The explosive growth in Internet and mobile industry has made the connectivity, dependency and adoption of contents much more seamless than ever before. People are more data driven and business/brands/services are being tested on the toughest platform ever. The revolution in digital era is demanding marketers and brands to look for more innovative form fashion to reach and engage users which is resulting in higher influence of Google and Social Media networks over marketers.
Content Is King But Difficult To Filter
As internet users are appreciating in scores, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn (and every online information property) have become more conscious towards information filtration in order to priorities sources based upon quality; Recent Penguin updates are one of such great examples. However, this has made new entrants to fight on rough road from the very first day and most of the time they are falling flat in front of well-known sources or internet properties who have much bigger and wider reach. Yes, SEO process has become the most tedious and daunting process for many these days.
On the other hand, sitting on 1 Billion users community, Facebook is also making rapid changes in its features to leverage more upon quality data, information and prioritizing that in various sections of its network. One may witness this in upcoming ‘revamped’ comment section (being used widely by millions of websites across the globe) and new EDGE rank algorithm about to introduce in few weeks. Here, I believe that most of you are already aware how EDGE rank influences the display of links and updates in anyones “News Feed” and why many times you realize that your update is not reaching to all of your contacts and fans.
Marketers Can Still Create Magic In Just $10
In spite of all above changes and cumbersome new features, there are many ‘not-much-exposed’ features that are the best tools to make things viral. Facebook’s new “Promote” button on Pages and Personal Profile is one such tool that could please marketers and clients with the results – conditioned to intelligent adoption.
We already explained about the functionality of Facebook’s ‘Promote Button” in details, so I would like to hit the nail directly.
Promote Button Better Than Google AdWords ?
Though, it’s not viable to compare Facebook promotional tools with Google AdWords but for I will rate Facebook Promote Button higher than Google AdWords when it comes to SMB promotion. Comparatively, it’s much more affordable, reachable and engaged than AdWords. Facebook promote Button allows you to promote the whole preview along with some text, image and link unlike Google AdWords limited characters set. Therefore chances of getting the eye-balls of users are quite higher with Facebook Promote Button than AdWords.
I must admit that Google AdWords has an edge over Facebook due to ‘Target Keywords’ features in AdWords that allows marketers to reach selective set of users unlike Facebook. However, the overall comparison (later section in this post) will satisfy the thought that Facebook has got upper hand when it comes to SMB promotion.
$10 Daily Budget – Avg. 50,000 Rich Reach
Marketers must pay attention to the fact that Facebook has ‘shuffling’ mechanism behind Promote Button tool. This means not everyone will get the same price and marketers must know to optimize this in order to reach maximum number of users in $10. Facebook undisclosed algorithm behind Promote button throws different ‘reach numbers’ when marketers try to burn $10 which could be lower in many case and could end up making you pay much higher for each reach.
We have witnessed that many marketers end up paying anything $0/70 – $0.90 for each CPM (cost per 1,000 reach – in Facebook terms) while it could be easily optimized to get it as low as $0.35, resulting in more reach numbers in same daily budget of $10
How to Optimize Facebook Promote Cost
It’s all about engagement and contribution and Facebook do respect the most engaged and active profiles. Marketers should first identify the most active Page in their network which is ready to allow him to post an update on the page. It’s important for marketer to be selective as the cost per reach is directly link with the ‘People Talking About’ aspect of the selected page – The higher percentage of ‘People taking about’ against ‘Total Fans’, lesser per reach cost. Marketers can easily find these numbers below the Profile Picture of any Page.
After identifying such Page (and getting approval to post), marketers should add a link which they want to promote. Here it’s important to note that marketers should decide their priority before adding up that link:
- Decide whether social community building is more important or to generate traffic to a site/post. However, I would suggest to prioritize ‘Acquisition’ than generating traffic. This will further lower your promotion cost as once acquired marketers could feed multiple links/post/products to him.
- If selected ‘Acquisition’ – which is the best move – design an opinion “Poll” or “Post” on client’s Facebook Page where users can ultimately land, act, like and share further – Something like this.
- Marketers need to remember that the above step need to perform on the Facebook Page of the Brand/Company which they want to promote – NOT on the Facebook Page through which will are going to promote this link.
After finishing all above steps, now marketers should put the link on the Facebook Page through which they are going to promote. Once added, down right hand side a “Promote” option will start getting visible automatically. On click of that it will pop-up a box which carries the list of possible reach and cost.
However, marketers must change the option to “Friends of Fans” and see the list changing. Once done, select $10 and click on Promote. Yes, the number of reach display here 30% lesser than what I Projected. Don’t worry here is the methodology which justifies my thought:
I specifically mentioned that above “marketers should choose the most active Facebook Page to promote”. This means that majority of the fans are quite active on Facebook so with their personal profile also. The above process will make your promoted link to reach to ‘Friends of Fans’ which will reshare or act upon your post and promote the link to one more level inside – enough to compensate 30%.
Let me out this through a numerical example. Let’ say you have selected a Facebook Page that has 7,000 fans (obviously the big honchos are not going to entertain your request) with avg 1,000 ‘People Talking About’ aspect. You Promote a link (specially designed for Acquisition) with $10 budget that shows default reach of 30,000 – 35,000 (remember this figure could change due to Page selection as I described above). Now, let’s say only 5% of this reach will act upon your link (share, Like, vote or comment) which results in sharing the link automatically in those 1,500 real active users further. Assume each active user has got avg 500 connection and only 2% of that sees your promoted link that again results in another 15,000 reach. Interesting the count is not going to stop as this will trigger a chain reaction which will easily get you another few thousands reach easily.
Undoubtedly, Facebook “Promote” functionality is the best marketing tool when it comes to deal with CPM type promotion. Unlike other CPM deal networks, who demands minimum commitment of few hundred dollars with absolute blank understanding of their network activity and activeness, marketers could use Facebook Promote as ‘Pay-as-you-go’ with quite an affordable daily budget.
Besides, if marketers compare the overall CPM cost with any other eCPM deal from a premium network in Facebook class, it’s the best promotion mechanism one could find it ever.
Grow Your Own Facebook Page Reach
One of the other biggest hidden advantages of the above mechanism is the enhanced reach of brands’ own Facebook page. Following the above process could also make your brands’ Facebook page more active as more and more users, being driven through other Facebook page via Promote button, will act on your page. This will appreciate EDGE ranking of brands’ page and all updates to the page will reach to maximum number of fans, resulting in more engagement and more ‘People Taking About’ numbers.
However, digital marketing is not limited to above guide, and there are many more ideas and hidden features which are still remain unexplored. One can expect many more such marketing guides here coming up regularly.
If you have any feedback, questions or suggestion related to above guide, please feel free to use below comment section, and will be happy to assist you off.
