Should My Small Business Market On Facebook?
April 12, 2017
It’s 2017, and some business owners are still asking if they should market on Facebook.
Let’s not mince words. The answer is yes. Your business must market on Facebook.
Consider these statistics:
Be aware that #8 is a number that increases every day. The world is on Facebook. Your prospective customers are certainly on Facebook. It’s no longer a question of whether or not your business should be. It’s just a question of how much marketing ROI you’ll enjoy from your Facebook presence.
Social Media ROI
The main reason business owners remain skeptical of Facebook marketing is a misconception of what their return on investment (ROI) should look like.
Let’s take point #6, that 50% of 18-24-year-olds go on Facebook when they wake up. Why the urgency to get on Facebook? Is it to learn about some product or service they might have an interest in? Do they have their credit cards handy so they can start their day shopping?
Not likely. They are drawn to Facebook because they want to find out what their friends and family are up to. They want news updates. What’s better than starting your day with a funny meme somebody posted?
This is also reflected in how engagement increases on Thursdays and Fridays. Those are inherently social times of the week.
Facebook is not, in essence, a marketing platform. It’s a social network where advertisers can gain brand exposure.
Facebook is like the interstate highway: a place of high traffic. Your marketing materials are like billboards. People aren’t driving down the interstate just to look at billboards, but they see them nonetheless.
For the most part, social media ROI is a measurement of engagement metrics, which include:
- Impressions – How much your ad was seen.
- Reach – How many people your ad displays to.
- Likes – How many people liked your ad.
- Shares – The number of people who shared your ad.
- Comments – How many comments your post got.
- Frequency – How often your ad was shown, on average, to a user.
- Click Through Rate – The percentage of consumer who saw your ad then clicked through to the landing page.
- Page Likes – The number of likes generated for your Facebook page because of the ad.
The primary goal of Facebook marketing is to get more people to engage with your brand. When you do, you bias them towards you when they do get to a point they need your product or service.
Targeted Advertising
You may be thinking this sounds too broad. How am I supposed to reach the right people with my marketing message?
Well, nearly half of marketing pros today don’t consider Facebook critical because they’re getting lucky. The fact is Facebook offers the most targeted brand advertising on the internet. There are two important ways Facebook achieves this.
The first is the nature of Facebook’s relationship with users. Most people think Facebook is free because they don’t get a bill every month. But there is still a transaction taking place. In exchange for using Facebook, you let them track everything you do on the platform.
As a result, Facebook has an enormous amount of demographic and interest-based data on users. It knows your age, job, income, family status, hobbies, education, type of home you live in, political affiliations, and entertainment preferences.
But that’s not all. Most people don’t realize this, but in 2013 Facebook partnered with consumer data brokers including Epsilon, Acxiom, and Datalogix. These companies have access to trillions of data transactions every year.
Every time you buy something, the transaction is recorded. Facebook uses this data. Are you planning a wedding? Do you love books by conservative political pundits? Are you an early adopter of new cell phone technology? Do you take medication for high cholesterol? Facebook knows all of it.
All this data lets advertisers target people based on their interests, lifestyles, and buying habits with amazing accuracy. You’re not just advertising on a random highway. You’re advertising on a highway where everyone who passes by has a measurable interest in your offer.
Facebook can actually predict what consumers want. For example, I take medication for high blood pressure and recently purchased several healthy recipe cookbooks. Suddenly, an advertisement for salt-free seasoning started showing in my News Feed. It was an ad I was genuinely interested in seeing.
Direct Conversions
You may still be skeptical of Facebook marketing. Maybe you have a smaller, local business where brand advertising isn’t that much of a priority.
Not to worry. Facebook offers direct-response advertising opportunities with Facebook Lead Ads. These ads allow users to convert using a form that’s (mainly) auto-filled by Facebook. It’s very effective way to get people to schedule services or capture their contact info.
You can also retarget people who’ve previously visited your website with ads relevant to the pages they visited.
Facebook continues to develop as a marketing and advertising platform. They make huge efforts keep users happy, and that means only showing sponsored material that’s highly relevant to them.
That’s a win/win for consumers and marketers. Make sure you’re in the game.
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