Having an effective Facebook campaign has become increasingly important for businesses as they seek to retain and satisfy their existing customer base and drive new business. Facebook has over 800 million active users, making it the largest online platform available for businesses to showcase their products and or services (Laroche et al, 2012).
Supporting data has suggested that Facebook is a primary source of news and information for millennial’s (which can roughly be defined as anyone who was born between early 1980’s to the early 2000’s). One survey showed that 88% of millennial’s get news from Facebook at least occasionally (American Press Institute, 2015). Also, as shown in the chart below, Facebook can be seen as the best social media platform for news and information.
Facebook is clearly a hugely popular source of news and information, it is therefore an extremely fertile ground for both small and large businesses to advertise and promote their products. As a result, a strong Facebook presence has become a ‘must have’ for most businesses.
But what makes an effective Facebook business campaign? This blog focusses on three separate components that are necessary for a successful Facebook campaign.
Firstly, the campaign should be created on the back of a carefully developed plan.
When developing a marketing plan for Facebook, a business must align the goals and execution with their overall social media strategy; this means that none of the goals should have contradictory purposes or aims. To develop a plan, a business must begin with research, including a thorough analysis of their existing social media followers across all of their current networks.
Once this step has been completed, the next stage is to allocate an appropriate budget. The budget should include whether or not the campaign requires any paid social efforts, and should be a realistic expectation on the cost of running an effective Facebook campaign.
It has been reported last year that 48.9% of global business leaders are planning to increase their social media budgets (as shown in the graph below), making it an imperative for other businesses to make a move in this direction.
Simple advertising with no direct consumer interaction often doesn’t work. Plans and strategies must focus on creating a positive experience when a customer interacts with a businesses’ social media platform. Mike Dilorenzo, who is the director of social media marketing for NHL stated, ‘Social networks aren’t about websites. They’re about experiences’ (Wyshynski, 2009). Any plan must engage with this theory.
The second important stage for creating an effective Facebook campaign is clearly defined goals.
Businesses must identify what they plan to achieve by creating a Facebook campaign. Each goal needs to correspond to an overall objective (again aligned to other social media marketing initiatives), making it easier to analyse and measure the results.
One such goal could be increasing brand awareness. For a relatively new business this should be a fundamental goal that a Facebook campaign can quite easily achieve. By doing so customers should be able to easily recognise the brand, which will have the effect of increasing customer loyalty. One way in which a business can increase their brand awareness through Facebook is by engaging with their customers.
An example of this is shown in the figure below, where the company Litographs took to Facebook to ask their customers a question. As shown in the post, it received a lot of attention resulting in over 1,200 likes and 623 shares. The company uses their Facebook posts to drive sales, but they also do a good job of entertaining their audience with questions and humour (Vahl, 2015).
Another goal that can be achieved through a Facebook campaign is increasing visitor loyalty. This can be created by brand communities, whose aim it is to increase relationship marketing, which focuses on creating and maintaining long-term customer relationships, instead of promoting individual transactions, (Webster, 1992). As maintaining a one-on-one relationship with customers is not easy, brand communities have been introduced as a solution of serving customers through such social media platforms. They often share information, perpetuating the history and culture of the brand, and provide assistance to customers (Laroche, 2012); and they also greatly influence customer loyalty (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). By customers having some level of relationship with a business, they are more likely to visit their social media page on a regular basis.
The third and final component that an effective Facebook campaign should include is a thorough analysis.
There is little point in executing a marketing plan unless there are means by which its effectiveness can be measured? As such businesses should set out to analyse and measure the success of the Facebook campaign, and also if it achieved the goals it set out in the first stage.
Such techniques could include measuring how many more Facebook fans have the business obtained; and how many more likes on average the business is getting on their posts.
Such other measuring techniques could be tested through the set-up of redeemable vouchers. Here, a business can measure how many coupons were used through their Facebook promotions, giving them a clear indication of the quantity of people actively using and engaging with their Facebook page.
Facebook offer special services to businesses which in turn helps them to understand who responds to their messages.
Within this service, they have a tool called Page Insights which enables businesses to access the gender, age and location of the people who are the most engaged with their business so they can continue to engage with them through targeted adverts and promoted posts (Facebook for business, 2016).
This tool also offers a range of different services which include a detailed frequently asked questions section with solutions to all a business’s needs regarding measuring their Facebook audience as shown in the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/help/355635011174004
References
American Press Institute. (2015). How Millennials use and control social media. [online] Available at: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-social-media/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].
Facebook for Business. (2016). How to Use Facebook for Business Marketing. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/overview#measure-adjust [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].
Laroche, M., Habibi, M., Richard, M. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2012). The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), pp.1755-1767.
Muniz, A. and O’Guinn, T. (2001). Brand Community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), pp.412-432.
Vahl, A. (2015). 11 Ways to Boost Facebook Engagement for Small Businesses : Social Media Examiner. [online] Socialmediaexaminer.com. Available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/boost-facebook-engagement-for-small-businesses/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].
Wyshynski, G. (2009). Inside the NHL’s social media innovations, growing pains. [online] Yahoo Sports. Available at: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Inside-the-NHL-s-social-media-innovations-growi?urn=nhl,199092 [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].