It’s an ongoing discussion for social media and marketing managers around the world alike – is Facebook worth it when you suddendly have to start paying to reach your audience? The answer is no, and yes.
The past weeks Swedish social media marketers have debated wildly about the state of Facebook advertising. The debated dawned after Thomas Barregren claimed in a blog post that Facebook has scammed us all for money to grow our fan base – and now they’re tricking us into paying to reach people who aren’t even our target group. Two Swedish social media experts, Michael Kazarnowicz and Deeped Strand, beg to differ. Facebook is not megaphone, writes Kazarnowicz, and it’s important to know why you are using the social media to begin with.
So what’s the problem people are debating in Sweden and around the world? The organic reach for pages has been going down steadily (even though some experts still beg to differ despite evidence). In the chart from MEC Australia below, it is states that the average organic reach of Facebook posts has dropped from 15,09% to 5,87% in just six months:
The same decrease can also be seen in the US, according to global advertising agency Ogilvy (also the source Barregren refers to):
“By February 2014, according to a Social@Ogilvy analysis, organic reach has hovered at 6 percent, a decline of 49 percent from peak levels in October. For large pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach hit 2 percent in February.”
So okay, I guess it’s fair to say that Facebook deserves some credit for letting us reach and interact with our audience on their platform. And of course it can be worth putting in the extra money to increase the reach to be able to speak with at least half the people who have opted in to see your posts (e.g. liked your page). You clearly have started to build a relationship with these people, and they most likely like you. Which means they are an important group of people for you.
So what’s the problem then? Isn’t Facebook just getting their fair share? (And I imagine us all thinking that it would start costing sooner or later.) Well, the problem isn’t just that you aren’t reaching your target group organically anymore, you might not even be reaching the right people when advertising.
Asian and Arabic names start appearing in your page notifications, even though you’ve just asked to target for example the Swedish market. Mr Barregren believes this is due to click farms in other parts of the world. To make their accounts seem more legit they press all and any advertising they see. Maybe they’ve put one of the countries you’re targeting as their home country, even though they don’t even live there. And all of a sudden your “real” fans start getting mixed with your “fake” fans. So that the small 5,87% average organic reach that you still get for free, actually is a mix between reach from both the real and the “fake” fans.
So is it not worth the effort? To advertise? To even be on Facebook?
Well, despite the ongoing discussions, I am still confident that Facebook is an important tool for reach and awareness. And for engagement with people who really and truly care about you company / product / organization.
Let me quote Rayana Pandey from Marketing Interactive:
“Marketers need to be bold in reassessing the role of Facebook and review it as a reach tool rather than the engagement tool it used to be.”
That’s just it. Facebook is not necessarily the go-to-engagement-tool anymore. Facebook is a reach tool. A tool you use to raise awareness. And a tool you use to direct people to YOUR OWN spot on the Internet. Be it a website, a blog or an e-commerce site.
Companies I’ve been working with during the past months have seen a huge awareness upswing thanks to Facebook advertising. People who recognize their brands offline thanks to having seen advertisement online. High engagement rates can still be obtained through a carefully planned social media strategy. But with the advertisement you’re still getting the word out. And to a much cheaper cost than other forms of digital and traditional advertising. Facebook is still the platform where your target audience most likely hang out. So it’s logical to still be their. To make a point-of-contact. Because today, it might take 5-10 times of interactions between a brand and a customer before the customer actually decides to make a purchase / enroll in a program / apply for a job or whatever you are wishing to attain. Then Facebook is still a great way to get in contact with this person, as part of a larger strategy.
And besides, many people were not using Facebook for sales to begin with. Facebook has been used to gain awareness and to create word-of-mouth. And to direct traffic to a place on the Internet where business is done. I wrote a post about how the best measurement tool for social is social traffic to one’s own website. [You can read the post, in Swedish, here.]
So. With that said. I still believe Facebook to be a great marketing and communications tool. But not the same way as before, when people were talking about social media being a free tool (besides the time put in of course, that has always been the case). So stay on. Stay engaging with you customers and giving them information, updates, and pictures that they like and cherish. Use Facebook as a customer support function, or as a hub for your internal company intelligence that you want to share with the world. And then add on Facebook advertising either when you see a post starting to go viral, so that even more people can help you spread the word and start sharing, commenting and liking on it; or when you have a new product, update, important news or whatever that you really want to get out their. Engagement rates might not sore on these posts, but then again, awareness and traffic to your site will. It’s all about knowing why you are using the medium, and what goals you are hoping to achieve.
