Facebook has certainly grown as a marketing channel for small and large businesses alike. From it’s early infancy as a university social network site through to a global communication channel, Facebook offers endless opportunities to businesses to communicate directly or indirectly with customers and target audiences simultaneously.
It’s simple nature of communication makes it very easy to use for users, but it’s complexity as a business tool is continuing to grow and I’ve recently realised that many small business owners don’t actually understand how to truly leverage the extensive benefits that this tool can use.
I realised this even more so when I was recently asked by two separate business owners to explain why I’d asked them to invest in some Facebook advertising, both coming back to me saying “but I thought it was free”.
Free vs Paid
Setting up a business page and asking people to like it and joining your community is a free tool. Once people are a part of your community, you can chat with them, share ideas and they can see everything that you post. They can also like, comment and share your posts, which they can share with their friend network as an action that they have taken. It is like the old word of mouth marketing “The Marketing Elf shared Bob Smiths post”. If people like their post, they aren’t liking what you had but what their friend had – this is where a disconnect occurs. Unless the friends of friends like your actual page, they aren’t going to become a part of your community and you won’t be able to talk directly with them. The outcome of this is that you are only talking to your direct community and not extending your reach any further.
Continuing to talk to just your community will allow for organic growth, which will happen gradually, but it will make it difficult for you to get an increased response to your marketing and build your potential customer base.
To put this in business terms, If you consider two scenarios, one free vs paid, the outcomes could look like:
FREE: you are trying to clear some overstocks so decide to post these for sale on your page. You know that they would appeal to females 18-25 of which you have about 50 followers on your page. With 2.5%(average percentage of followers who actually view posts from business pages), you will reach approximately 1.25 people. With that person sharing, you might increase by a couple however it is a very low response rate and is unlikely to result in a sale. With Facebooks new rule too, unless your post creates meaningful interactions with your followers, you won’t rate highly in the news feed so the 1.25 people may even become lower.
PAID: If you were to use paid advertising and looked to boost the same offer using paid advertising, you can actually target people and increase the number of people who see your ad. Facebook,s recent change doesn’t affect paid advertising do you are more likely to feature prominently in the news feed and also capture people who fit your demographic profile. You can also choose to capture these people within a certain radius of your location, like particular pages and who fit your defined target audience profile. By doing all of this, you are creating an ad that has relevance and this will create a better chance at people seeing your offer and responding. The other benefit of doing this is that you are reaching out to people who are within your area but might not know you exist which will hopefully also result in an increase in page likes. There is also a good chance of opportunistic buying. Unlike traditional marketing like letterbox and mail, Facebook captures people who are in your area at the time your ad is run. They don’t need to be permanent residents which just gives you greater exposure and potential brand opportunity. You can do all this too for as little as $4 (according to Facebook). I would recommend that you do plan to spend around $50 – $100 however the benefit of this marketing is that you can afford to test with a few different budgets and see what drives results.
Why use paid Facebook advertising
Facebook provides for a great way to advertise your business locally, whilst directly targeting individuals who are a part of your target audience. You have the ability to define your ad preferences by age, location, gender and also behavioural elements using their search history both within Facebook and outside. The power of this is huge from a marketing perspective and provides the ability for you, as a business owner, to limit wastage in your marketing spend by targeting people who would be interested in your products.
With Facebook’s recent change to improve the user experience by making their news feeds more valuable, simply posting a photo or a comment about your business isn’t going to be rated well and will therefore not get the exposure that you require.
Second to this, when you simply post on your Facebook page, you are only talking to the people who have liked your page, some might share with friends and family but you’re simply talking to an already engaged audience (I hope). In order to receive a well rated post that appears at the top of your followers news feed, you need to have a highly engaged post which creates a conversation, not simply likes or shares. Even if people add a comment with their friends names, that isn’t going to be enough to have a highly rated post.
In short, it’s going to be much more challenging to get organic results – paid advertising will allow you to feature in a news feed and it will also reach new customers, allowing you to achieve growth in followers and potential customers.
Tips on creating a conversation
With the big change in Facebook’s posting rules for business, you need to focus on driving conversations, your posts essentially need to become conversation starters and allow people to chat and discuss things with each other. Depending on what you are posting about, here are a couple of ideas:
Fundraising: end with “join us in congratulating <name> on such great results and the support they’ve shown to <details>”.
Product push: include a prompt of getting people to think about ways that they could have benefited from the product i.e. “share with us below details of how <product> would make a difference to your life.
Business awareness: “We want to know a bit more about what you think of the work we do so tell us below about how you view our brand?” (Be prepared for some negative feedback but you can always turn a negative into a positive).
Business product awareness: “it’s morning tea time and we’re thinking about what to have with our second coffee for the day. Share with us below what is your favourite treat to have with your mid morning coffee break”.
The examples above are just to show you how you can build conversation starters into your posts rather than just talking to people. It’s more important for you as small business to make wise marketing decisions and to get value out of the effort that you put in.
In summary, Facebook is a crucial part of any marketing plan. It now so it’s more important to get behind it as a budgeted channel to ensure you leverage it properly.
Definitely use the free posts but you need to ensure that you are getting s good mix of paid advertising in their also – otherwise you will start talking to yourself.
Facebook is really good at keeping people informed of changes but this most recent one creates a challenge for small businesses who don’t have marketing funds readily available. You need to ensure that you are leveraging at opportunity possible. Facebook is an evolving business and like all companies, they need to make a profit too. This latest change is certainly enforcing more paid advertising by businesses, with the reward being seen, but it’s a better experience for the users who will gain a lot more value for the platform and continue to use it.
Good luck!
The Marketing Elf
© February 2018
The Marketing Elf 