If you spend time on any digital marketing blogs, you’ve undoubtedly heard industry experts praising Facebook for its ability to allow companies to engage directly with their target audiences. And while this is true, what’s even more important to note is that Facebook can only be such a powerful marketing tool if its wielded correctly.
Plenty of would-be Facebook advertisers and marketers have been burned by low engagement, low ROI on paid ads and negative feedback from followers. Avoid these issues and more by watching out for the following seven crazy marketing mistakes not to make on Facebook.
1. Treating Facebook like a one-way conversation
Don’t think of Facebook as a megaphone – think of it as a conversation.At its core, Facebook is a social network, which means that people use the site to connect with friends, stay in touch with family members and even web-stalk past boyfriends and girlfriends. They don’t visit the site to be bombarded with advertising messages – and they’ll become incredibly resentful towards your company if these are the only encounters they have with your brand.The “Desperate Marketer” profile on The Oatmeal’s popular “How to Suck at Facebook” comic sums this one up pretty neatly.
Putting out nothing but ads and promotional messages is a quick way to burn out your audience. Instead, make an effort to engage your audience by asking probing questions, sharing fun quizzes and disseminating images and videos that get your followers talking.One company that does this well is Jackson Kayak. Take a look at their recent Halloween status update, which asked followers whether they dressed up their boats for the holiday. Within hours, the post drew nearly 100 “Likes,” over a dozen shares and plenty of comments – all of which got people engaged with the brand without relying on an outright sales pitch.
2. Ignoring what your metrics are telling you about your followers
Although there are plenty of Facebook marketing guides out there that’ll tell you to post to your profile on specific days/times or that all visitors respond best to picture-based status messages, the truth is that there are no “hard and fast” rules that will best serve all audiences. All audiences are different, so the only way to figure out what’s going to work for your followers is to head over to Facebook Insights.
Once you’re inside your admin panel, there are a few simple checks you can do to determine whether or not your posts are resonating with your readers:
- 1. Check your overall engagement rate – To do this, find the number of “People Engaged” over the past week under the “Engagement” section. Divide this number by your Page’s total number of “Likes” to get your overall engagement rate. If this number is less than 10%, you may have an engagement problem.
- 2. Take a look at your top posts – Next, navigate over to the “Posts” section and scroll down to the “All Posts Published” area. Click on the “Engagement” column heading and sort your results by “Likes, Comments and Shares.” Now, pay attention to both the types of posts that rank at the top of the list (whether text, links, images or videos) and the subject of each post.
- 3. Determine when your visitors are online – Within this same section, take a look at the “When Your Fans are Online” chart, which will show you the days/times during which your followers are most active. Compare this to your list of “All Posts Published” and determine how many of your updates fell into your followers’ most active periods.
These three insights should help you to establish a baseline engagement level for your followers. Check your stats periodically to identify any trends that emerge, and make sure that you’re accounting for these trends in your future updates.
3. Expecting a high CTR from Facebook Ads
Paid advertising via the search engines has a somewhat predictable impact on website performance – set up ads, pay money, get traffic. But unfortunately, Facebook advertisers who apply these same expectations to their paid social campaigns are bound to be disappointed by the site’s historically low click through rates (CTRs).
So what kind of traffic can you expect? A recent report by Salesforce and Social.com indicated that the telecommunications and publishing industries had the highest overall average CTRs, coming in at 0.92% and 0.80% respectively. Advertising, gaming and “deals” ads ranked the lowest of the industry results, averaging just a 0.27% CTR.
In general, the lowest Facebook advertising CTRs come from ads appearing in the right-hand side ad bar (which typically includes “Like” ads, Page “Like” ads and app ads). But even Sponsored Stories placed in the news feeds of relevant users tend to generate a CTR of just 1-7%, according to marketer Andrew McDermott.
So what does this mean for your business? First of all, it means that you should keep your Facebook advertising expectations (and your starting budgets) low. Set measurable ROI goals for yourself and use Facebook’s split testing features to continuously improve the quality of your ads. If you find over time that your ads aren’t meeting the goals you set for yourself, consider allocating your time and money elsewhere.
4. Forgetting your Facebook Ads call-to-action
If you aren’t deterred by potentially low CTR rates, the best way to improve the quality of your Facebook advertising campaigns is to improve your ads. And the easiest way to do this is to ensure that your ads include a call-to-action that’s as effective as possible.
A call-to-action, as the name suggests, implores an ad’s reader to take action – whether it’s to “Like” the page, to “Click here” on a link or to leave a comment on a Sponsored Story. If your ad doesn’t have a clear, concise call-to-action, adding one is an easy way to improve the performance of your ads.
But even if your ad already includes a call-to-action, chances are it can be improved. When possible, use Facebook’s split testing features to run slightly different call-to-action messages in order to determine which alternative drives the best ad results.
5. Targeting your Facebook ads poorly
Although Facebook has more than one billion active users, most of these people don’t want to see your ads! Don’t pay money to show them ads when Facebook offers such a robust set of targeting tools.
The best way to start targeting your ads is to think like the people you want to reach. Because Facebook gives you the option of selecting potential ad viewers based on location, age, gender, interest, broad-range categories and existing connections, you can easily weed out the people for whom your ad will never be relevant.
For example, if you’re running a Promoted Post campaign for a recent company blog post, you can choose to display your ad only to those who already follow your page. Or, if you’re looking to drum up new Page “Likes” with an ad in the right-hand sidebar, you can target those that live in your geographic region or that already follow your competitors’ pages.
Take the time to experiment with different targeting parameters, but watch your ROI carefully. Over time, your campaign results will tell you which groupings are most effective.
6. Handling negative feedback poorly
Unless your business is 100% perfect, all the time, you’re going to encounter negative feedback. And just like in real life, there’s a good way and a bad way to handle it.
To see how significant of a difference this can make in terms of brand perception, take a look at Facebook posts from Buffer and Amy’s Baking Company – two companies that were recently called out for various issues by their customers.
Buffer:
Amy’s Baking Company:
In the case of Buffer, the company was notified of an issue and immediately went into damage control mode – keeping followers updated as the scope of the problem was identified and apologizing profusely for any inconvenience cased. Amy’s Baking Company, on the other hand, responded with anger and accusations in a series of now-deleted status updates that Buzzfeed captured as “The Most Epic Brand Meltdown on Facebook Ever.”
As a result, Buffer was lauded for its thoughtful response, while Amy’s reputation remains tarnished. Which brand do you want your company to be like?
7. Abandoning your audience
Finally, the last rule of failing on Facebook is to abandon your audience. Just give up! Go months at a time without posting and then expect your followers to react positively when you do make it back with an update.
When it comes to social media marketing, consistency matters. Posting at regular times gets your followers in the habit of expecting posts from you. And when your content is usually good, they won’t just expect your posts – they’ll look forward to them!
Compare that with a brand page that doesn’t get much action. When you do pop by for an update, your followers will be startled to see you posting – and they’ll almost always react to your posts in a negative way, seeing them more as an interruption than a welcomed message. The only way to avoid this mistake is to get into the habit of posting regularly. If you can’t trust yourself to stick to a schedule, look into tools like Buffer or Hootsuite that can automate your posting for you.
Staying away from these seven mistakes will go a long way towards improving your Facebook advertising results, but they aren’t the only issues you might face. If you have any other tips on things to avoid, share your recommendations below in the comments!
