Ahh, Facebook (or, should we say, Meta now) – that most annoying of platforms which we all openly hate and yet cannot stay away from. Basically the Ryanair of the internet. Facebook, like all social media sites, has it’s pros and cons. It can connect you with long lost family on the other side of the globe, while simultaneously leaking your personal information which it promised to keep private. Very much a love-hate relationship. But that’s on a personal level, what about from a business’s point of view? Why, in 2021, is it so vital to have a presence on Facebook for Business?
In this blog, we’re going to run through the basics of why Facebook, flaws and all, is such an important part of doing business in today’s world.
EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK. EVERYONE.
There’s no getting around this first point. Love it or hate it, chances are the vast majority of your existing or potential clientele have a Facebook account. According to recent reports, as of 2021, there are over 2.8 BILLION monthly active Facebook users. That’s over 35% of the total population of the entire planet (7.9 Billion as of November 2021)!
Doesn’t sound like THAT much, does it? Well, consider this. Massively populous countries like China, North Korea, Iran, and Vietnam have banned access to Facebook entirely. These countries alone have a combined population of just under 2 Billion. Removing them from the equation, suddenly Facebook users account for over 47% of the world’s population.
But wait, there’s more, because that still doesn’t account for the countries where Facebook may be available, but people do not have access to the Internet. As of 2020, India alone accounts for over 685million people without Internet access. Add that to the roughly 60% of the population of Africa – 1.216 Billion – who don’t have internet connection, and suddenly Facebook’s reach is over 62% of the population of Earth!
Specifically for Ireland, of the 4.995million population, over 3.3million have Facebook accounts – that’s over 66%.
There’s a lot more we could do here to raise these numbers even higher, but I think you get the picture – everyone is on Facebook, therefore if you want to reach your audience, you simply must have a presence on Facebook.
HOW CAN FACEBOOK HELP A BUSINESS?
Aside from simply reaching your customers, Facebook allows you to curate exactly what you reach them with. The possibilities are nearly limitless – provided what you’re posting falls within the platform’s rules & guidelines. Broadly speaking though, you can share news about the business, product & service information, promote sales & offers, run giveaways & competitions, host live events, collaborate with other businesses, and overall improve your engagement with your customers and their overall sentiment towards your business.
If a person gets the impression that there are actual humans running a business, listening to their comments & questions, replying in a timely manner; and not just a bunch of drones & algorithms, they’re much more likely to become customers and stay loyal.
And all of this is achievable without actually spending a penny on the platform.
SO WHY BOTHER WITH FACEBOOK ADS?
Good question. Simple answer related to point number one – everyone is on Facebook. You might have 10million followers on your Facebook page, but that’s still less than 0.4% of all users on the platform. There are an almost infinite amount of possibilities to continue to grow on Facebook, reach new people, attract new business, diversify into new markets & submarkets. And you won’t achieve that level of growth & reach just on “likes and shares”.
So you look to Facebook advertising. In simple terms, they can help the business’s presence on the platform grow more quickly than it would organically. But in more advanced terms, Facebook ads can help to increase website traffic, online sales, lead generation, etc.
Users spend upwards of 19 hours per week on average scrolling through Facebook, meaning you’re more likely to have your ad seen on Facebook than on TV or a Billboard, and by far more people, for far less money. Taking out an ad on TV or Print, you can at best “guestimate” how many people might see it. And if you’re really diligent with it you could maybe figure out how many sales resulted from your ad campaign. But it’s not accurate. Not really.
With ads on Facebook, you can see facts and figures down to the individual user. You can see how many people the ad as reached but not only that, you can see how many times they’ve seen the ad. You can then track their entire path through your website to making a final purchase so you know with total accuracy how much revenue you have generated from your ad campaign. And all of these reports are automated – all you have to do is sit back and watch the numbers roll in. Something you simply cannot do with traditional media.
FACEBOOK ADS MANAGER
Ok, so you’ve decided to go ahead and start advertising on Facebook. But where to begin?
If you go to your page, you’ll see a lot of big blue buttons that say “Promote Now” or “Boost Post” which will ask you to pick an audience to target, select a budget and a date range, and away you go. Simple, right? No.
Well, yes. But, really no.
These options, the buttons that pop up on your main page are the very very basic layer of advertising options on Facebook. They are mostly useful for getting a quick spike in likes of the page, or boosting out a recent post to your existing followers to make sure more of them see it and engage with it. These options are not likely to earn you much Return on Investment long term.
Instead, you’ll want to get into Facebook Ads Manager. This is Facebook’s powerful backend advertisement campaign creation platform. From here you can do almost anything and ads are created from the ground up to be as effective as possible. You can choose the type of campaign (which we’ll go over in the next blog), be far more selective and deliberate with the audience targeting, set a more comprehensive budget and bid range (again, next blog), and create much more engaging types of content such as Carousel Ads, Instant Experiences, Lead Forms, etc – all of which are specifically designed to get the best results possible for your individual goals.
Don’t be put off by how much is going on here, though. Facebook have made it very easy to learn this platform inside and out. And no, you don’t need a masters in computer science to figure it out.
Simply visit Facebook Blueprint, Facebook’s own online learning portal, where you can enrol for free in numerous courses & lessons which will teach you everything from the super basics to the extremely advanced methods of advertising, promoting and growing your business using Facebook.
THAT’S ALL GREAT, BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR FACEBOOK
That’s fine too, and you’re not alone. Despite it’s many benefits, particularly to small businesses, getting the most out of Facebook can be extremely time consuming. And if you’re a small business owner and you already wear enough hats as it is trying to keep everything else running; dedicating so much time to Facebook might be the last thing on your mind. Especially if you have to learn from scratch how to do it all.
Luckily for you, that’s where SMK Marketing can help. We’re experts in Social Media Management and our consultants have experience working within Facebook itself, and know the platform like the back of our hands.
We’ll take on the responsibility of your Facebook page for you. We’ll manage your day to day organic activity (posts, videos, images, reviews, etc), create comprehensive campaigns for you, generate detailed but easy to digest reports, and even set the whole thing up from scratch for you if you’re brand new to it all.
