Promoting on Facebook has changed over the past few years. Before if you had thousands of likes (or fans) you could expect to receive a great amount of engagement (likes, comments, shares) if your posts were of good quality. However when FB changed their policy a couple years ago it has never been the same. In order to reach the same amount of audience, companies now must pay to ‘boost’ their post. The race to get as many likes as possible thereby building out your audience now shows little benefit. It would take hundreds of thousands of ‘likes’ for your page in order to reach the levels of engagement which were once free.
What should we use Facebook for?
Facebook should still be used, but not in the same old way. Instead of posting pictures of cats and famous quotes, businesses should be harnessing the power of audience-targeted ads.
Gone are the days of just posting pictures and status updates, as you would on your own personal FB. That will not result in anything tangible, and certainly does not even build ‘brand awareness’. Facebook should be used as a bullhorn. It is used to get the word out on something valuable, desired and specific. It can be done in two ways:
1) ‘boosted’ post which will be made viewable to as many people you have in your fan-base.
2) native ads which are placed in fan’s news feeds.
The later is far more useful as the ads can be Geo-targeted and interest-targeted. Allowing you to achieve exquisite control on who sees your ads. The content of these ads/posts is entirely up to you. Whether they are straight ads or useful information (content marketing), or PR. Whatever content you end up choosing for your ad it is absolutely vital that narrow down your audience so it is not so broad that it is being wasted on people not in your area or not interested.
Additionally before any big dollars are pumped into an FB ad campaign it is very wise to first do a series of ‘soft ads’ campaigns. Vary the wording, images, audience etc, and see what ad gets the best results. And then use that one for your big campaign. By doing this you avoid dumping money into an inherently poor performing ad.
Other Goodies
Here is a list of all the different types of ad campaigns in FB:
- Boost your posts
- Promote your Page
- Send people to your website
- Increase conversion on your website
- Get installs of your app
- Increase engagement in your app
- Reach people near your business
- Raise attendance at your event
- Get people to claim your offer
- Get video views
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