We currently live in a platform society where the way we interact, communicate, and understand the world around us is heavily influenced by the infrastructural technicalities of media platforms. While the complexities of rapid platform advancements can be extremely daunting, they can also be a powerful tool in the digital marketing realm. The massive user base that social media platforms have accumulated, combined with their potential to effectively deliver messaging, makes it a prime space for your marketing strategy to thrive.
Facebook marketing, in particular, can be a compelling way to connect with your audience and effectively market yourself. With 2.8 million monthly users, Facebook provides an invaluable opportunity to reach people. Organic, boosted, and paid ads are the three main ways to market your business on Facebook. While they can be used separately, algorithm updates and the highly competitive social media landscape means using them interchangeably is generally required to reach your full potential and goals. When it comes to setting up a Facebook ad to boost and target your content, there are many things to consider. So we have created a comprehensive list of the different types of Facebook ads, their unique purposes, and specific benefits to help you choose the best option for your intentions.
Organic Posts
As the word organic implies, organic Facebook posts consist of content that is shared without paid distribution. This includes posts, photos, videos, stories, and any other content shared via your profile onto your followers feed.The consistent use of organic content can help build a community of like-minded and loyal followers that share your company's values. In this regard, organic posts are an excellent opportunity to tell and develop your brand story. However, these benefits are not easy to achieve, as posts created by business pages typically reach only 2% to 6% of their followers. All major platforms use ranking algorithms that usually preferences relevancy over recency, and why only a tiny percentage of followers will see your post. Nonetheless, this is no reason to boycott organic posting altogether. When done well, organic posts can nurture and strengthen your existing audience relationships, helping you gain momentum for paid advertising efforts. While this method is technically free, it can take a lot of time, experimentation, and experience to get it right. However, in-depth planning and research can help you establish your personality and voice and start producing informative content engaging customers at every stage of their journey with your brand.
How to create organic content
As creating effective organic content is easier said than done, we have narrowed down a few specifics to help you make a truly meaningful impact. Organic content relies on quality, brand value and user experience, so it is vital these aspects are at the core focus of each organic ad. This can mean:
- Incorporating user-generated content that incentivises engagement;
- Collaborating with influencers or partnerships;
- Focussing on creativity, quality, and core business values for all content decisions;
- Mixing up post formats and creating a visual variety; and
- Using attractive, quality and engaging images, visuals and videos.
Once your content is finely crafted, it is essential to find your unique best time to post. You can use your Facebook analytics to determine when your fans are most active online and schedule posts for these periods.
Boosted Posts
Boosted posts are essentially the middle ground between organic and paid posts. They generally only require a small budget, specifically allocated to boost the reach of an organic post. This method allows you to use custom and lookalike audiences to reach your existing users, as well as others similar to them. Essentially, it enables you to reach a broader audience that is not limited to your followers, with the added feature for you to set parameters for your audience and target specific people.Boosting content is so popular for its simplicity, as you don’t need knowledge of Ads Manager or technical software to run the campaign. It is also a great way to increase your reach and test the effectiveness of your content before putting major spending behind it. Ultimately, a boosted post aims to improve your visibility and engagement while acting as an inexpensive measure to position yourself at the forefront of your customer’s mind.
How to create boosted posts
Fortunately, creating a boosted post means you have already done the hard yards in strategically crafting the content. All that is left is finetuning your intentions, determining your budget, and the click of a button. Steps to boosting your post:
- You must have a business page on Facebook, business manager access, and a native post on your page.
- You will also need an ad account since boosted posts require a budget.
- Then, choose a post from your page’s timeline and click ‘boost post’.
Paid Posts
Paid Facebook marketing takes things to the next level, providing your business with the opportunity to truly capture new audiences and make a statement. Depending on your objectives, you can choose to pay per impression (so, the number of times people see your post) or per click (so, the number of times they participate in the ‘call to action’). Such a paid tactic is also known as push marketing, a method that aims to capture the audience's attention by directly delivering them a purchase opportunity tailored to them. Unlike organic posts, paid social media content is not published on your business page and won’t be delivered organically to your audience's news feeds. Data and sentiment suggest that 64% of social media users use platforms to find shopping inspiration, making paid social marketing the perfect opportunity to generate more engagement. Paid posts are ultimately the best way for your brand to target new audiences and convert them into customers. Such content is often crafted to raise brand awareness, attract new followers, promote new deals or events, generate leads, and drive conversions.
How to create paid content
Creating paid content requires a slightly different process than creating organic posts. This is predominantly because paid social must be more specific. It is one thing to segment your audience but another to simultaneously craft your content specific to the audience.Steps to planning paid posts:
- Set up your business goals and objectives and content-specific objectives so that you can track and evaluate your process.
- Create your ad in Facebook’s Ad Manager, choosing your objectives and defining your audience.
- Set a budget according to your goals.
- Produce the content based on in-depth planning and audience research.
- Decide on ad placements, and publish.
Integrating Different Ads into Your Social Media Strategy
Decide on which post style to use and for what particular content or campaign can be consuming, especially if you don’t have a clear understanding of your intentions. So now that you understand the types of Facebook ads, we have broken down the factors to consider before implementing them into your social media strategy.
1.Consider your objectives
Undoubtedly the most important aspect of any social media strategy is considering and setting specific goals that you can base all content decisions around. Some common objectives include building and nurturing relationships, boosting engagement, increasing visibility, increasing traffic, and generating leads. Think about exactly what it is you are trying to achieve, and align these intentions with the objectives of specific post types.
2.Understand your scenario
Depending on your campaign’s context, scenario, and purpose, certain post types may be more applicable. For example, one time events don’t typically require a whole campaign and can generate extremely effective results for your business by just boosting a post.
3.Experiment with organic content
It is ever so important not to underestimate the potential and value behind organic content. The no-cost factor means these posts are of a lower stake economically, giving you the chance to play around with content specificities and see what works best for you to put money behind in the future. Only use paid options when you intend for it to specifically help you hit your KPIs and ultimately reach your business objectives. For example, if your organic activity isn’t getting the reach or impressions you’d hoped for, and you know the content is engaging, then it may be time to consider paid options.
4.Boost engaging and effective content
If certain organic posts performed extremely well, or you are looking to garner a further reach, boosting the post can help you achieve this. It is also a cheap way to further test your content before creating a paid and higher risk Facebook ad.
5.Target your audience properly
Undeniably, the main mistake most marketers make with Facebook ads is not targeting them efficiently. Paid posts give you the opportunity to target by demographics, which can be understood through research or traffic analysis from your existing or past campaigns. Ideally, location, age, gender and interests are the optimal demographics to pay attention to.
6.Create quality content
While audience segmentation is the most common downfall, a Facebook campaign would go nowhere without quality content. At the end of the day, content is the main focus, and adding spending to a post will only be effective if it is well crafted in the first place. Quality content is anything that can actually add value to your specific audience. This means knowing your audience, adding a unique element of personality, and delivering content specifically made to benefit them.
The world of social media marketing can be somewhat confusing but undeniably valuable when used strategically. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for more advice on starting your Facebook Ad Campaign. While social media marketing is our specialty, we understand that it can be intimidating at first. We can’t wait to help you on your journey.
