Social media. Love it or hate it, Facebook or face-ache – we can all agree that it is something that has changed the way businesses and people can communicate on a huge scale.
There is a lot of misconception around social media, and how it has, or is going to somehow transform marketing.
Whilst it does have huge benefits above traditional marketing; such as the granular targeting available, the relaxed and trustworthy nature it portrays, along with the rapid pace in which a message can be deployed, it ultimately just fits in as another part of the large marketing mix businesses can use to speak to, or reach new and existing customers. It is just another tactic in a modern businesses armoury to reach prospective customers.
Social media management vs. Social media marketing
There is no definite consensus over these two terms. For us, it comes down to using the different options within Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn for their intended purpose, and who is responsible for certain tasks.
If a consultant, agency or employee is running organic, (non-paid), posts on a regular basis on your company page – just posting relevant content, special offers, general messages and dealing with the inbound enquiries through messenger – we would deem that as social management. Whether in-house or using a social media management agency – the responsibility for the day to day content and running/updating of your business page is classed as management.
We believe marketing is about driving results for real business objectives – whether it is reaching new clients, driving website traffic or visits to your physical location. Running heavily targeted social media campaigns is what we see as social marketing. Not just posting organic posts, or boosting posts. Strategic, planned, targeted campaigns to achieve your goals.
What are the different options available for businesses?
On Facebook, Instagram, and a very similar approach on LinkedIn – there are three ways to promote your business or publish a message. Unfortunately, many business owners believe posting on their company page, or boosting a post now and again is ‘doing’ social media. It’s easy to understand why – with social media being insignificant compared to major business decisions, but, when used correctly running targeted campaigns on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn can pay dividends massively and generate a huge amount of ROI.
Knowing which way to utilise social media for a specific goal is when it gets tricky. Due to the (sometimes) complex nature of organic posts, boosted posts and targeted campaigns mixed with the platform’s own algorithm, it can be confusing to know how to use Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn marketing – and what success would actually look like. This is where using an agency or specialist comes in.
Three ways to promote your message: Organic vs Boosted vs Targeted
We have put together a handy infographic which explains the three ways to utilise Facebook/Instagram or Linkedin. You can view our graphic here.
Alternatively, continue reading!
We have already mentioned the fact there are three ways to promote your business on Facebook/Instagram. Let’s take a deeper look at Facebook and Insta in particular as these are two of the biggest platforms for promoting via Social Media;
Organic (Normal/Non-Paid posts)
These are great for raising awareness of, and promoting your brand to existing clients. Normal page posts also give you a platform to portray your brand persona, or the more personal side of your company.
Once you have created a Facebook and/or Instagram page for your business, these posts are simple, quick and easy to do.
Generally, alongside the benefit of portraying your brand persona, these types of posts are normally to build up your audience over the long term – to encourage people to follow your social page, or to communicate a blog out to some of your existing followers.
How many people do they reach?
Only 5-10% of people that ALREADY like your page. These are likely to be existing customers, friends, family members…etc. So not only is the reach extremely limited, but even those you do reach are unlikely to help you achieve your business objective.
Whilst these are quick and simple, they only reach a tiny amount of people who already like your page. Whilst this may be good to generate reviews, stay in front of customers, it isn’t going to help drive leads or new business into your company.
Unless you have a huge brand following, go ‘viral’ or have a crazy offer – these are relevant, but not good for ROI. Over time, as your followers increase this 5-10% will increase, but this is a long term win.
Boosted posts
Boosted posts are the easiest way to advertise on Facebook. Once you have published a normal post as described above, you can essentially ‘boost’ it for a fee.
Set a budget, date and choose from limited targeting options and your post will appear in front of people that do not follow your page, but match the few options you have chosen from. This is not the best way to promote on Facebook…
When should you utilise boosted posts?
Boosted posts can be a quick way to drive engagement on one specific post/message but not your business, website or products overall. If you are looking for that specific post to get some awareness, and you don’t really care about being very specific on who the audience is, then a boost would help achieve that.
Be careful, as boosted posts can be a very big waste of money. You have limited targeting options, and almost no control over changing the look and feel of the actual post – you are just boosting a normal post.
There are many specialists or agencies that claim to run marketing campaigns for businesses on Facebook, but they are simply boosting standard posts to gain a little bit of reach.
Boosted posts, in our opinion, should rarely be used. They do not help with the majority of business objectives, and the majority of time – you would want your campaign or message to reach the most accurate or specific people as possible.
Targeted social media marketing campaigns
This is the real way to promote properly on Facebook. Running heavily targeted campaigns utilising Facebook’s full targeting and design platforms – a mix of Creative Hub, Ads Manager & Business Manager to run optimised, effective campaigns that learn over time to generate more response based on your business objectives. This is ‘full’ Social Media Marketing.
Running campaigns through Business Manager, whilst it is time consuming and more complicated than boosting a post – it generates actual results. You can cut through the noise and reach highly relevant people, likely to act on the post.
You set an objective – website traffic, sales, page likes, simply reach as many as possible, retarget people that have visited your website – and then build a heavily detailed granular audience using the millions of targeting options available. If you want to reach people who do not live in, but are travelling in a specific location, have an interest in food and are wealthy – fine! If you want to reach people who live within 20 miles of your business and have been searching for your products, we can do that too. The Business Manager platform offers some of the most advanced demographic based targeting available.
Over time, the adverts are optimised based on the objective you set – they will generate more and more website clicks per 1,000 reach, or generate more sales per 1,000 reach as the creatives learn (up to a point of course!).
Once built – you have complete control over where the ad appears and what it looks like. If you want the adverts on Instagram and Facebook, fine! If you only want them to appear within people’s messenger app, fine! The customisation options are huge. These ‘posts’ or ad creatives do not appear on your page at all, it only appears in front of the right people you have targeted, in the positions you have chosen.
Adding different call-to-action buttons, carousel images, different blocks of text which rotate and swap give you control to maximise the clicks or awareness that your campaigns generate. When boosting a post, there isn’t any real options to change the way to posts/adverts look.
You will notice a boosted or targeted post in your news feed as they are both labelled as ‘sponsored’ which highlights they are paid for.
To summarise:
Ideally, running a mix of options based on your overall strategy is best. We recommend using a consultant or specialist for targeted campaigns, while you portray your brand persona to your existing clients via ‘normal’ posts.
The Business Manager portal is not very user friendly, and knowing which options to choose to maximise your return can be difficult unless you know the platform inside out.
Contact us to discuss your overall business strategy and we can advise you which of these types of post would suit, and discuss some options.