Facebook marketing: Why, How and What exactly?

Everyone is on Facebook and therefore every company wants to be on Facebook. Yet the persistent question remains: what is a like worth? And what exactly can I do with Facebook for my company? In the series Why, How and What is it after B2B Content Marketing now it's time for Facebook marketing. We look at the commercial choice for Facebook as a marketing tool, how exactly you get likes and interaction and what you do and do not post on Facebook.

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Page links Facebook marketing: Why?

This article is split into 3 pages: Why, How and What. Use the page links below for fast navigation.

• What is Facebook Marketing?

Why Facebook Marketing?

• Facebook marketing gives reach: numbers
• Facebook reach
• Facebook Edgerank: from 1500 to 300 messages
• Facebook is part of the customer journey
• Facebook supports SEO (search engine optimization)
• Facebook marketing is relationship management: brand awareness and branding
• Facebook offers binding
• Facebook puts the user first: user stories
• Facebook is a service channel
• Facebook is interaction
• Facebook is a marketing platform
• Facebook Authorship helps bloggers and journalists

Why not Facebook marketing?

• Facebook only?

What is facebook marketing?

With Facebook marketing you put your product or service on the market with Facebook as a marketing tool. The crux is immediately there: Facebook users are not waiting for advertising messages. They want to be entertained with interesting and relevant content. Their attention gives you clicks, responses, partial promotions and likes. The challenge is to convert that into value for your company, in the form of branding, website traffic, newsletter subscriptions and reach.

With a free product or service, the customer is the product. In other words: as a consumer you pay with your attention. Smart companies catch that attention with the right content: entertaining, funny, serious, responding to the news and interactive. In short: tailored to the target group. That makes Facebook marketing more than just an extra task for a colleague who was hired for something completely different. Facebook marketing is a part of online marketing and therefore falls under 'standard' marketing. Certainly now that Facebook ads has become an important part of Facebook marketing: it is no longer just about extra time, but also about budget.

Why facebook marketing

Every company that focuses on consumers is on Facebook or would like to sit on it, or everyone follows the saying: 'Fish where the fish are'. With 9.4 million Facebook users, free use of Facebook pages and relatively fast communication, Facebook seems the logical choice. But if your messages get too few responses, likes or even reach, and you are constantly thinking up 'nice' content, then you can still start to wonder: why are we on Facebook again?

Facebook marketing gives reach: numbers

Facebook gives an unprecedented size potential range. First the figures from the Social Media Survey Newcom (as of January 23, 2017):

• Number of Dutch Facebook users: 10.4 million;
• Number of Dutch Facebook users who log in daily: 7.5 million;
• 88 percent of the Dutch, Facebook finds the most important social media platform;
• Facebook grows especially below elderly, 8 percent reduction in use among young people between 15 and 19 years old;

Number of Facebook minutes per day

According to it Marketing Facts Yearbook 2015 - 2016 the average American Facebook user spends 40 minutes a day on Facebook, and the average Dutch Facebook user 17 minutes (8.3 hours per month). According to Brandwriters this is 21 minutes.

Use Facebook every day

According to research from Facebook:

• We check on average Facebook fourteen times a day: 17.6 times a day on weekends and 8.3 times a day on weekdays.
• 61 percent of (American) Facebook users check Facebook at least once a day.

Leisure time to media per day:

To put that in perspective: here the figures from it Social and Cultural Planning Office from February 2015 on how we used our free time for media in 2013:

• Total media time per day: 7 hours and 22 minutes. This also concerns two media at the same time: watching TV and reading the news on your mobile, for example.
• Total TV watching per day: 3 hours.
• Total reading on paper per day: 36 minutes.
• Total listening radio at time of broadcast per day: 2 hours and 48 minutes.
• Total communication per day such as calling and online: 1 hour and 5 minutes.
• Communicate via social media and internet forums per day (Facebook and other social media): 20 minutes per day.
• 50.2 percent of the Dutch population uses Facebook at least once a day.

The SCP gives as a reason for a lower score of social media use the fact that other surveys such as those of Statistics Netherlands use a different question. But also indicates that the actual use will be higher due to the fleeting behavior of social media.

Facebook reach

Nowadays, TV, radio and the newspaper are traditionally costly marketing resources to use as a company. Facebook gives you the opportunity to reach the same numbers with better segmentation and lower costs. For those who read this and by no means intend to spend the Facebook Ads budget: read on.

• The number of pages liked per user grew more than in 2014 50 percent
• Average number of friends on Facebook: 130 (per 2013)
• Average number of Facebook messages per day: 1500
• Average number of Facebook messages that Facebook shows: 300

"A like is worth less and less."

Indeed: of the 1500 Facebook messages from pages and friends that Facebook can show on your Timeline, only 300 are shown on average. The other 1200 does not consider Facebook to be interesting or relevant. And that number of irrelevant messages grows as we like more and more pages. As a Facebook page with 1000 likes, your messages are shown by default at an average of 2 percent: that is 20 fans. That percentage differs per page based on previous interaction. That used to be 100 percent, now Facebook is turning back this organic range. That means that a like is worth less and less: you get less and less reach with it.

Facebook does this on the one hand to promote Facebook Ads and to earn money, on the other hand to let Facebook administrators create more relevant content. Better content keeps people on Facebook longer. Content that is clicked, that is liked, that receives responses and that is shared, therefore gets extra viral reach. More fans get to see it and friends of friends. That range can go far beyond their own number of fans. In short: there is a lot of potential reach on Facebook, but that costs budget (Facebook Ads) and time and effort (relevant content).

Facebook is part of the customer journey

Because so many people are on Facebook so often, Facebook can play a role in the customer journey. Before a consumer purchases a product or service, there is contact with the company through different channels and different devices: so-called touch points. Those are paid channels such as advertisements, those are earned channels such as a newspaper article, and own channels such as the website and the Facebook page.

The role of Facebook differs per company and per product or service. The specific role is determined by: all different touch points, the added value of Facebook, the final purchase itself (conversion) and the further customer relationship that follows (customer lifetime cycle). This is something that every marketer will have to determine for himself.

Facebook supports SEO (search engine optimization)

Google often plays a major role in the customer journey. Google looks at the number of likes for the Facebook page that is linked to a website. It is an indirect indicator of the popularity of the website and has limited influence on the ranking.

Content (so a specific page on a website) that is often shared on Facebook, often correlates with a high ranking in Google. Correlation means that it coincides: it is not automatically a matter of cause and effect (causation). When content receives a lot of incoming links but little is shared on Facebook (social shares), then that is a sign for Google that something is wrong. Google expects that a big brand also has a Facebook page with many likes.

Authority on Facebook counts

The authority of the Facebook profiles and Facebook pages that share the content and that like the page also counts. When Beyonce places a link to your site on its Facebook page with millions of fans, it is more valuable than when Pietje and two friends do so. Certainly when Pietje has just been on Facebook and Beyonce for years.

In short: if you work as an online marketer on the findability of your website and specific pages, Facebook supports you with that.

Facebook marketing is relationship management: brand awareness and branding

On Love Den Helder Den Helder is only shown positively.

Facebook is an ideal tool for staying in focus with your target group and working on a positive image: relationship management. And relationship management is nothing more than 'staying top of mind'. Ensuring a pleasant relationship means ensuring a positive image of you as a company (branding) and ensuring that when your customer thinks of a new purchase, that you are mainly thought of (brand awareness). With a pack of chewing gum, the first thing is particularly important: that is a typical 'low involvement' repeat purchase.

With a 'high involvement' product such as a new car, the consumer is much more involved in the process, and a positive image is also important. Volkswagen is quality and Volvo is safety. A product such as a detergent does not need to be supported with a positive image from the underlying manufacturer: displaying the same advertising message on TV many times already works. Only when you know how to create positive branding can you gain more brand awareness.

Facebook offers binding

Before you buy a car, many people want to get to know the brand. And when you read Margriet, you might also like to follow their Facebook page. In both cases there is talk: the consumer is getting closer to the company or brand. With a like, the consumer chooses to expose himself to the messages of the company. And for the consumer, these are not about branding or brand awareness, but about specific value. Often a certain feeling, coupled with a lifestyle value. But also practical tips and information. When you as a Facebook page offer what your target audience is really waiting for, then you create a bond. You offer, consumers like it. Binding is attention that you can focus on your own message. Example: a Facebook page about poems can, in addition to poems from known and unknown poets, occasionally place a link to a poetry workshop. It is in line with expectations.

Facebook puts the user first: user stories

Commercial messages don't work on Facebook. The consumer simply does not click on your ads and does not respond to your Facebook messages at all, until Facebook automatically filters them out due to a lack of relevance. With Facebook, the experience of the users is central. Facebook is their story. You have to adjust your story to suit your target group. Content that appeals. Ads for pages that their friends already like.

Facebook is part of our lives

Before social media, TV was the most important medium in people's lives. Watch an exciting movie or a fun show on Saturday evening at 8.30 p.m. Not much has changed, except that Facebook there has come. It is your personal newspaper with messages from your friends and news and topics from pages and advertisers that you find really interesting. In that respect, Facebook has really come deeper into our lives. I see weekly messages from family members that I have not spoken or seen for years, and therefore they feel closer to me.

Facebook's growing role

Facebook has biggest plans to take a bigger role in our lives. Such as being able to reserve a restaurant, paying your bills, creating a virtual assistant such as Siri (iOS) and Google Now (Android). This growing role is of course very interesting for companies, provided that they continue to put the user first.

Facebook is a service channel

Source: Parody page Customer service

The interaction that is so often discussed is often about complaints and critical questions. Via social media you can easily ask a question and you get - Pling! - a signal when there is a response. What makes service via social media so difficult is that it starts with a public question. Everyone watches how you approach this. For parties such as Dutch Railways, Facebook has become part of their product as a service channel.

Go with the flow

Consumers apparently need Facebook as a service channel: a good reason to just go along with it. It also gives you the opportunity to see what questions are going on, and then address them with an FAQ on your website. Do you have products with a low service level? Then Facebook is primarily a way to get in touch with customers.

Facebook is interaction

Companies often do not value interaction. While you can do so much with it! Interaction helps to better align your product or service with your target group. Speaking examples:

• LIDL that lets the fans decide which type of Saladinettes potatoes are on sale;
• A hotel on Texel that submits its ideas for an advertisement to its fans to determine which advertisement is ultimately used;
• The same hotel that points to vacancies: who knows someone looking for a part-time job?
• Australia Traffic Agency that places the most beautiful submitted holiday photos every week;
• A municipality that explicitly demands the opinions of citizens on topics (citizen participation, an important theme for municipalities);
• Small breweries that respond to specific feedback from fans (ok, beer geeks) in specialty beer communities;
• Celebrities who respond personally to messages from fans and thereby go viral (so-called 'showbiz news');

Facebook is a marketing platform

Advertising on Facebook offers an incredible number of options for companies. If you have a budget for offline advertising (daily newspaper, Sunday newspaper) or for online advertising (Google Adwords), then Facebook Ads is a serious consideration. This year, Facebook Ads has grown much further than the "Promote Message" to which every Facebook administrator is pointed out. You can advertise very specifically to specific target groups by segmenting on: age, gender, education, family situation and interests such as car rental. In addition, Facebook puts the achievement of your online business goals at the center when creating a Facebook campaign: site traffic, conversion or likes.

In addition, you can also segment by behavior: pages that are liked (competitor or similar company), travel regularly, upload photos, take events, etc. You can also target 'similar' people, such as the people who are already your customers and of whom you are have the e-mail address (custom audiences). And visitors to your website can be registered when they were already logged in to Facebook, which is standard for everyone, with a pixel. And not only as a visitor, also when they make a purchase.

So a few business examples:

• A restaurant in South Amsterdam that, based on its e-mail list with 100 satisfied customers, sets up a campaign in Amsterdam aimed at similar consumers;
• A car lesson company that focuses on young people between 18 and 21 who are not yet following their competitors in their own working area;
• A tourist office in a nature reserve on the coast that focuses on German families from North Rhine Westphalia who enjoy walking and cycling;
• A webshop for baby items points customers who are not yet following their page, with a retargetting ad on their Facebook page;
• A rather unknown band that gets large locations full by advertising on people who appreciate similar music;

Read more about the opportunities, strengths, threats and weaknesses of advertise on Facebook.

Facebook Authorship helps bloggers and journalists

Bloggers and journalists are still familiar with Google Authorship, which is now completely destroyed. Facebook takes over with Facebook Authorship. By adding a code to the page with the content, Facebook recognizes the writer, and as a Facebook user you can immediately follow the writer. As a writer, you must also set that you can be followed.

Read on Marketing Facts for setting up Facebook Authorship.

Facebook only?

In answering the question 'why Facebook', you should also answer the question 'why not Facebook'. In the distant past there was a debate about whether you should not replace your website with your Facebook page. Now the answer is: No. Because you cannot control Facebook and your own website is. Facebook marketing is based on the successful use of Facebook. And if a hammer is your only tool, all your problems will look like nails. The use of Facebook is not isolated: it is an interaction with your other channels. And if your target group is not concerned with your subjects on Facebook, or if you simply do not have the time and money to use Facebook as a fully-fledged channel: just do not do it. Focus on achieving your business goals on what works well for you.

Facebook for Bloeise

So my own adds Facebook page little to the customer journey of my customers: first and foremost, these are companies that also get a better picture of Bloeise through my website and my blogs on Dutch Cowboys and Emerce. Clients, partners and workshop followers get access to my Facebook community where I already share the latest Facebook news. And to show my work on Facebook, I refer to my Facebook page Love Den Helder.

Read Part 2: How do you use Facebook marketing? Best principles

Read Part 3: What do you use for Facebook marketing? 22 useful tips