Last December, Facebook updated its algorithm and announced changes to how people see updates from individuals and Pages in their news feed. As a result, most business pages have seen a noticeable decline in organic reach. To compensate, Page managers now need to ramp up paid Facebook spend to ensure that their stories appear in audience feeds.
While some may be upset by this move, it’s not surprising. Facebook has pulled a classic Marketing 101: The Hook. Get your customers hooked at a reduced price (or for free) and once they’re hooked they won’t mind (or will have no choice) to pay. Well played Facebook. Well played.
How much is enough?
For some, paying Facebook for exposure will be necessity. But small businesses generally have small budgets. So how much is enough? And where should the money be spent?
Before we go on… We aren’t talking about buying Facebook followers. We’re talking about Facebook advertising. And there is a difference.
New Facebook pages
To build exposure and likes to your Facebook page, there must be initial investment in paid advertising to target the right demographic to your page.
Set up a split campaign to test what gets the best results (i.e. likes). Facebook advertising is great to drive likes to your page and traffic to your website. But if budgets are small try and build your audience first then switch the focus to driving website traffic.
Existing Facebook pages
If you’ve already attracted a fair audience and they’re engaged with the content you are producing then it’s smart to pay to promote the right content to ensure it gets to the right audience.
To do this you need to make the distinctions between casual content and business worthy content. Photos of fun things you do at the office and quick news updates about your niche are all relevant, but probably not worth paying for as these posts don’t impact your bottom line. If on the other hand, you’re announcing a new product, new features, an ebook it’s worth investing in some advertising to ensure your posts are seen.
Need help? Let’s talk.
See you next week,
Darnelle
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