Tactical Tech

By Chris Paradiso

FACEBOOK MARKETING EVOLVES

It’s vital to keep up with changes and adapt your strategy

The way we go about marketing our agencies is always changing, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  Marketing is a never-ending job, and part of that job is adapting to change. The way we go about marketing our agencies is always changing, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

Recently we’ve noticed some changes in Facebook’s algorithms and realized we needed to alter our strategy to achieve higher visibility. In this column I’ll talk about where you should be spending your marketing dollars on Facebook and how you can reach a wider audience with the right strategy.

First, Facebook boosting is not as effective as it once was. Until recently, boosting was a reliable tool and a great place to spend your marketing dollars to push your agency’s visibility online. Over time, though, we’ve seen our metrics start to decline with Facebook boosting, so we’ve had to adapt.

The way we go about marketing our agencies is always changing, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

Our marketing team revisited our audiences and adjusted them to make sure we were reaching the right eyes while maintaining a substantial volume of responses. We still had poor metrics. Take a look; the numbers don’t lie. Here are the results of a boost we did back in April 2018:

With a $5 budget, we were able to reach over 1,000 pairs of eyes and obtain over 100 engagements. Not bad.

Now look at a similar boost we did in November 2018:

We invested three times the amount of money with a budget of $15 and reached only about one-third the number of eyes, with only nine link clicks.

Facebook ads

The boosting issue doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t an effective advertising outlet. It’s just that we need to use new strategies to adapt to Facebook’s recent changes. Facebook is a “pay-to-play” platform, meaning that the more you invest, the better your results are likely to be.

Let’s look at the numbers associated with our most recent Facebook ad campaign:

You’ll notice that this ad’s reach and link clicks are far higher (almost 5,000 people) than those of the boosted posts we experimented with. This ad also ran in November 2018, and you can see that our budget was $10 per day.

We actually spent only about $17 on this ad by letting it run for two days, and the results were more than satisfying. This boils down to about 27 cents per click, whereas our last boosted post cost roughly $1.66 per click.

With a difference like this, you can’t afford to ignore Facebook ads when developing your marketing strategy.

To see the Facebook ad platform, visit your agency’s Facebook page (while logged in as an admin) and click on “Ad Center” at the top of the page. The first thing to look at is your target audience, so click on “audience” on the left-hand side of the page. You’ll want to customize audiences whose interests are in line with the content you’re posting.

A powerful way to customize your audiences is to match them to your agency’s marketing personas. If you don’t have marketing personas, visit www.paradisopresents.com and search our blog for personas.

We created audiences whose interests align with our agency’s brand, and we reach from 100,000 to 8 million depending on how many interests and how broad a location we specify. It’s a good idea to experiment and keep editing your audiences over time to see what works best for you and your agency.

Next you’ll need to choose an objective for your ad. If you click on the blue “promote” button on the Ad Center page, you’ll notice that Facebook has predefined objectives all laid out for you. These include boosting a post (which we will avoid), promoting your “send message” button, promoting your page, and more.

Of these options, we suggest “promote your button on Facebook” and “get more website visitors.” So far we’ve experimented with website visitors, and we’ve gotten quite a lot of clicks for the money we’ve spent. Once you’ve selected an objective, you’re ready to move on.

Now you’re ready to get started on the creative side: your content. On the “Ad Creative” screen, enter the requested information, then choose a format for your ad. If you’re new to Facebook ads we suggest making a video because that’s where we started and we were very pleased with the results. Your video should be engaging, enjoyable, and represent your agency’s brand and/or message, and it should target your specific audience.

Once you’ve created your content, ask yourself if you would watch this video if it showed up in your own newsfeed. That should help you decide whether you feel confident about investing your money in this ad. If you take your time and craft your message carefully, I promise you’ll enjoy ROI from the time and money you spend.

To finish your ad, you’ll need to create a headline, a description, and a call to action, and select an audience from the audiences you created earlier. Then you establish a daily budget and tell Facebook how long you’d like the ad to run. Facebook will give you an estimate of how many people you should expect to reach.

If you follow these steps and create compelling content, you’ll see that Facebook is still a fantastic way to get in front of potential leads or prospects. If you have questions or want to discuss your Facebook ad strategy, please reach out to me at the email a­­ddress below. I hope to see your ad in my newsfeed soon!

The author

Chris Paradiso is president of Paradiso Financial & Insurance Services in Stafford Springs, Connecticut. His agency won PIA National’s Excellence in Social Media Award in 2013. He also heads up Paradiso Presents, LLC, which provides social media consulting, seminars and workshops to help agencies thrive in the online marketing world.

Contact Chris via email at cparadiso@paradisoinsurance.com.