It’s Now Paid Ads Or Else For Brands On Facebook
They say content is king. But for brands on Facebook, I say using paid ads is king. And I can back it up.
Here’s why.
Organic Social Reach Is Harder Than Ever
While gaining organic traffic is an easy, efficient way to gain traffic, the updated algorithms social media platforms have created are making this method increasingly difficult.
Facebook, Instagram, etc. used to show posts based on recency. If it was 11:06 AM, and a piece of content was posted at 11:05 AM, that content would be higher in the feed (near the top of the page) than a piece of content posted at 11:01 AM.
Facebook Algorithm
Facebook then changed their algorithm to determine what a person sees on their feed based on multiple factors.
A person will see the posts based on the meaningful engagement of the post. Meaningful engagement consists of posts that start actual conversations in the comments. As opposed to simply tagging a friend that would relate to the post. This conversations include people commenting back and forth about the topic and appreciating the post.
When making posts, you need to create quality content with topics that prompt conversation.
For example, if you’re selling a new eye mask that is supposed to help people sleep better at night, you might include some questions like “are you tired of being tired all the time?” or something along those lines.
Hopefully one of your followers will comment I have been searching all over for a product that will help me sleep better at night.
Then one of their friends sees that she commented on the post and replies to her comment saying “this will be perfect for you, you’re always tired at work” and the conversation continues between the two.
In that instance, Facebook will see that your post is conjuring meaningful conversation on your posts and that your engagement levels are high. They will reward this behavior by showing those two people more of your content on their feeds.
The graph above shows the effectiveness of different ways to phrase questions. Questions that begin with should and would prompt discussion and debate. Typically, those types of questions require more than one word answers which is good for getting engagement on your post.
Questions like what and when can typically be answered with one word and do not really open the post to meaningful discussion.
Why and how are at the bottom of the list because they require more discussion and thought than the typical Facebook user is willing to exert on a pages post.
Creating Engaging Content
When creating posts with the intent of increasing engagement, you have to consider the way you phrase a question.
While this seems positive and easy, it is not guaranteed that your post will be seen by these people or that if they see it they’ll even bother commenting on it.
Facebook gives scores to posts based on the relevance to the individual. Engagement and clickbait are two of the factors used to determine relevance. The amount of people who interact with the posts on a daily basis determines where your post will end up on an individual’s feed.
So what does this all mean for you and your focus on organic reach? You might spend hours crafting a quality post only for less than 2% of your fan base to even see your post. That’s a small number for the amount of time and effort you put into your social media posts.
This number does not mean you should just stop trying to get organic traffic on social media. It just means you should add additional measures to ensure your posts will be seen.
Content Without Paid Ads Is Becoming Useless
Don’t be fooled, quality content is still vital for your brand. The question is no longer which type of advertising is the best: organic or paid ads? It is now: how can I integrate the two?
People will not want to view your posts, no matter how much money you spend to promote them, if they are low quality. This however is not to say that quality content will automatically get you the traffic necessary for your brand.
People who are familiar with your brand will read your posts and view your content. The goal of organic posts and paid ads is to get new people viewing your posts and becoming loyal customers.
Now that Facebook has implemented a more advanced algorithm, quality content is struggling to solely provide brands with the attention they need to survive. Paid ads on Facebook get your quality content out in the world for consumers to see.
This is why we recommend Facebook ads for realtors every day of the week. It goes so much farther to find potential home buyers or sellers, in this case.
Quality Content Alone
Content on its own only produces a 42% yield for people visiting their website after seeing a post. Content paired with paid ads produces a 95% yield for people visiting their website after seeing a post.
The numbers speak for themselves. Quality content is not enough to get customers to look at your page.
Even if you do have high quality content, it is extremely difficult to get a top spot on Facebook without paying for it.
Quality Content Plus Paid Ads
Promoted posts got double the amount of visits to their page versus the top organic posts. The digital marketing world is changing and if you want your brand to survive you need to understand the importance of combining the two techniques.
You may be thinking this is just one more thing to ad to your already busy schedule of running your business.
But you don’t have to take on paid advertising alone. In fact, hiring an experienced advertising agency that will market your brand for you can allow you to focus on running your business.
Advertising agencies will focus their attention solely on your brand and how well it is increasing sales.
As you can tell, the digital marketing world is rapidly changing. Hiring a marketing firm will allow them to monitor the changes and ensure your brand remains ahead of the game will you focus on the functionality of your business.
Robben Media offers paid advertising services to double your businesses sales. Consider hiring us to conduct your digital marketing needs and help your business flourish.
Organic reach and content alone are long-term marketing techniques that require much time and patience to get a positive output.
Paid ads are a short-term marketing technique to get you the traffic you want without having to wait months and years to actually gain the desired result.
Facebook Ads Are Highly Underpriced
Facebook and other social mediaadvertising is still a relatively new form of digital marketing. Not all brands believe paid advertising will be beneficial to their company.
Don’t be that brand.
Paid ads are an untapped market that will push your brand over the edge in traffic to your website.
Facebook users spend on average 35 minutes on the app per day. You want your brand to show up on their feed at some point in those 35 minutes and that’s not going to happen without paid ads working on your behalf.
That’s losing 35 minutes each day of potential sales if you fail to join the paid advertising game.
Since paid social media advertising is a relatively new phenomenon, big brands that have the money to spend big bucks on Facebook aren’t spending as much as they could.
Now may be the only time that running ads on Facebook is underpriced. Take advantage of the low prices for advertising on Facebook now before they increase tremendously.
Target Audience
Facebook ads don’t just boost your post on every person’s feed while you cross your fingers that it will help boost your sales. Facebook has a feature when you are creating your ads to help you reach your target audience. They break it down into three categories.
You can decide to use the core audience feature in which you put your desired location, demographic, interest, etc. about your target audience which tells Facebook exactly who you want to see your ads. If you aren’t entirely sure who to target your ads to, you can try their custom audience feature.
The custom audience feature puts your ads on the feeds of people that have already shown interest in your business. You can sync your contact lists when you create your ads and download different software that allows Facebook to see who recently viewed your website and targets to them.
I’m sure we’ve all been online shopping and the next day the same pair of boots you just looked at show up on your Facebook feed. This is not coincidence but instead methodical paid advertising.
Lookalike Audience
The final feature you can use if the first two don’t reach a wide enough audience for your brand is the Lookalike audience feature. This feature allows you to advertise to people that are essentially similar to your current customer base. Facebook has a way to determine features of your current customer base to then target to people that share those same features.
You can use any of these features or a combinations as your business grows and boosts its sales.
Paid ads with Facebook provide you with a lot of features for a relatively low price. Take advantage of this new digital marketing technique before prices increase and your business can no longer benefit from these services.
Win With Strong Content Plus Paid Ads
Step 1: Create Strong Content
Your website first needs to have strong content to get the best possible output from paid ads. To really thrive in the digital world, the product you’re selling needs to be unique enough for people to want it. And also reasonable enough that people can easily understand why they need it.
(See why most ecommerce businesses fail for more on this.)
The marketing campaign you create for the product needs to be pleasing to the eye to get the customer to engage with it but still fit within the aesthetic of your brand. The content you put out into the world with this campaign needs to be quality. People won’t click on it if it seems like very little effort was put into it.
After launching your campaign, you need to have a landing page that is useful to get the customer to the specific product you advertised. Your landing page does not need to be anything extravagant, you can put the bare minimum in and still get a clean, aesthetically consistent page to sell your project.
The most important function of this page is to direct the customer straight to the product you’re selling so they don’t have to search your site for it.
A general note about content is to keep it consistent. Even with a rapidly changing digital marketing world, your customers trust your brand and like consistency.
Only change your overall content slightly to coincide with the changing world. There is no reason to completely rebrand, just ensure your content is quality.
Step 2: Use Paid Ads
Now that your content is strong, it’s time to market it directly to your customers Facebook feeds. Paid ads capitalize on the Facebook algorithm and get your content out to the world.
Take the strong ad campaign you created and go to Facebook to decide what audience you want this ad to reach. The goal is to get the most new customers to increase sales.
People are not likely to visit sites that are cluttered with ads so you have to be strategic about how and where you advertise. How you advertise deals with quality and engaging content. Where you advertise should be social media sites that your target audience use.
Use the audience features on Facebook to ensure your content is going to reach the correct customer base that will likely engage with your content.
Paying for advertising will stop thefight with the Facebook algorithm and will ensure you great content will reach the appropriate audience. Don’t rely on content alone and miss out on the low-cost paid advertising Facebook is currently offering.
Step 3: Analyze Your Paid Media
Once your ads are up, make sure to regularly monitor the output. Your sales and customers should increase. Figure out what works and what doesn’t work based on the comments on your posts.
Don’t get angry at negative comments and become defensive of your content. Understand that these negative comments are coming from somewhere and use them to improve your overall brand.
Try to keep your customers happy and really take their feedback into consideration. They are the people that will be interacting with your content so as long as they’re happy, they will continue to visit your site.
It is also important to analyze and monitor your paid media. Since the digital media world is constantly changing, things that may have worked yesterday may be useless today.
Do you have the time to create new posts, promote content, and analyze the success of it? If not, consider hiring a market firm that specializes in these features.
Let them focus on the paid advertising and the logistics that go along with it so you can focus on your brand and the overall success of your business.
These three steps will give your brand an advantage in the ecommerce world and help boost your overall sales.
Paid Ads Wrap Up
Content alone is no longer enough to get your brand the traffic it needs to survive.
Paid ads are the absolute way to go. Learning the importance and benefits from combining quality content with paid advertising will make a huge difference in getting your business the increase in sales it needs.
It is still inexpensive to pay for advertising on Facebook so now is the time to capitalize on this digital marketing technique. Don’t miss out on advertise to your current and potential customers who spend 35 minutes every single day on the app.
Follow these three, simple steps to ensure your content is getting the maximum viewership possible:
- Create strong content
- Pay for advertising
- Analyze ad performance
The digital world is rapidly changing and it’s important to get ahead now before it’s too late to even attempt to catch up.
Consider hiring a marketing firm like Robben Media to keep up with the digital world for you. These firms know what content sells and know all the logistics about paid advertising. Let these firms perfect the ad campaign, content, and landing page while you sit back as your business grows.
If you would prefer to continue operating all parts of your business on your own, at the very least consider paid ads as a viable tool in your next marketing campaign.
Take this Facebook ads advice to heart and good luck on your next campaigns.
P.S. Need help turning your ads into profit? Consider hiring our Facebook advertising agency.