tips on how to maximise your facebook campaign

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How to get the best possible results from your Facebook marketing


How to get the best possible results from your Facebook marketingIn our first of a series of white papers, we explore how you can make more of your Facebook marketing without breaking the bank.

Enjoy!

James Dempster

MD of Cobb Digital


How to get best possible results from your Facebook marketing

Whilst I would accept that there are some companies that wouldn’t necessarily hit the right audience with Facebook, the numbers don’t lie. It boasts over 1 billion monthly active users and those numbers continue to grow. Since the social networking service was launched in 2004, Facebook has built up the largest, most engaged audience on earth, with a significant percentage of the world’s population logging on daily.

Facebook’s rise and massive audience provides an excellent opportunity for any business to build brand awareness and acquire revenue. Brands must reach consumers where they spend the most time, therefore Facebook is an obvious choice. Fortunately, it is now possible to reach tightly targeted demographics on Facebook by utilizing its own tools; you don’t need to be a software wizard to obtain valuable information from the available insights.


Business page best practiceBrand recognition is key to the success of every social account. For many this can start with how the account looks.

Are your Facebook pages using a logo, cover photo and colouring that reflects your brand?


Oversharing vs Undersharing

The ability to post to social networks is going to differ massively from account to account. For some it may be a full time job and for others an extra responsibility.Our advice is to update social networks at least once a day and deal with questions, enquiries and user posts within 24 hours.

Don’t over post as this can become annoying. The key to successful posting is to engage with your audience. It sounds obvious, but the key word in all of this is social. All of your posts need to encourage conversation from your followers.


Examples of engagement driving posts

Fill-in-the-blank posts.

Picture caption competitions.

Asking questions to encourage people to respond and engage with your Page. Sounds obvious but status posts with question marks receive significantly more comments.

Exclusive content or news to get people talking about your Page and sharing content with friends. Don’t underestimate this. By sharing exclusive content with your Facebook fans, you create a community all of its own.

Posting special offers, like discount codes or deals, just for the people who like your Page. This can increase loyalty and drive in-store traffic (if you have one).


Use current events to your advantage

Some of the best content that I’ve seen has come as a result of a topical news piece. When Suarez bit Chielini at the World Cup, Facebook went crazy with brands falling over themselves to make it relevant to their brand or service.

Take a look at these examples for some inspiration:


Facebook organic reach

Unfortunately it is getting harder to make your posts visible to your fans without paying for them, with organic reach hitting 6% of your loyal followers. This has dropped from 12% in under a year, which is understandably a concern.

Facebook launched a new update to their algorithm that works out who sees your content named “Edgerank”


And in laymans terms?

How popular have the post creator’s past posts been with the viewer?

How popular are past posts?

Does the type of post (status update, photo, video, link) match what types have been popular with the viewer in the past?

How recently was the post published?

Get all of that right and you’ve got more chance of getting your content seen without having to pay for it.


Promoting your page organically

Tell customers about your Page by posting in-store signage or mentioning it on your website

Invite friends, family and key customers to like your Page

Claim a web address and put it in your marketing materials

Add a Like button to your website

Post Facebook Offers that encourage new customers to visit your Page and business

Evaulate the type of content that your fans engage with and give them more of it. I can’t stress this enough! Facebook Insights is a free tool and it allows you to analyse a lot of data to become more effective in your attempts.


Paid Facebook advertisingWith organic reach removed from the mix, it would be easy to conclude that Facebook will be just another paid channel.Paid support will be required to reach existing community members. but the evidence is clear that Facebook fans have incremental value: A ComScore study found that one retailer’s Facebook fans were 27 percent more likely than a control group to make a purchase in the four weeks following a paid campaign. So how do you make sure you make the most of this precious budget?


Recommendations

GET AD CONTENT RIGHT: Advertisers should ensure that their ad creative follows standard Facebook design best practices before rolling out an online campaign. Messages should be short and concise – approximately 90 characters - and specifically tailored for the target audience. Images carry the greatest impact and should be chosen wisely: consider using headshot images of people or close-up pictures of products. When posting Page post ads, text should make up just 20% of the overall ad to maximise appeal to the typical browser. REACH THE FRIENDS OF CURRENT CUSTOMERS: Custom Audiences also presents advertisers with the opportunity to reach the friends of current customers. For example, Thomas Cook could target the friends of customers who recently stayed at one of their resorts with a message highlighting the fact that they too can have a wonderful holiday.

MANAGE MOBILE CAMPAIGNS SEPARATELY FROM DESKTOP: As we keep reading, this is the year that mobile traffic overtakes desktop traffic. Mobile-targeted creative and desktop-targeted creative should be split into separate campaigns. The behavior of mobile users tends to differ from desktop users when researching and purchasing products. Therefore, a device segmentation approach will help ensure easier management, reporting, budgeting, and overall optimisation.


ALLOCATE AT LEAST HALF OF BUDGET TOWARD NEWS FEED PLACEMENTS: In addition to driving superior performance directly to the right-hand column, focused advertising in News Feed presents several additional key benefits for advertisers, including increased visibility and mobile reach.

ANALYSING THE DATA AT YOUR DISPOSAL:First off, don’t be scared. There’s a lot of data there for you but that doesn’t mean you have to read all of it. Most of you reading this will have busy jobs that won’t permit days of data analysis, but here are the key areas for you to look at.

You can use Page Insights to understand how people are engaging with your Page.

With Page Insights, you can:

For example, you can look at each of your posts and see which ones have the most likes, comments and shares and the least negative feedback. You can use this information to create more of the types of posts that your audience is interested in seeing. You can also learn about when your audience is on Facebook and publish your posts when you’re likely to reach more people.

I could write an entire paper about insights, but that should give you a flavour.

View metrics about your Page’s performanceLearn which posts have the most engagementSee data about when your audience is on Facebook

If you would like to discuss any of the items listed in this paper or would like a free audit of your current Facebook activity then please email me, [email protected]

tips on how to maximise your facebook campaign

Marketing