Facebook is making big changes to their News Feed Algorithm with a focus on prioritising content from friends and groups rather than advertisers and pages, this will affect countless businesses worldwide who use Facebook Posts for their business.

That means a bigger focus on Facebook Ads because of the decline in usefulness of organic posts, so reviewing your Facebook Strategy is more important than ever. Which means you need to reconsider your Facebook Marketing Strategy.

Posts on your Business Page

If you’ve been relying on Facebook Business posts (sometimes referred to as “organic” posts) to promote your business, your reach has been steadily declining and soon it will be virtually nil. The reason your organic reach has been declining is that Facebook is undertaking major changes to the platform that is sure to affect millions of businesses who use Facebook to promote their business.

Mark Zuckerburg said in a recent statement in January 2108:

“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups. As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.”

 This latest change will make it difficult for any business – whether it be IT companies, Law Firms, Manufacturers or Retailers to promote their business on Facbook for free as the News Feed Algorithim update will mean less Business type posts will be seen by followers. 

So you need to think about your current Facebook Marketing Strategy, the effort you are using to make content and who is going to see the content rather than just creating content and continually pushing it out to your social media channels under the assumption that it will be seen by followers.

You can check out Facebook’s video on the changes below:

Advertising is on the Rise

But all is not lost. Facebook is still a great channel but is now about to become a “paid” not free channel. Thats means budgeting for Facebook ads rather than just doing organic posts to advertise your business

However don’t wait too long as more and more people realise organic posts aren’t working they too will start to pay for ads driving the price up and making it harder for any smaller or medium sized businesses to get into the game.

In a time where Facebook Advertising can offer extremely tailored and targeted advertising campaigns it is of critical importance that you know who your buyers are. You can do this through clearly defined Buyer Personas.

You Need an Effective Facebook Marketing Strategy

Knowing the different types of Facebook ads and which ones suit your business and budget better can separate you from the pack and guarantee you are making more informed and educated decisions about marketing for your business. There are 5 main types of ads in Facebook Advertising these are; 

• Page like campaigns or engagement campaigns – these are ad campaigns on Facebook that are created solely with the goal to get more page likes. You may have seen examples along the lines of “like our page for up to the minute Facebook Ad strategies from the experts”
• Page Post engagement – this is essentially the same as the page like campaigns with the exception being the goal of these ad campaigns is to get more engagement on your posts rather than the page itself
• Traffic campaigns – these are ad campaigns with the goal of getting people to click through to your website.
• Conversion campaign – these ads are the ones that require action on your part usually filling in your contact details in exchange for a free resource or a regular newsletter
• Product catalogue sales campaign – these are one of the newest types of ad campaigns Facebook offers and these are if you have an e-commerce store on Shopify or Woo Commerce, this type of ad will allow you to dynamically show items from your shopping cart to people in the newsfeed. You may have seen something like this say if you were searching for holidays in Fiji, then you started seeing frequent ads for Fijian holidays

Knowing your Buyer is Critical

Facebook Advertising is effective when targeted meaning if you know who the common customer types are for your business and know key demographic info about them (such as age, sex, religion, occupation, location and views) you can use Facebook’s targeting to ensure your ads reach the relevant people as often as possible.

Buyer Personas are simply fictional representations of your customers. By examining the habits of your typical cusotmer you can tailor content towards their specific needs as well as address the concerns of certain groups within your buyers. If you need help creating buyer personas for your business check out our Free Buyer Persona Guide.

Unless you have spent the time to make sure the ad and the targeting match it won’t get the response you were probably hoping for.

Finally

We hope this will help you better understand the changes to Facebook and what it measn for your business. If you would like to discuss your Facebook Marketing Strategy or an effective Integrated Marketing Plan for your Business  we would love to help.

Just call 1300 676 448 or contact us for an obligation-free discussion.