facebook can drive traffic to their website, and they want in. They’re just not entirely sure how it works, what they’re supposed to post, or whether it’s worth their time at all.

This one’s for Dave. Again. And for anyone else wanting to know how to use Facebook to drive traffic to your website.

What is Facebook, actually? (For those who’ve avoided it)

If you’re a Facebook user, you can probably just skip over this bit.

But if you aren’t, before we get into tactics, it’s worth understanding what Facebook actually is and how people use it – because that shapes everything about how you should show up on it.

Facebook is a social media platform with around 3 billion monthly active users worldwide. In the UK, it remains the most widely used social media platform across the 35-and-over age bracket. People use it to stay in touch with friends and family, join communities around shared interests, follow local businesses and events, and – yes – discover products and services.

Crucially, people on Facebook are not usually in “buying mode.” They’re scrolling. They’re procrastinating. They’re looking at photos of someone’s holiday or arguing about the football or politics (and they do that a lot).

Your job as a business is tough, because you don’t want to aggressively pull up with your advert because that just isn’t going to work. What you need to try to do is appear on their Facebook feed in a way that feels relevant, useful, or interesting enough that they want to know more. And “know more” means clicking through to your website.

That’s the whole game: earn the click.

Lost the buzz for your business?

Starting a business is exciting. Succeeding is rewarding. The bit between is hard, repetitive, and full of self-doubt. 

The Lonely Middle Club (From Business4Beginners) helps you through it:

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Is Facebook right for your business?

Facebook works brilliantly for some businesses and barely at all for others. It’s worth being honest about this before you invest time in it.

Facebook tends to work well for:

• Local service businesses: tradespeople, therapists, personal trainers, accountants, cleaning services. People actively look for local recommendations in Facebook groups.
• Product-based businesses: especially those with visual appeal. Homeware, food, gifts, clothing, crafts.
• Community-oriented businesses: cafes, gyms, restaurants, venues, nurseries, community organisations.
• Businesses targeting the 35+ age group: this is Facebook’s strongest demographic in the UK.

It’s less effective if your customers are primarily under 25 (Instagram and TikTok is the best for these people), or if you’re B2B targeting senior professionals (LinkedIn is stronger there). But for Dave’s plumbing business, serving homeowners in Chelmsford? Facebook is close to perfect.

Setting up a business page that actually works

The first thing to understand is the difference between a personal profile and a Facebook Business Page. Your Business Page is your public presence – it’s what people find when they search for you on Facebook, and it’s where your website link lives.

A Business Page that drives blog traffic and website clicks needs:

• A clear, accurate business name matching your website and every other online listing exactly
• A completed “About” section with your services, location, and a direct link to your website
• A call to action button: Facebook lets you add a button at the top of your page linking directly to your website, a booking page, or a contact form. Use it, it’s really effective.
• Your website URL prominently displayed – don’t make people hunt for it!
• Regular, consistent posting, because an abandoned page with posts from 18 months ago does more harm than good (it makes you look like you’ve stopped trading)

Dave’s Business Page, when I first looked at it, had a profile photo of his van (not bad), a cover photo that was just grey (not good), no website link, and his last post was wishing everyone a Happy Christmas in 2023. We had work to do.

How Facebook decides what people see (and how to work with it)

Here’s the bit most people don’t know, and it changes how you approach your content strategy completely.

Facebook’s algorithm decides which posts to show to which people based on relevance and engagement. When you post something from your Business Page, Facebook doesn’t automatically show it to all your followers. It shows it to a small percentage – often as little as 2-5% – and if those people engage with it (like, comment, share, click), it shows it to more people.

This sounds annoying. It is, to be honest. But it also means that the quality of what you post matters far more than the quantity. One genuinely useful, engaging post will outperform ten bland ones every time.

The types of content that tend to perform best for driving website traffic:

Video – especially Facebook Live. While standard posts might reach 2-5% of your followers, a Facebook Live video can reach 10-50% of your audience. Live video gets prioritised by the algorithm because it drives real-time engagement. Dave now does a monthly two-minute live video answering a common plumbing question. He feels slightly ridiculous doing it, but the reach is excellent.

Blog posts with a compelling hook. Share a link to something genuinely useful on your website – a guide, a checklist, an article that answers a question your customers ask all the time. Don’t just paste the link. Write two or three lines that make someone think “I actually need to read that.”

Behind-the-scenes content. Photos and short videos of work in progress, before-and-afters, team moments. These build trust and personality, which makes people more likely to click through to your website when you share something that asks them to.

Customer stories and social proof. A short post celebrating a completed job, with a photo and the customer’s permission, performs well and builds credibility. Include a line at the end – “Find out more about our services at [website].”

Facebook Groups: The underused traffic driver

This is where Dave had his best early results, and it’s something most small businesses overlook entirely.

Facebook Groups are communities built around shared interests or locations. There are local community groups for almost every town in the UK, as well as industry-specific groups, interest groups, and business networking groups. Many of them have thousands of active members.

Being genuinely helpful in these groups – answering questions, sharing useful information, occasionally (and appropriately) linking to a relevant piece of content on your website – builds your reputation and drives traffic in a way that no amount of posting on your own Business Page can replicate.

Dave joined three local community groups in Chelmsford. When someone posted asking for a recommendation for a plumber, or asking how to deal with a particular problem, he answered helpfully and professionally. No hard sell. Just useful. His website traffic from Facebook tripled in the first two months. He was so pleased he bought me a pint, which I’m choosing to count as professional payment.

The rule for groups is simple: give more than you take. Contribute genuinely, and the clicks follow naturally.

Facebook Ads: When organic isn’t enough

Organic reach on Facebook has limits. Paid social media advertising fills the gap – and Facebook advertising remains one of the most cost-effective ways to drive targeted website traffic available to a small business.

Facebook Ads let you target by location, age, interests, and behaviour. For a local service business like Dave’s, that means showing ads specifically to homeowners in Chelmsford aged 30-65. For a product business, you can target people with demonstrated interest in your category.

Retargeting is particularly powerful. By installing a retargeting pixel on your website, you can serve ads specifically to people who’ve already visited your website but didn’t convert into a sale. Website visitors who are retargeted are 43% more likely to convert – significant for a relatively modest additional spend.

You don’t need a huge budget to test this. Even £5-10 per day targeted well can generate meaningful traffic to a specific landing page. Start small, see what works, then scale what’s performing.

Measuring what’s actually working

None of this matters if you’re not tracking it. Connect your Facebook Business Page to Google Analytics so you can see exactly how much traffic Facebook is sending to your website, which posts are driving the most clicks, and, crucially, what those visitors do when they arrive.

High bounce rates on traffic from a specific post usually mean one of two things: the content on the page doesn’t match what the post promised, or the landing page isn’t doing its job. Fix the mismatch rather than just posting more.

Facebook also has its own analytics within the Business Page – look at “Reach” and “Link Clicks” for each post to see which content formats are genuinely driving traffic versus just getting likes.

What Dave does now

Dave posts twice a week. One useful tip or answer to a common question, with a link to his website. One piece of behind-the-scenes content – a job he’s completed, something that happened on site, occasionally something funny (he has a decent sense of humour, to be fair to the lad).

He shows up in three local Facebook groups, answers questions when he knows the answer, and doesn’t push his services unless someone directly asks.

He runs a small retargeting ad campaign – £6 a day – pointing at people who’ve visited his website.

His Facebook page is now his second-biggest source of website traffic after Google search. The ROTI (return on time invested) is, by his own admission, better than anything else he’s tried. He still doesn’t fully understand why it works. But he’s stopped questioning it.

And sometimes that’s enough.

Not sure how social media could help your small businesses increasing traffic, find our in our guide about using social media to get traffic to your website.