What is Facebook marketing? Most of us think it’s posting your products on the Facebook page or just advertising on Facebook and getting likes and followers on that particular post. But that’s not it.
Facebook marketing is creating and actively using a Facebook page as a communication channel to maintain contact and attract customers. Facebook allows you to create individual profiles or business pages for companies, organizations, or any group attempting to develop a fan base for a product, service, or brand.
In the third quarter of 2015 Facebook had 1.55 Billion monthly users and definitely, by now the numbers have increased.
Source: Jeff Bullas
These numbers are quite inspiring, right? And as a business person we may see this as a business opportunity. It is, but that depends on if you do the marketing right. This is because most ‘digital marketers’ just post their products to get many likes and shares.
Facebook is an awesome place for business persons to promote their products. It can either make or break your business.
Here are some mistakes to avoid when using Facebook to market:
1. Is There A Problem In Optimizing Facebook Ads Often?
Most Facebook advertisers are frequently touching their ads thinking that constant changing bids, budgets, and targets lead to faster progress. While actually, each optimization resets your ad rank and puts your ads right back to the starting phase.
We can equate this to planting a seed, digging it up after 5 minutes to see how much it’s grown, replanting it, and then digging it up again 5 minutes later.
Similarly, making multiple ads doesn’t give you more chances to be at the top. You want to get to 50 conversions per ad set per week. If you’re frittering your budget across dozens of ads, there isn’t one single ad with enough power to produce a winner.
That means you are required to target larger audiences by pooling custom audiences and relying on lookalike audiences of the custom audiences that you have created.
2. What Is The Importance of Engaging Your Audience?
This is one common mistake in businesses by Kenya.
Over 90% of them just broadcast their messages instead of providing relevant and engaging content regularly.
source: https://www.chuimedia.co.ke/5-biggest-facebook-marketing-mistakes-kenyan-businesses-make/
Facebook involves engagement and not just broadcasting your messages. Take it this way, how else do you use Facebook apart from Facebook Marketing? You don’t just blast your friends with information on every thing you do. You engage them so that they can be more interested.
Your followers and potential customers are looking for a real connection with you and will give back to you by staying or being loyal to your products if you post engaging and relevant content. I know profit is always the main objective, but if you provide a meaningful, genuine social media experience to them in the end they will buy your products.
3. How Does Uninteresting Filler Content Affect Facebook Marketing?
Business people in Kenya forget that Facebook is a social media platform where people share funny, interesting or useful things with their friends. Bear in mind the kind of content your fans would want to see, enjoy and share when planning your posts. Always consider asking yourself what kind of emotion your post will spark from the audience. Whether they will cry, laugh, get annoyed, shout or be proud when they see them.
Status updates can also become boring. This is no different when it comes to photos, videos and multimedia as a whole. Your duty is to mix it up. Avoid being predictable, boring or annoying. Customers or fans may hide, unfollow or even block and report as spam. Just keep your posts varied, a video here, a photo here, a tag of one of your fans here and reply to comments.
Using giveaways, Facebook offers and contests to maintain engagement between you and your fans is also a great strategy to make your business page exciting.
4. How Important Are Facebook Metrics and Tools When Marketing?
Facebook has a lot of information available to you. If you use these tools correctly and master the Facebook insights that matter you can optimize your business presence on Facebook. With the help of insights your engagements, likes, traffic can increase and most importantly your business revenue is boosted.
The problem comes in where most businesses focus on the surface metrics like the likes and followers instead of the concentrated ones like creating the custom audiences This results in a business person wasting time since the sales, profits and revenues will not be that much.
It is not entirely your fault because Facebook throws a lot of incapacitated insights at your face every time you log in. Statistics like what percentage of your fans saw your post and how many fans you lost or gained in a week don’t give you the whole picture especially if spending money on ads.
Quit worrying about how many people your posts have reached and start caring about what you need to do. A high audience reach doesn’t mean more sales, leads or registrations. This doesn’t mean a high audience reach doesn’t matter. It matters, mostly when promoting a time-sensitive campaign or knowing the best time your post for audience.
5. Does Time Investment Matter on Social Media Marketing?
Most people in Kenya have a set and forget it mentality when it comes to Social Media Marketing. Do not expect people to bring themselves and want to be a fan of your business page. It’s takes a lot of commitment otherwise your fan growth will not be as much as your expectations.
It also ruins relationships with your existing fans, especially the customers used to well-timed responses from their producers.
I think the problem lies in the way we operate when they are offline. In Kenya, offline media buying is large. Methods such as print, billboards and Radio still work effectively but are totally different from digital advertising especially Facebook. Don’t expect to put a banner or a fan page and think “let the money roll in”. You are in for a shock!
6. How Does Incomplete Information On your Brand Page Break your Facebook Ads?
Have you ever come across a product page that describes itself as if they don’t feel like it? Have you ever started a journey and got a hint of directions only to be disappointed in the middle of the road, not knowing where to go because the one who directed you maybe did it half-heartedly and you are left not knowing where to go?
I don’t think you would want your customers and fans to feel that way.
The Product Page is where you first contact with your audience. And therefore a good first impression is necessary! Give your audience all the details about your product or service and the brand also.
Mention the following in your Business Facebook Page:
- the hours of work
- address
- contact details
- URL
7. What is the Effect of Out of Content Posts?
Aligning your Facebook marketing posts to the brand is very important. But sometimes the producer does not do that and it is very important to your audience. It avoids confusion.
Right from the text to images and videos, everything should be a reflection of your brand. Offer variety but make sure you don’t go out of context. You can cash in on major events happening across the world, but make sure it matches the core message of your Facebook marketing context. Some training on digital marketing would help a lot in your Facebook and Social Media Engagements
