29 Sept 2013

3 Facebook Marketing Mistakes that Kill Results



By Brad Smith at Social Media Today:

Facebook marketing looks easy. But in reality, it's incredibly difficult.

Because simply adding fans isn't good enough. And "engaging with your audience" doesn't pay the bills.

If you want to make Facebook marketing work for your organization, then somehow, someway, we need to figure out how to increase reach, engagement, amplification, and achieve some goal -- all at the same time.

It's possible, but not easy (especially if you have limited time and money). So everything you do -- each daily tactic and update -- needs to work together to produce the best result.

And you need to avoid making these 3 costly mistakes.



Mistake #1. Relying on Your "Inner Circle" for Reach

One of the greatest benefits of social media is the ability to engage with people over time.

And this is where things can go wrong...

Because many companies only reach their "inner circle" of friends, family and existing customers or clients.

Beyond that? Nothing.

There's no reliable, predictable way to grow the "top of the funnel" and get more, new Facebook fans. The problem is that over time, people begin opting out.

This is where "subscriber recency" comes into play, because the longer people are on your list or Facebook page, the less attention they'll inevitably provide.

So the best way to grow a successful Facebook page is through creating reliable and repeatable campaigns that you can run consistently. (Here are 3 ways to do that.)

Sure friends and family might get you to 100 fans. But how are you going to get to 1,000? Or 10,000?




Mistake #2. Talking About Features, Not Benefits or Outcomes

Creating content updates for social media accounts looks easy from the outside. But in reality, there's a tremendous amount of thought and strategy behind every 140 characters.

Each Facebook status update needs to grab awareness, improve engagement, or call people to action. It needs to be pre-planned and coordinated in advance with your other campaigns or updates. And it needs to be an extension of your content marketing strategy.

The simple reason why no one interacts with your updates? Because no one cares.

Consumers don't care about your company. They don't care about your industry. Consumers only care about how you can help them.

Take a look at your last 20 updates on Facebook. Are they about your customer's problems and pain points? Or are they about your company and products?

Instead of droning on-and-on about things that no one cares about, try getting in their shoes. What do they want to hear about? What makes them tick?

And when you're going to talk about your company or products/service, then focus on outcomes and end results they'll get from your features and benefits. (Not the other way around.)




Mistake #3. Alignment Between Objectives and Tactics

At the end of the day, we're doing Facebook marketing for a reason. We need it to provide more awareness, improve customer service, become a lead, buy something or make a donation.

Depending on that main goal or objective, then everything else should fall in place. You should have one or two priorities (max!) for a given time period, and your daily actions should be broken up to achieve those goals.

But too often, social media becomes too tactical. We get distracted by Facebook's latest updates. Or we get too busy reacting and responding to customer feedback on our pages (instead of being proactive and furthering our objectives).

And many times, there's a big mismatch between what we want and what we can probably achieve. Our expectations are off.

For example, almost everyone says they want to drive direct revenue through Facebook. But for most, it's not going to work well. People will never buy over Facebook unless you have great brand awareness, a commoditized product and sales cycle, and a compelling reason to buy now (instead of using another channel at a later date).

Otherwise, the best you should hope for is to generate more inbound leads. Your strategy and daily tactics will look completely different too.

You'll start promoting more lead-generating content like guides and webinars instead of directly pitching your products and services. You'll spend more time building awareness and nurturing engagement.

And your daily interactions will shift from transactional to educational. You want the same goal (revenue!), but the objective and strategy -- they way you go accomplishing your goal -- will change immensely.

Because the quickest way to improve your marketing is to begin with the consumer's point of view. And then adjust your day-to-day tactics around their behaviors and motivations.

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1 comments:

  1. Super helpful Content you share with us.
    Keep posting this types of useful information always.
    Thanks.
    E commerce web solutions

    ReplyDelete