Should You Have a Business Facebook Page?

Social media marketing gurus have long extolled the virtues of having a business Facebook Page.

With well over 1 billion monthly active users, Facebook is undoubtedly the biggest and most active social media platform. And for businesses, it makes sense to go where the customers are.

But the free ride for businesses on Facebook is over.

Brands now have to “pay to play” to keep the benefits of the business Facebook Page they invested so much effort into building.

When Facebook created Pages for business, it gave brands a free opportunity to get their products (and marketing) in front of a captive audience. Brands were quick to take advantage of this immensely valuable resource, and many made it a fundamental part of their marketing strategy.

But all good (free) things, eventually, must come to an end. After years of providing a free service to all, the social media giant has turned its attention firmly towards monetization. Facebook has its sights set on becoming the biggest advertising and publishing platform in the digital world. And if you want a slice of the action, then you’re going to have to pay.

Organic Reach or Paid Reach?

The choice between organic or paid traffic would have been far easier to make before Facebook rolled out its advertising platform. Organic reach is heading towards zero for owners of a business Facebook Page – regardless of how many fans a Page has. At present, less than 5% of fans see posted updates from the Pages they “liked” because Facebook push paid content over (unpaid) organic activity. So essentially, you have to pay if you want to be seen.

Of course, there are aways exceptions. Some brands are still getting organic value from Facebook, but even the most active have seen a drop in levels of fans’ engagement. Eventually, all brand Pages will face the creeping erosion of organic reach that Facebook hope will “encourage” brands to pay.

So, as a general rule, if you don’t have a business Facebook Page, it’s probably not worth the work involved unless you plan to use Facebook Advertising.

Previously, brands focused on building their Page fan base organically – in future, their following will be a byproduct of their advertising spend. If you already have a Facebook Page, it’s likely you have already seen a significant fall-off, and should measure the ROI to see if maintaining your Page is worth the time and effort.

If you don’t see the value in building your Page organically, you could still use Facebook for advertising. Even if you don’t have a Page, you can set one up and use Facebook Ads without having to build up a following first. Facebook makes it easy to target demographics, location, and interest via its paid advertising platform. Facebook ads can be highly effective, but only when aimed at interested audiences. So, you must define your market, create compelling content, and serve your ad to target them.

 To illustrate the difference between organic and paid reach, I created an ad for each and compared the results.

I shared a post I wrote about getting funded on Kickstarter on a Facebook Page – firstly organically, and then a paid “boost”. Granted, this isn’t exactly a scientific study, but the results are obvious:

Before Facebook Ad Boost:

As you can see, the post was barely noticed. Only 8 people out of 67 had this post appear in their timeline. Granted, the Facebook Page I used is not very active, but still.. only 8 people? No engagement, no clicks, no likes, nothing – it’s like it disappeared into a black hole.

After Facebook Ad Boost:

Next, I clicked the “Boost” button and added €4 to run an ad over 2 days. The result was completely different, and much more successful, as you can see from the reports.

• 1,287 Total reach.
• 40 Website clicks.
• 15 Website conversions.
• 7 Post likes and 1 page like.
• €0.07 Cost per click (CPC)
• 4.6% Click through rate (CTR)
• 13,520 Impressions [55 Organic; 13,465 Paid]

Facebook Ad Report:

Reporting options in Facebook Ads are pretty comprehensive, allowing you to see audience information from different metric viewpoints. If you enable Facebook’s Conversion Pixel tracking, you can get detailed statistics for Facebook users and how they interact with your website. You can see exactly which actions led to conversions, (like sales, email sign-ups, or downloads), and determine the ROI from your Facebook advertising spend.

Another great feature of Facebook ads is the ability to define target audiences using the incredibly useful Audience Insights tool to build custom audiences profiles to target in future ad campaigns.  You can create a campaign consisting of subset category groups of different ads, which essentially means creating different versions of the same ad to target segmented audiences. Combine this with the ability to A/B (or C) test different version, and you have a means to get your message directly in front of any audience you wish to reach. 

 So, do you really need a business Facebook Page?

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you prepared to use Facebook as a paid advertising platform?
2. Is the ROI enough to justify your time spent on Facebook?
3. Are your customers actively engaged with your brand on Facebook?
4. Do you use your business Facebook Page as a point of contact for customer service?
5. Are competitions an important part of your marketing strategy?
6. Do you like Facebook?

If you answer no to any of the above then you might want to reconsider investing your time or money on a business Facebook Page. Brands now have to “pay to play” to continue enjoying the benefits of the business Facebook Page they invested so much effort into building. Re-evaluate your marketing priorities and allocate more resources to areas that are giving you the best returns.

If you answer yes to more than one question, then go for it – as a social media ad platform, Facebook is hard to beat.

If you want to avoid wasting money on social advertising, or want to learn how to implement paid adverts into your digital marketing strategy, get in touch. We’re happy to help.