4 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Facebook

Photo Credit: Pixabay / Simon

 3 min(s) read

Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004, and since then has been the largest social media platform in the world. As of July 27, 2016, Facebook has more than 1.71 billion monthly active users and 1.13 billion daily users. (Source: Facebook).

What does the above statistics mean to you as a business owner or marketing/advert strategist?

It means that Facebook provides you with a vast number of active and consistent audience to engage on a daily basis. This is a prime reason to utilize the platform. However, there are still more reasons why you should consider using Facebook for business.

Below are five reasons to add Facebook to your marketing strategy:

Contents

• 1 1. Zero or Low Cost
• 2 3. Targeted Audience
• 3 3. Increased Website Traffic
• 4 4. Easy and Swift Customer Support and Feedback
• 5 Conclusion on Why Your Business Needs Facebook

1. Zero or Low Cost

Getting your company on the platform and engaging users is absolutely free; $0!

All you have to do is create a page with a unique name, probably the name of your brand or company and start inviting people to like the page. People who agree to like the page by clicking on the ‘Like’ icon on the page get automatic updates of your ‘page posts’ on their timeline.

There is also an option for paid reach which allows you to pay Facebook to promote your page, and therefore, your business by reaching a larger number of people. This is referred to as inorganic reach as opposed to organic reach which you don’t pay for.

You can propagate your page or posts on your page. For just $5, you can reach between 7k- 18.6k people. Compared to other forms of adverts, this is very cheap. It cheap simply because it is the internet. It helps you spend less.

3. Targeted Audience

Facebook allows you to choose specifically which category of users you want to engage. Categories are based on factors such as location, age, gender and interests (as signified in users’ activities).

Facebook allows you to control who sees your posts by choosing your target audience, This also helps you to know which groups of people are seeing your posts.

This is something you cannot achieve with the conventional strategies of TV, radio, newspaper, ads, e.t.c. In those, you cannot estimate which who was reached.

But Facebook gives you feedback on your post reach progress anytime you wish to know. You control how it works and you know if it is really working. You are in charge!

3. Increased Website Traffic

You can use your Facebook page to propagate and drive traffic to your website. You can post a link from your website to your Facebook page and the clicks directly go to your website.

Another good thing is that the posted link does not just appear as ‘texts’ but as a large thumbnail image (if your website setting utilizes it), which makes the link post more conspicuous and attractive.

Immediately users click on the image, they are directed to your website to read the full story of which the image is just an illustration.

4. Easy and Swift Customer Support and Feedback

Facebook enables customers who have liked your page to send you instant messages through a ‘send message’ button which you can reply immediately.

However, it should be noted that this button will only continue to be visible and available to your subscribers as long as you respond to messages ‘swiftly’. So you can address customers complaints and respond to inquiries via this channel.

Also, they can reach you by commenting on your posts, which you can respond to. You can also get instant feedbacks from customers on the go. Some can also send testimonials in form of pictures and videos. All these can be done easily and swiftly.

Conclusion on Why Your Business Needs Facebook

The above listed are the major reasons why you should include Facebook in your marketing strategy, there are much more. The world is now a global village and more people are getting connected to the internet via social media every day.

The largest social media platform in the world is Facebook, so it is only rational to explore and exploit it to the fullest. Get a Facebook page for your business or brand today and you will start getting immediate results if you use the right strategies.

http://www.preneurdigest.com/reasons-company-needs-facebook/

You're Missing Out On Free Facebook Likes!

If you advertise on Facebook, or plan to, this post is for you!

There is no denying the power of the Facebook advertising ecosystem (Facebook & Instagram). It is the gold-standard by which all social advertising platforms are judged and will likely always be. Campaigns are centered around roughly one dozen marketing objectives and targeting options are incredibly sophisticated. Accordingly, over 3MM advertisers are actively seeking the attention of 1.7B+ monthly active users.

Regardless of the above campaign objectives chosen, secondary benefits almost always include increased brand awareness, page likes, and likes/shares on ads themselves. Today I want to focus on the likes and shares your ad will inevitably receive.

If you’re not doing this, you’re not getting your money’s worth!

Below you’ll see the “home page” for a recently wrapped up “website clicks” campaign. This particular campaign consisted of one ad that generated 250k+ impressions and 4100+ website clicks on a budget of $1000.

Since this was a standalone ad, and not a boosted post, the ad itself never appeared on the brand’s page. The only way to see it, and the accompanying likes/shares, is to click on “See Post” in the highlighted area of the image below.

Now that we’ve done that, we can see that the ad in this campaign received over 765 likes. That’s 765+ people that fit the demographic we decided to target. And, more importantly for this conversation, that’s 765+ people we now have the ability to invite to like our page. All we have to do is click the hyperlinked area on the post telling us how many people have liked it. I’ve highlighted this area on the image below.

Once we’ve done that, we get a pop-up showing us every user that has liked the post. We can see whether or not they’ve already liked our page as well as whether or not we’ve already invited them to like our page. In the image below, you’ll see a combination of the two. I took a screenshot after inviting anyone who hadn’t already liked the page to do so. Prior to this, the boxes that say “Invited” said “Invite,” telling me that those individuals were fair game.

Using this method, I grew the Facebook audience of an established page by over 37% last month.

You can do this too! In fact, you can use this method on all of your regular page posts as well. Though you’ll obviously net greater results when doing it with paid advertisements.

Now, you may be asking “why bother, likes don’t mean anything, right?”Wrong!

While the value of a like is a hotly contested subject, there is no denying that perception is reality. Consumers want to see that other people like them have “endorsed” your brand by liking your page. Furthermore, the larger your audience the greater your potential organic reach. While the Facebook ecosystem will always be pay-to-play, there is no reason to downplay either of these benefits. After all, consumers live in a sea of marketing and businesses need every advantage they can get.

If you’re interested in learning more about what the Facebook advertising ecosystem can do for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love to hear from you!
http://www.watchsm.com/blog/youre-missing-out-on-free-facebook-likes

4 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Facebook Ads (And How To Avoid Them)

Have total clarity on your ideal client’s pain point/desire/frustration and PLAN your campaign in advance!

I spend a lot of time in putting all the pieces together, revise, rethink until I feel the funnel is ready for Facebook ads.

Here’s the thing! It’s NOT hard to boost a post and attract traffic to your website/offer/lead magnet. Facebook is going to deliver, if you pay for that traffic! Everytime!  But it’s WHAT  you do with that traffic that’s going to determine the ROI of your campaign!

Here are 4 of the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make

1. No strategy
2. Not testing copy and images
3. Not knowing the numbers
4. Not mastering targeting

So, let’s talk a little bit about each one

MISTAKE #1 – NO STRATEGY

Most entrepreneurs don’t generate revenue with FB ads because there is no strategy.

38.6% of the GLOBAL online population is using Facebook, and 900 million users use Facebook daily.

The business that has a STRATEGY in place to efficiently collect qualified leads that lead to sales is a giant leap ahead of the rest.
Are you one of them? Do you have an effective strategy to collect qualified leads and get a piece of the pie?
If you don’t have a strategy, start creating one based on these three steps:

Step #1 – Attract
Use Facebook Ads to attract people to your FREE lead magnet (eBook, PDF, webinar, challenge, etc.)
Step #2 – Convert
Use your lead magnet to convert the traffic you are getting to subscribers
Step #3 – Promote
Create an email sequence to promote an offer that’s in alignment with your lead magnet

Make sure that your sales funnel converts to the best of its ability before you spend $1 on advertising.

Once you have this setup, you can put a plan in place to reach your income goals.

MISTAKE #2 – NOT TESTING COPY AND IMAGES

If you use Facebook ads to reach more people and go from overlooked to fully booked, don’t forget to use strong, eye-catching colors for your images!

How many images do you test with your campaign? 5? 3? Just 1?

Remember this…

“Consumer Acquisition found that images are responsible for more than 75% of ad performance. It’s crucial that you choose the most dynamic images possible,”according to Walgrove.

Blue is not noticed…“While blues tend to blend too much with Facebook’s theme colors, and blacks and grays are visually recessive (meaning the eye ignores them), vibrant colors like red, yellow, orange, and green appear in some of the most successful ads.” Source: Walgrove

Now, if you don’t test more than 2 images normally, go and create more images for your campaign.

You don’t want to leave money on the table, right? You don’t want to pay more than average for a lead, right?

Start implementing this little trick …

Start with 4-5 images and after 3-5 days, keep only 1-2 (the ones that perform best, of course). Create images that stop people from scrolling through their news feed and will pay attention to your ad image. Use strong colors for your images to stand out in the news feed.

User-generated pictures tend to perform better than professional images (stock photos) with models. You’ll look more *real*, and your ad will be more trustworthy. Therefore, it’s wise to avoid stock photos or images with models.

MISTAKE #3 – NOT KNOWING THE NUMBERS

Rome wasn’t built in a day! So, even if you build your campaign in one day, your job has just started. You need to measure, track and tweak to optimize your campaign until you start attracting the revenue you want.

Maybe it sounds overwhelming at first, but it’s not! Follow my steps…

Here are some of THE MOST important numbers to keep a very close eye on as long you run your campaign.

Get CRYSTAL CLEAR on how much are you willing to pay for a lead and how much are you willing to pay for a brand new sale?

Ready? Go and do that now and read the rest when you are done.

Done? Okay!

Let’s move forward then…

Now we will look at the following numbers….

1. Your Landing Page conversion rate – This is the page where your lead magnet and conversion rate should be between 10%-30% to be in the ‘okay’ category. If you keep optimizing your campaign, you may reach 50% or even more. I get 60% for some of my pages, and I target cold traffic.

2. Positive and negative score – Aim for more positive feedback than negative feedback to keep your account safe.

3. Relevance score – If it’s between 6 and 10, it’s great.

4. Click Though Rate (CTR) – You want to know how interested your audience really is in your ad and CTR tells you exactly that.

5. Ad placement – Over 900 million users visit Facebook each day and 700 million of them are on mobile, so targeting mobile users is a great idea for most business owners. However, I’ve seen ads perform better on desktop. Test mobile, desktop, and feed ads to see which one works best and then stop the ones that are not performing as well.

MISTAKE #4 – NOT MASTERING TARGETING

• Have you ever wanted to target
• People who have already expressed their interest in buying from you?
• Who visits your website most often?
• Who expressed their interest in booking a discovery call with you?
• People who bought similar products like yours?
• Everyone who lives near your local store and could be interested in special promotions?
•  Those who were on your Landing Page, but didn’t opt-in?

Well, you can do this with Facebook ads.

Facebook ads have more than 600 targeting options. A few examples: household income, level of education, home type, parents of children with specific ages, buyer profiles, people who frequently buy online, frequent travelers, and much more

Over 900 million users visit Facebook each day. If your customer is not on Facebook, then where are they?

Explore the targeting options, find out which one makes sense for your business, and find customers.

Organize your target following these three types of audiences:

• People who know you (Custom Audience)
  People who are similar to the ones who know you (Lookalike Audience)
  People who don’t know you (Saved Targeted Group)

Targeting Facebook Ads by custom audiences (rather than by category or interest) the cost-per-conversion is 64% lower.

It turns out when you target Facebook ads to fans, you get 700% more click through, according to the data king Web trends.

Additional data from TGB Digital shows that ads targeted at fans increase actual conversions (not just click) by as much as 400%.

If you don’t have many fans on your Facebook page, run a ‘like campaign’ to get more fans.

Once you have more than 1000 fans, start targeting them to lower your lead cost.

http://florentinaistrati.com/facebook-ads-mistakes/

We Analyzed 37,259 Facebook Ads and Here’s What We Learned

We’ve discussed plenty of times before what we think your Facebook ad should say, so we’ve analyzed the text from 37,259 ads from our Facebook ad examples gallery to find out exactly how the best Facebook advertisers are piecing together their ads.

We took the text, headline, and news feed link description from 37,259 ads, analyzing them for length, sentiment, and what type of words these ads were using. We also looked at the Call-To-Action they used and the links in these ads, and how Facebook advertisers were using these to generate as much interest in their products as possible.

Here’s what we found.

The Most Popular Headline Is Just 5 Words Long

You have three text fields for the copy in your Facebook ads: The headline, the main text, and the news feed link description:

When you’re putting together the copy for your ad, we have one piece of advice: keep your copy short and extremely clear.

It seems Facebook advertisers have taken this to heart. The median length for a headline is just 5 words long. This means that their ad is immediately clear and to the point each time.

This example from Thinkful shows a great ad. Not only is the headline nice and tight, but all the text is to the point. It gets your attention and then makes you want to click through to the site to find out more:

A few advertisers are making their headlines way longer than this and immediately losing the focus. This ad from Video Game Testers & Designers puts too much information into the headline — information that should be in the text. They even have an asterisk to explain more because they can’t fit it all in the headline:

Post Text And Link Descriptions Are A Little Longer (But Not Much)

The median length for ad post text is just 14 words long, again keeping it short and to the point. The link description is a little longer, at 18 words.

The post text for this ad from Gwynnie Bee has just the right amount of information in its 14 words:

And this ad has the median number of words in the news feed link description, describing what Falcon Social is succinctly in 18 words, so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed:

We strongly suggest you keep your text tight and to the point. Facebook ads are expensive real estate, and aren’t there to tell your life story. Instead, use clear and catchy text to attract people to the ad, and then let them click through to your site to learn more about your service.

The Most Popular Word: You

Looking at the ad examples dataset this was one of my favorite things. It seems that Facebook Advertisers really are on their game. Recently I wrote about the best psychological tricks to make your ads unforgettable and included a list of the 5 words that you should always include in your ad if you want people to respond:

You

Why is you so powerful? Because it makes you think of you. If every ad could be hyper-personalized that would be even better, but in lieu of that, the word you will suffice. Our brain is activatedspecifically by hearing or thinking of our own name and ourselves.

Free

We value free highly. Free is the ultimate word for any viewer of an ad. We are always on the lookout for free. Including it in an ad and it’s almost guaranteed to catch the eye.

Because

We want answers. Humans are inquisitive souls. We are constantly questioning why? And because of that the word because means a lot to us.

Instantly

We love now. We discount things drastically into the future, so instantly nearly always seems like the better option. This has been backed up by brain scans, showing that if you offer something instantly, our brains go crazy.

New

We are novelty-seeking animals, so using new is a great way to show you are something fresh, or re-invigorate an established brand and put it back into the customer’s mind.

Here is a word cloud of the text from these 37,259 ads, where the size of the word is proportional to how often it occurred in all the fields.

OK, so ‘because’ isn’t there, but ‘you’, ‘free’, ‘now’ (instead of ‘instantly’), and ‘new’ are the words that you find most frequently in these ads.

Well done guys!

Here are a couple of examples of advertisers using these words well. First Hit the News using ‘You’ in their ad, making readers wonder if you are happy together:

Then General Assembly using the awesome power of free to get people to learn to code:

These words work. We are naturally drawn to these words as they signal something powerful to us. Using them in ads means you have a natural advantage over all other advertisers.

If You Want To Stand Out, Go Negative

Sentiment analysis is a way of analyzing text for how positive or negative it is. Certain words are assigned a valence score and you add up the scores for each word in a document to determine the text’s sentiment, either positive or negative.

Most ads are neutral, either because the words aren’t scored in the valence database (it only has scores for about 2000 words in the English language), or because positive and negative words in the ad have canceled each other out. Below you can see ads that were either positive or negative (0 scores have been removed).

The graph is skewed towards positive valence, with most non-neutral ads showing a slightly positive tone. These ads might contain words like ‘capable’ (+1), ’top’ (+2), or ’yummy’ (+3).

This ad for Lays scores highly because it has the word ‘yummy’ (+3), and ‘win’ (+4):

This DraftKings ad has high valence words such as ‘top’ and ‘win’ multiple times.

The ads that are really positive in tone, with a sentiment score of 5 or more can either be made up of a few of these slightly positive words (super-yummy or win-win-win), or might have extremely high valence words like ‘breathtaking’ (+5), as this VideoBlocks ad includes:

Not all the ads are positive though. Ads for news items or charities are often slanted slightly negatively. This Soi Dog ad contains the words ‘cruelty’ and ’torture’, scored as -3 and -4 respectively:

It will definitely grab a user’s attention, especially with the image of Ricky Gervais as well. This PandoDaily ad scores slightly negatively because of the inclusion of the words ‘war’ and ‘hurting’:

Of course, looking at this data it seems there is one way you can get your ad to stand out from the rest – go negative. If your ad is all the way off to the left of that chart, it will definitely stand out from the rest (though will people click on it?)

CTAs Aren’t Being Used Effectively

Including a call-to-action (CTA) button in your ad makes it easy for a user to click through to your site to learn more about your product, sign up to a service, or to download an eBook, app, or game. From the possible CTAs available to Facebook advertisers, our analysis showed that only a few are really used extensively:

‘Learn More’, ‘Shop Now’, and ‘Sign Up’ are all used significantly more than any other call-to-action. Below is a word cloud of the CTAs, with the size of the words proportional to how often they appeared in the ad example gallery.

The less-used ones, such as ‘Open Link’, or ‘Use App’ can barely be seen (they are the ones that look like an Umlaut above the ‘p’ of Shop).

Using a CTA makes it easy for a user to find out more about your product, and shows them exactly where on the ad they should click to get the information. Kabbage uses the ‘Learn More’ CTA so you can find out about their small business funding:

Don’t be scared of using those lesser-used CTAs though, if they have relevance to your service. Here Angel Stone uses the ‘Play Now’ CTA exactly as it should be used — to get people to their gaming site:

In total, only 56% of ads included a CTA, so this is an area where Facebook advertisers could really up their game, making it easier for users to click through to their sites to Learn More, Sign Up, or Donate Now.

69% of Ads Link To A Landing Page

Your Facebook ad should be advertising something specific, rather than just your site or whole service. Your Facebook ads should be targeted towards a specific audience, and you should offer them something that is unique to them. Your link from the ad should be pointed to a specific landing page for your service.

This is what most advertisers are doing:

69% of Facebook ads point to a specific referral or landing page on the product site. 11% of ads miss out on this targeting by pointing to the home page instead, and a further 20% point to another page within Facebook instead of moving out of the site to a product or service. The Localytics ad does it right by sending the user to a specific landing page for their eBook:

Why do we suggest have a specific landing page for your click-throughs? Because this is a great way to use Facebook ads for Lead Generation. You can then create a dedicated landing page for your lead magnet, using apps such as Welcome Mat from SumoMe, and capture information about your customers easily. If you are going straight to your home page, or to another page in Facebook, you’ll lose this information and lose customers.

Most Companies Only Have 1 Ad, But The Best Have 100s

Our final task was to look at how many ads each advertiser had in our gallery. Unfortunately, most advertisers had only 1 ad in the gallery. This is a massive mistake. It means they are only putting up 1 ad for their product. They’re not taking advantage of ways to optimize their campaigns, such as split testing different designs or text.

We did find a few companies that were doing to awesomely though. Shopify has over 200 examples in the ad gallery, using different images and text in each, to attract a different type of user. Here are 3 different Shopify examples with the same headline, but different images and text for different personas:

Awesome work, Shopify!

—

It seems that most Facebook advertisers really hit the mark. They keep the text nice and short, keep the ads positive, and even if they aren’t always using CTAs, they link to specific landing pages on their own sites so they can capture important user information.

Where they are letting themselves down is by not producing more ads, so they can’t optimize their campaigns effectively. If they did this, I’d expect there to be even better data in the other categories.

Are you playing by these rules? Or can you see ways of subverting these norms, such as going negative, to make your ads stand out even more? We’d love to hear about your strategies to optimize your ads and to get them to stand out from the rest!

https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/we-analyzed-37259-facebook-ads-and-heres-what-we-learned/