Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Efficient use of Facebook in marketing
In this articlet I will talk about how to make efficient use of Facebook in online marketing. To really understand how this work, let us first take a look at a two things people believe work, but really don’t.
As many followers/fans/likes as possible
The numbers of likes has nothing to do with success on Facebook. Anyone can give your page thousands of fans, but if you are not a international brand like Coca Cola, Pepsi or Mc Donals there is absolutely no reason to have this as your goal.
Product and brand focus.
Surprisingly for many this is not efficient marketing on Facebook. People really don’t care about you or your products anymore – they care only about themselves. We will look closer at this later.
So to the stuff that actually work, and why.
Important to remember
There is a few things that are important to remember and understand about Facebook. One is the Edge Score and another is the way we as persons use Facebook.
Edge Score is a measuring unit that Facebook uses to measure how “important” your status updates are for your followers. If you look at your own “homepage” at Facebook you will see that there is not all of your friends updates or updates from pages you follow you can see without clicking the “Latest news” button on the top. This is because some has a higher Edge Score than the other. This changes all the time, and you may have thought about it sometime – “why does this person updates show today and not a few days ago?” Well that’s Edge Score.
How we use Facebook is another very important thing we need to think about when working with marketing online. Think about yourself and your own homepage on Facebook, here you will find small day-to.day updates from your friends and family about everyday stuff like walking the dog, what to eat for dinner, out running etc. This is what most people see, and more importantly want to see. So when we as marketers write on Facebook we need to remember that our message will be visible in-between all of these everyday updates. So du we then want to tell them about our fantastic ABS Breaking system? – sure some people is interested, but far from all. And honestly is it the one who care about the technical part of ABS breaking systems we want to connect with or is it the 200 other car-owners we want? Think about it…
Forget about products and brand
Many business owners have a hard time to think this way, but the social media world is here and we need to think differently. Today people have choices and this is “killing” traditional marketing. Think about it, today we change channel on the TV to avoid commercials, we read newspaper online instead of on paper, we look at short videos on YouTube etc, etc.
Today people simply care mostly about themselves and what their need is. And not only that – they care about what their need is “right now” - not tomorrow or next year but right now, right here.
So how can we achieve this?
Strategy or not?
Sure we should have a strategy for Facebook, but don’t make it to rigid. Have a overall plan, and a strategy that makes it possible to change with your clients and prospects.
An example of a strategy
To really show what I am saying about all this, let me show it with a small example.
Timing!
As business owners we know that timing is important, so also with online marketing and especially when it comes to Facebook and other social medias.
There is lots and lots of statistics on the topic, but in my experience there is a few times that works better than other.
If your average client is a family father or mother with fulltime job and kids, you do not want to post updates in the morning (they will be stressed out with kids anyway), just before lunch can be a ok time, but you will be “interrupting” their job. Maybe 4pm – 6pm? – No, they will be having dinner, driving kids around etc. So when?
The answer – 10pm – 11pm is Facebook Primetime for this target group. The kids are in bed, and for the first time this day they have time to think about “me here – me now – my needs” (as we talked about earlier)
Sunday afternoon and nights are also good.
What is important is to do split tests on your Facebook ad-campaigns. What works when etc.
Cost!
There is one mistake more businesses make than any other – they don’t want to use money on Facebook Marketing. There are some many businesses that are willing to use tens of thousands of dollars every month on advertisements in newspapers, radio or TV, but only want to use a few hundred on Facebook. This is a BIG mistake. I’m not saying you should stop “offline” marketing, but do a mix and use a larger portion of your marketing budget online. If you use 1,000 dollar on a newspaper ad, you should use the same on Facebook advertising. And always, always, always remember to mention your Facebook page on all other advertising.
If you don’t have the time to do all the work on Facebook yourself, you can outsource the work to professional social media managers like us. A professional Social Media Manager is not as expensive as you may think.
To get a company like ours to manage a Facebook Ad campaign you will pay about 10% of the advertisement cost and maybe a setup fee or a monthly management fee. In most cases you will actually in the end pay less for your advertising using a professional than you would doing it yourself, even with the 10% extra. The reason being that a professional knows more about the secrets of getting lower click price than you do.
Having someone to manage your day-to-day Facebook activity can cost you anything from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars monthly depending on the amount of work. Most likely a professional Social Media Manager can with the tools available to them manage your Facebook page in about 1 hour per day. (7 days a week). So with a budget of 25 – 30 hours monthly you will have a professional Social Media Manager providing you with a professionally managed Facebook Page. Aprox 500 - 1000 dollars a month. If you compare that to “offline” advertisement it is very affordable.
Remember, you must put some money and time in to this in the beginning. If you use a Social Media Manager use some time together with him/her and set p some overall strategies and plan. Make a plan for the initial campaign, and make a budget for the next 6 – 12 months.
A few closing remarks
This is a very short and simplified article giving some tips and insides to efficient Facebook Marketing.
To summarize the main aspects:
As many followers/fans/likes as possible
The numbers of likes has nothing to do with success on Facebook. Anyone can give your page thousands of fans, but if you are not a international brand like Coca Cola, Pepsi or Mc Donals there is absolutely no reason to have this as your goal.
Product and brand focus.
Surprisingly for many this is not efficient marketing on Facebook. People really don’t care about you or your products anymore – they care only about themselves. We will look closer at this later.
So to the stuff that actually work, and why.
Important to remember
There is a few things that are important to remember and understand about Facebook. One is the Edge Score and another is the way we as persons use Facebook.
Edge Score is a measuring unit that Facebook uses to measure how “important” your status updates are for your followers. If you look at your own “homepage” at Facebook you will see that there is not all of your friends updates or updates from pages you follow you can see without clicking the “Latest news” button on the top. This is because some has a higher Edge Score than the other. This changes all the time, and you may have thought about it sometime – “why does this person updates show today and not a few days ago?” Well that’s Edge Score.
How we use Facebook is another very important thing we need to think about when working with marketing online. Think about yourself and your own homepage on Facebook, here you will find small day-to.day updates from your friends and family about everyday stuff like walking the dog, what to eat for dinner, out running etc. This is what most people see, and more importantly want to see. So when we as marketers write on Facebook we need to remember that our message will be visible in-between all of these everyday updates. So du we then want to tell them about our fantastic ABS Breaking system? – sure some people is interested, but far from all. And honestly is it the one who care about the technical part of ABS breaking systems we want to connect with or is it the 200 other car-owners we want? Think about it…
Forget about products and brand
Many business owners have a hard time to think this way, but the social media world is here and we need to think differently. Today people have choices and this is “killing” traditional marketing. Think about it, today we change channel on the TV to avoid commercials, we read newspaper online instead of on paper, we look at short videos on YouTube etc, etc.
Today people simply care mostly about themselves and what their need is. And not only that – they care about what their need is “right now” - not tomorrow or next year but right now, right here.
So how can we achieve this?
Strategy or not?
Sure we should have a strategy for Facebook, but don’t make it to rigid. Have a overall plan, and a strategy that makes it possible to change with your clients and prospects.
An example of a strategy
To really show what I am saying about all this, let me show it with a small example.
1. Getting the first followers
Of course we need followers, but we need the right ones. So let us use a local car dealership as an example. A car dealership don’t need international followers or national followers, they need local followers. They do not need followers below 18 (16) .
So, how do we attract the first local followers? First of all we need to make them a reason to join your page. Let me use a extreme example done by Reanult Norway. They made a sweepstake on their Facebook Page where the winner got a brand new Renault Megane. Through a Facebook advertising campaign they targeted facebook users within their target group and gor thousands of fans in no time. Sure you might say – and yes sure, but what happens next is the interesting part.
2. Keeping your fans and interacting with them.
What Renault Norway did is that they after the initial campaign started to communicate with their followers. But as I have talked about earlier, not about their product and brand. For example they posted a question on their Facebook wall – “what is your best car-vacation memory?” The response was huge, and people posted their memories, and interestingly most people either posted “when I was on a vacation in my car xxxx” or “When we was on a vacation in our Renaul Megane xxx” – you see what is happening?
Renault Norway also posted questions like: “If you were to test-drive a Renault today, which model would you try?” – as you can see product mentioning can be used as well of course, but in a kind of “non selling” way.
The result by the way is that Renault Norway has a big and dedicated fanbase on Facebook. Their fans ask questions and post comments.
It is extremely important to answer you fans quickly. Use tools or external help to do this!!!
Timing!
As business owners we know that timing is important, so also with online marketing and especially when it comes to Facebook and other social medias.
There is lots and lots of statistics on the topic, but in my experience there is a few times that works better than other.
If your average client is a family father or mother with fulltime job and kids, you do not want to post updates in the morning (they will be stressed out with kids anyway), just before lunch can be a ok time, but you will be “interrupting” their job. Maybe 4pm – 6pm? – No, they will be having dinner, driving kids around etc. So when?
The answer – 10pm – 11pm is Facebook Primetime for this target group. The kids are in bed, and for the first time this day they have time to think about “me here – me now – my needs” (as we talked about earlier)
Sunday afternoon and nights are also good.
What is important is to do split tests on your Facebook ad-campaigns. What works when etc.
Cost!
There is one mistake more businesses make than any other – they don’t want to use money on Facebook Marketing. There are some many businesses that are willing to use tens of thousands of dollars every month on advertisements in newspapers, radio or TV, but only want to use a few hundred on Facebook. This is a BIG mistake. I’m not saying you should stop “offline” marketing, but do a mix and use a larger portion of your marketing budget online. If you use 1,000 dollar on a newspaper ad, you should use the same on Facebook advertising. And always, always, always remember to mention your Facebook page on all other advertising.
If you don’t have the time to do all the work on Facebook yourself, you can outsource the work to professional social media managers like us. A professional Social Media Manager is not as expensive as you may think.
To get a company like ours to manage a Facebook Ad campaign you will pay about 10% of the advertisement cost and maybe a setup fee or a monthly management fee. In most cases you will actually in the end pay less for your advertising using a professional than you would doing it yourself, even with the 10% extra. The reason being that a professional knows more about the secrets of getting lower click price than you do.
Having someone to manage your day-to-day Facebook activity can cost you anything from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars monthly depending on the amount of work. Most likely a professional Social Media Manager can with the tools available to them manage your Facebook page in about 1 hour per day. (7 days a week). So with a budget of 25 – 30 hours monthly you will have a professional Social Media Manager providing you with a professionally managed Facebook Page. Aprox 500 - 1000 dollars a month. If you compare that to “offline” advertisement it is very affordable.
Remember, you must put some money and time in to this in the beginning. If you use a Social Media Manager use some time together with him/her and set p some overall strategies and plan. Make a plan for the initial campaign, and make a budget for the next 6 – 12 months.
A few closing remarks
This is a very short and simplified article giving some tips and insides to efficient Facebook Marketing.
To summarize the main aspects:
• Have a plan and a strategy but not too rigid
• Don’t focus on products and brands
• It’s not the numbers of fans that counts, but the quality
• Be interactive – ALWAYS answer your fans.
• Be a resource for your fans
• Use professional help if you need to
• Facebook is marketing – don’t think of it as somewhere it is “free” to be.
• Remember that your status updates will be visible to your fans in between messages from their friends and family.
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