Managing Facebook’s Shift Away From Free Impressions
Tapping into Facebook’s free (organic) communications network has been a cost-effective way for many companies to reach people with minimal investment. Moving forward, however, this organic reach essentially will be gone for commercial users. Joining and creating conversations will continue to be fundamental objectives for social media strategy, but the future of Facebook will revolve around paid advertising – good content is no longer good enough.
Previously, brands often invested in building a fan base because this audience would automatically receive brand posts in their news feed. The new reality is that fans no longer see these posts organically, which necessitates a drastic change in orientation for those focused solely on posting content on Facebook. Great content still has the opportunity to shine, but not without a boost of paid media. Knowing what tools to utilize and what content to promote will be an essential key to mastering this new social landscape.
Target and Test
While no brand looks forward to purchasing impressions that were once free, Facebook does provide effective targeting options that harness the massive range of data it collects. One Facebook targeting option is custom audiences. This form of audience targeting allows a brand to direct advertisements to a specific list of Facebook users who have interacted with the brand, such as website visitors or mobile app users. Another effective audience targeting technique is utilizing audience lookalikes. This method allows a brand to target users who match the characteristics of its identified audience. Lookalike targeting is a great way to leverage an existing Facebook fan base, extending ad reach while avoiding a scattershot approach.
The Facebook ad platform also allows brands to control how many users it targets and how often ads will be served to each user. This is done by utilizing Facebook’s reach and frequency application programming interface (API.) Through this control of breadth and depth, brands can either avoid wasting impressions on those who are not receptive or make sure messages are getting through to a particular group of users.
Regardless of the targeting techniques used, Brand USA regularly implements content testing as one of its best practices. Before launching a new campaign with significant media investment on Facebook, testing different creative and messaging options with a small amount of spend allows us to ensure that we are optimized for each market. The short lead time allows Brand USA to tweak or rethink ads, if necessary. Additionally, Facebook automates optimization toward better performing ads when multiple iterations are run in market.
Facebook Still Requires a Social Lens
Like standard display advertising, Facebook is evolving from a content delivery platform to a method for attracting people to great content that lives elsewhere. Brand USA’s general objective with Facebook’s ad-centric framework will be to entice users with great content to continue the journey on our websites. In the past, Brand USA would have chronicled an influencer’s entire road trip on Facebook, posting updates every day. Now, Brand USA would select several of the best pictures or a video from the trip and invest in page post link ads to invite people to explore the trip on our websites.
Example of old approach: photo album from road trip
Example of paid post:
Nevertheless, while the business side of Facebook has become much more like standard digital advertising, it is still ultimately a social platform and ads should retain an appropriate tone for the newsfeed, which has specific context. If standard digital ads are a bit like walking up to someone on the street, Facebook newsfeed ads are more like walking up to someone at a gathering. Even if the message is the same, how it is delivered should be adjusted accordingly.
Although the days of free access to your fan base are over, the opportunity for social amplification is still an important differentiator for Facebook as an ad platform. The likes, comments and shares earned through an effective campaign can extend reach beyond the initial targeted audience that was purchased. This additional exposure can only be earned by compelling content, which should remain at the heart of any social strategy.