Advertising

February 19, 2019January 13, 2019 by Mandy Edwards

36 Marketing Stats to Help Your Marketing Strategy in 2019

Stats and analytics are the backbone of any good marketing campaign. If you are not using these to plan and review your campaigns, now is the best time to start! Even if your marketing strategy is done, it does not hurt to always look at it and change things as the year progresses based on the results you see from your current campaigns.

While reading through stats from the past year, these are the ones that stood out as being some of the most interesting.

Here are 36 marketing stats to keep in mind this year.

Digital Advertising Stats

Ad blocking in the US has increased from 15% to 30% since 2014. (Source: Statista)

60% of consumers click on mobile ads at least weekly. (Source: Business Wire)

Facebook Stats

100 million hours of video is viewed daily on Facebook. (Source: Facebook)

40% of consumers watch the most video on Facebook. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Instagram Stats

Within 10 hours of an Instagram post, users receive 50% of their total comments. (Source: Sprout Social)

Instagram posts using at least one hashtag receive 12.6% more engagement than posts excluding them. (Source: Sprout Social)

Instagram drives the most engagement per post compared to any social network–84 times more than Twitter, 54 times more than Pinterest and 10 times more than Facebook. (Source: Sprout Social)

7 out of 10 hashtags on Instagram are branded. (Source: Sprout Social)

51% of consumers used Instagram regularly, and more than half of those people (30%) like or follow a brand. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Millennial Social Media Stats

80% of millennial Pinterest users say that the platform helps them decide what they should buy. (Source: CoSchedule)

7 in 10 Gen-Xers are more likely to make purchases from brands they follow on social. (Source: Sprout Social)

50% of millennials use the internet to research products before purchasing. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Twitter Stats

Tweets with images are 150% more likely to get Retweets than text-only Tweets. (Source: AdWeek)

Twitter is accessed through a mobile device by 82% of its monthly active users. (Source: Sprout Social)

Tweets with videos get over six times as many retweets as tweets with photos. (Source: Wochit)

Search Marketing Stats

90% of searchers haven’t made up their mind about a brand before starting their search. (Source: Status Labs)

Local searches lead 50% of all mobile users to visit stores within one day. (Source: Google)

Over 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while searching on their smartphone. (Source: Google)

Organic SEO is about 5.66 times better than paid search ads. (Source: New Media Campaigns)

70-80% of search engine users are only focusing on the organic results. (Source: MarTech)

72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. (Source: Wordstream)

Social Media Stats

59% of Americans believe that customer service through social media has made it easier to get their questions answered and issues resolved. (Source: Lyfe Marketing)

96% of people talking about companies and brands on social media aren’t actively following those brands. (Source: Lyfe Marketing)

Facebook and Instagram are the choice platforms for marketers. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

21% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they can reach on social. The same percentage would rather message a brand on social media than call customer service. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

The top reasons that consumers reach out to brands on social are that they had a question (57%), they had an issue with a product or service (45%) or they wanted to commend a company on their product or service (34%). (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Consumers absorb influencer content across the major social networks at a surprisingly low level, between 1-11%, and prefer seeing posts that announce what is happening at a company 3x more than company posts that feature influencers or celebrities. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

When asked what their reaction would be if a friend posted about a company, product or service on social media, 61% of consumer respondents said they’d be more likely to research that product/service, compared to 36% if a product or service were mentioned by an influencer or celebrity. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Top factors that impact whether or not a consumer watches a video on social are length of video (61%), caption or description of video (51%) and whether the video is an ad or not (40%). (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Over half of consumers (58%) prefer visual-first content on social media, with graphics and images and produced video taking the lead. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Consumers are more like to engage with posts that include discounts or are entertaining. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Consumers are looking for social content that includes discounts and sales (72%), posts that showcase new products and services (60%) and posts that teach them something (59%). (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

30% of consumers surveyed wanting links to more information from brands on social, and most preferring discounts, sales and educational posts. (Source: Sprout Social Index 2018)

Mobile accounts for nearly 80% of time spent on social media networks. (Source: Pew Internet)

Other Marketing Stats of Note

Emails that display incorrectly on mobile may be deleted within three seconds. (Source: Campaign Monitor)

LinkedIn posts with images receive 200% more engagement than text-only posts. (Source: Sprout Social)

Which stat surprised you the most?

Mandy Edwards is the founder of ME Marketing Services, a marketing company specializing in digital & social media marketing located in Statesboro, Georgia. A proud graduate of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia she has a thorough marketing background of 17+ years. In the fall you can find her along with her family at Sanford Stadium cheering on their beloved Georgia Bulldogs. Mandy has been mentioned in Forbes, named to the Statesboro Herald’s Top 20 under 40, has been ranked as a Top 100 Social Media Power Influencer by StatSocial and is a Sprout Social All-Star Elite. In 2016 she was recognized as a member of the University of Georgia’s top 40 Under 40 Alumni.

January 22, 2019April 25, 2019 by Mandy Edwards

12 Marketing Ideas to Try Out in 2019

By now I’m sure you’ve read numerous posts about your marketing strategy for this year. Although it’s beneficial and important to lay all of this before the end of the previous year, that doesn’t work for everyone.

If you are still working on your marketing plan for this year – or you are just open to new ideas – this is a post for you.

I love to see what other businesses are doing – that is one of the greatest resources we have, watching each other. We can see what worked and what didn’t. Who stepped outside the box and who fell on their face. Every great marketing campaign started with an idea from somewhere. And maybe this is that somewhere!

Here are 12 marketing ideas to try out for your business this year.

Review your existing strategy (and if you don’t have one, make one).

The beginning of any year is a good time to look at what you have planned and see if anything needs to be tweaked as we move forward into 2019. And don’t worry if you don’t have a marketing plan at all – it’s never too late to get started on one!

Focus on your best performing social media platform.

What platforms are you currently using? Do you see one (or two) out-performing the rest? Stop wasting time on the ones that aren’t working and focus on the one or two that are. It will save you time and give you time to focus on that core community.

Create an editorial calendar.

We create editorial calendars 30 days in advance, so we know what is going to post when – because you have to have a purpose behind every action you do. You can do this one or two weeks in advance if it’s easier, but have a plan and be purposeful about it!

Put your customers first.

There’s a rebellion coming, and your marketing will soon be in your customer’s hands. Put their needs first – solve their problems and stop pushing why you are better.

Get involved in something locally this year.

Not only is personal philanthropy important, but having your business involved is too. However, do it for the right reasons. Don’t do it to get your logo on a banner or your name mentioned in an article. Do it with a servant’s heart and you will be rewarded.

Use your data to guide your decisions.

Study your social media insights, Google Analytics, and email marketing reports and see what your audience is doing. What type of content are they clicking on? What are they responding to? Let these results help guide what you need to provide in your content marketing strategy.

Start a referral program.

In a time when customer loyalty is at an all-time low, reward the loyal customers you have by offering rewards and incentives when they refer their friends and family!

Add a photo booth in your store or office.

If allowed, set up a place for customers to take pictures and post to social media! Use a backdrop with your logo, or just a plain wall with some props. This is an easy way for your customers to share the love on social media.

Get stickers printed.

If you’ve been to a coffee shop, chances are you’ve seen laptops covered in brand stickers. Why not get some of your own and hand them out! You can get some awesome ones from Sticker Mule – that’s where mine came from in the picture below!

BTW, want one to the awesome stickers in the picture above? Just email us and let us know you want one!

Get in front of the camera.

Video is here whether we like it or not, so grin and bear it and get in front of the camera! Your customers want to see you (and/or your staff), so take them on a tour, or just say hi. You can even do it very easily and take advantage of Instagram Stories.

Get your staff involved.

Employee advocacy is huge. Get your staff involved in sharing content – and creating it as well! It will show off your business online and can provide some light-hearted entertainment as well.

Personalize.

This will forever be an idea because it’s what marketing is becoming – personalization for our customers, making the user experience unique. From emails, to ad campaigns, make sure you are tailoring your efforts specifically to them, the customers.

What ideas will you be taking advantage of this year? Share with us some of your favorites that either worked for you or someone you know!

in Advertising / Entrepreneurship / Featured / News / Social Media 0 comments

March 13, 2018January 13, 2019 by Mandy Edwards

Adapt Your Social Media Marketing or Fail

Social media marketing is changing.

The way you post, what you post, who you target – the who, what, when, wheres – it’s all changing. If you’re not adapting how you use social media to market your business, you’re going to fail. And fail bad.

In the past year, here’s what we’ve seen:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg folks.

In the beginning – way back in the early 2000’s – you could just post whatever you wanted on social media and people would see. Much like the movie Field of Dreams, where the main character was told, “if you build it, he will come.” And he built it, and he came. Now that was dealing with a baseball diamond, the Black Sox, and a dad, but the theory is the same. You could post on social media and people would see it, and theoretically, come to your page/store/website. There was no algorithm dictating who saw what.

Fast forward to 2018 and the landscape is vastly different. Everything is methodical. Everything is done purposefully. There is a science and a psychology behind social media marketing – and it’s changing.

People do not want to see sales pitches. They want to see content that matters and relates to them.

People do not want to see fluff (think of all of those stupid videos and gag-tastic memes/quotes/graphics in your feed). They want to see meat – content with substance.

People do not want to have their time wasted by a business posting meaningless “Share this to win a $25 gift card!” posts and their feed cluttered by 25 friends sharing it – which, by the way, is AGAINST FACEBOOK RULES TO DO. People want to see authentic content.

What are you posting online? What’s on your Facebook page right now? Instagram? Twitter? LinkedIn?

Put yourself in your follower’s shoes. Are you posting something that would make you stop and read it, or just scroll on by. Think about that for awhile and think about that when you post next.

Social media marketing is going through an evolution right now. It came on the scene, people exploited it, everyone became an “expert” on using it as a marketing tool (when very few are legitimately versed in it), and now as the tide is changing, everything is being sifted out. The fluff content is getting penalized on Facebook. The fake experts are being called out. Social media marketing is changing.

But how?

It’s all coming back to the nuts and bolts of what I call marketing 101. Relationship-building. And it’s not a one-way street. You have to be active and respond to everyone. Let me type that again – you have to be active and respond to everyone.

People have said they want meaningful, accurate, authentic, and informative content. Adapt your content as such. Stop the fluff. Post the content that will draw them in, make them act. Reach out like the human being you are and build a relationship through social media with your community. Use social media as the communication tool, like the telephone.

People want more personalized experiences, especially in retail (read more about it here). Use social media to tailor the experience they have with you to them. Feature customers. Congratulate customers.

AT&T way back in the day had an advertising phrase – “Reach out and touch someone.” Apply that to your social media marketing. Reach out to your followers and touch them. Create an emotional connection that will turn them into life-long customers. It’s all about the relationship.

Social media marketing is going to be like Darwin’s theory of evolution – the strongest will survive and those who adapt with outlive the rest.

So how are you going to adapt?

in Advertising / Featured / General / Social Media 0 comments

October 31, 2017October 8, 2017 by Mandy Edwards

5 Ingredients For A Successful Holiday Social Advertising Campaign

Whether or not we want to believe it, the holiday season is upon us. We see turkeys and pumpkin pie everywhere we go. The pre-Black Friday sales are going on. Christmas music is starting to filter through our radio stations.

Is your business ready?

The holiday season is one time of year that it seems advertising dollars are unlimited based on the traditional ads we see. Social advertising, however, has been slow to warm up to those levels. I believe that social advertising is more effective in reaching your audience – and this is coming from a former print advertising sales girl.

If you are using social advertising this holiday season, you want to make sure you are getting your biggest bang for your buck. In this article, I am going to share with you 5 tips for a successful holiday social advertising campaign.

You’ll find out –

Why having a budget is important.
Why you need to get creative.
Why you need to know your audience.
How targeting works for you.
Why tracking is a requirement.

Know your advertising budget.

In a perfect world, businesses would have advertising budgets as big as Santa Claus’ toy bag. With an unlimited amount of money to spend, just imagine what businesses could do. Unfortunately, that is not the case in our world. Company budgets are run tight, often cutting sales and marketing first. When you advertise online and do not set specific start and end dates, it’s very easy to run up a high advertising bill. That’s the last thing company needs in the 4th quarter.

Having a budget is important because:

It controls cost. You can keep track of where the money is being spent accurately.
It’s easier to calculate ROI when it’s over. When you track the response of your ad against how much you spent, it’s easier to figure out that elusive number as compared to traditional print or broadcast ads.
It shows you just how much you can accomplish with social advertising when putting it up to a traditional form of advertising.

Think outside the box.

Since so many companies are vying for your customers’ dollars, the gloves really come off where creativity is concerned. This is a time of year when you need to start thinking outside the box and leave your comfort zone. You need to be seen and heard among the Targets, Macy’s and Wal-Marts of the world. This is where creativity comes in. Think of the successful holiday advertising campaigns you’ve seen. The ones that come to mind to me are:

Coca-Cola. The Polar Bears are so endearing that it makes an emotional connection with the audience.
Hershey’s Kisses. The Kisses as bells playing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is my favorite holiday TV commercial. They have aired the same commercial every year for as long as I can remember. Continuity definitely says something.
Elf Yourself from Office Max. 9 years later, people are still getting elfed each year.

Now take a look at what made these successful – it wasn’t your normal run-of-the-mill advertising – they set out to really connect with people. Whether it was from an animated character, musical chocolates or making an elf in your image – they all started as something outside the box.

Know who your audience actually is.

Ask any business who their audience is and you’ll see a lot of similarities – people who like to spend money and have money are just two. Knowing who your audience is and being able to relate to them is key. You’ll know exactly what to say – and how to say it. The way you’d phrase an ad you want moms to see would be much different from ads geared towards teens.

For example, you are a clothing store targeting teenage girls. For an ad targeting their moms, you would say something like “We help 14 year olds look like 14 year olds.” (Disclaimer: I’m a mom of a tween – trust me, clothes these days do anything but make them look their age – moms are looking for ones that do) For the tweens, it would be, “Look totes adorbs & wow your friends.” Just knowing how tween girls talk helps you relate to them and get in front of them easier.

Knowing your audience is much different than just knowing the demographic stats. Know what they like, how they talk, who they interact with. That will help you put together a more successful campaign.

Targeting is your friend.

Once you really know who your audience is, you know who and how to target them. Facebook and Twitter have hands-down, the best targeting options out there in the realm of social advertising. With these two platforms, you can get in front of your competitor’s followers (Twitter), target people based on their net worth (Facebook), get in front of people talking about or watching certain TV shows (Twitter) or target trendy moms specifically (Facebook), just to name a few.

Targeting will help you:

Use your advertising budget more effectively.
Get you in front the exact person you want to reach.
Stay within the goals of your campaign. Your ad won’t be the needle in the haystack.
Separate yourself from your competitor.

Track your ad’s performance again and again and… again.

Any social advertising platform includes analytics on how your ad is performing. Knowing what these metrics mean and how they are performing will determine the success of your campaign.

Tracking can show you:

What wording and/or graphics work best. Use A/B testing to see what resonates with your audience the most.
Your ROI. With social advertising analytics, you can see the number of impressions for your ad, the clicks and if you have a conversion tracking pixel installed on your website, the number of conversions. Take your number and compare it with what you spend and bada-bing – you have your ROI. Ask a print or broadcast ad rep if they can get that specific.
How wise you are using your advertising dollars. This does relate some to ROI, but you can watch your ad and add or subtract money from your budget at any time. Is your ad off the charts? Add some more money to it! Is it totally bombing out? Then lower it.

Not only can these 5 tips be applied to your holiday social advertising campaign, but also to your everyday ads you run online.

Social advertising is going to become the dominant form of advertising. Just watch over the next 5 years or so. With people using their mobile devices more for internet searches and social networking or just doing pretty much everything online, it’s just a matter of time before we see more social ads than we do on TV or radio. Fortunately, social advertising is affordable for every business from your mom and pop store on the corner to the behemoths like Wal-Mart or Target.

Question is – how are you going to make it work for you? I hope these 5 tips help you out this holiday season. Have a tip you want to share? Comment below and let me know!

photo credit: roitberg via photopin cc

in Advertising / Ask Mandy Q&A / Social Media 1 comments

October 24, 2017October 25, 2017 by Mandy Edwards

Facebook Marketing 101: Where Do You Begin?

For all the bad press Facebook has gotten recently in regards to fake news, Russia, and the removal of advertising options, it’s still one of the first places you need to go to start your social media strategy.

So why use Facebook?

79% of American adult internet users are using Facebook (Pew Research Center)
76% of Facebook users log in daily (Pew Research Center)
As of July 2016, there were over 2 billion searches per day on Facebook (TechCrunch)
For my local readers – approximately 68,000 people in Bulloch County alone, ages 18+ on Facebook (which also translates into approximately 51,680 Bulloch County residents logging in each day to Facebook).

Of course, you do not need statistics to tell you why you need to use Facebook to market your business. I could list over 100 statistics to show you why you need to be on there. Simply ask people how they stay in touch with people and how they find out what’s going on. I guarantee you more than half of your answers will be ‘Facebook’.

That being said, I’ve put together a short and sweet primer below on Facebook Marketing 101, which originated from a Facebook Marketing class I taught at and for my local Chamber of Commerce. Let’s get started.

If you are going to use Facebook (and you should), where do you start?

Start with your “WHY”. Why are you using Facebook in the first place? Like anything you do on social media, everything you do on Facebook should come from your “why” and every goal you set should help you achieve it. If your actions to not attribute back to your “why”, start over.

If you are using Facebook, who am I going to target?

When thinking about who you are targeting, think about your “why” from above. Ask yourself these three questions:

Why are you targeting them?
Will targeting this group help you reach your goal in using Facebook?
Is this group someone you want to actually spend money with you? (Remember, not everyone is your client/customer)

Like I mentioned above, if these groups do not help you achieve the goal of your ‘why’ statement, start over.

Now that I’ve decided to market on Facebook, what do I post and how often?

Think about your target audience – their likes, interests, etc. – and craft your content strategy around that. What is your online voice? Your Facebook presence is the digital extension of your brand. When establishing your voice – are you fun or serious? Sarcastic or punny? Are there common phrases your business uses? Take all of this into consideration.

Facebook did research this year into what people are looking for in their Facebook content. First, they found that people on Facebook want and value meaning, informative stories.

In their algorithm, Facebook looks at a user’s personal signals, such as “how close someone is to the person or page posting, stories they’d want to talk to their friends and family about, spend time reading, and videos they’d spend time watching.” Also taken into account is the post’s overall engagement.

People value content that is informative as well. Think about what you take time to read or share, or even comment on. It is content you find meaningful and informative. You should put yourself in the your audience’s shoes and post the type of content they will spend time on, much like you would.

Watch out for promotional messaging. 46% of Facebook users will unfollow a brand on social for posting too many promotional messages (Sprout Social). A good ratio to keep is 80% educational/20% promotional. For every self-promotional messages you put out, you need 8 that are not. You can share articles relating to your industry, tips, behind the scenes of your business, etc. Just do NOT publish sales pitch after sales pitch.

Second, Facebook found that people on Facebook value accurate, authentic content. Facebook users have told Facebook that authentic stories are the ones that resonate with them the most, so Facebook ranks those types of posts higher in the News Feed. Some tips from Facebook include:

Clear headlines – do not mislead the person viewing the headline.
Spam – “do not deliberately try and game the News Feed to get more distribution.”
Accurate Information – make sure what you are posting is true.

Be friendly and helpful in your posts, not snarky and sarcastic. Emotional connections drive Facebook shares. The science behind a viral post rests on our knee-jerk emotional reactions to it. The more extreme our emotional reaction to it, the more likely you’ll share it. In psychologist Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions concept, he identified the emotions that drive our sharing behavior. The inner circle denotes the eight emotions to think about when creating content.

Make sure to respond. People want you to respond to them. 68% of consumers want brands to participate in conversations they’re mentioned in, and 83% want brands to respond to them (Sprout Social). And the percentage of posts that go unresponded to? 86%.

Create your own graphics and if you do not, know where you are getting them from. Make sure any graphics you use are on-brand and most importantly, make sure you own the rights to them! You can create your own at Canva (a personal favorite!) or download free graphics at Pixabay, UnSplash, or Pexels.

Let’s briefly take a look at the six main post types on Facebook:

Status – simple updates, seen more commonly from your friends than pages.

Links – Trick: Post the status you want, then the link, remove the link preview altogether and add a picture to the post. This will get more reach than simply inserting a link and having the link preview on. Keep in mind, you can no longer edit the link preview!

Video

Photos and Photo Albums

Products. If you have a Facebook Store, you can add products into your posts.

Take action: Sign Up, Get Messages.
- CTA posts to encourage your fan to take action immediately. Use sparingly.

Your post frequency depends on your business – it’s not a one size fits all, so be weary of every “Best Time to Post” article you read online. My recommendation? Post minimum 3-5 times per week, no more than twice per day, unless you’re at an event. To find out the best times for your business, look at your Facebook Insights to see when your fans are online and schedule/post around those peak times. (see example below).

What about Facebook Advertising?

Everyone is doing Facebook ads, you honestly, you may as well too. With Facebook’s algorithm, it’s almost a requirement to boost some posts in order for your content to be seen. But don’t worry – it will not bust your marketing budget.

On Facebook, desktop ads have 8.1x higher click-through rates and mobile ads have 9.1x higher click-through rates than normal web ads. Social media advertising is the most cost-effective way to advertise in this day and time, with Facebook leading the way with the various, and amazing, options available to businesses.

Here are some easy steps to setting up a Facebook Ad –

Step 1: Figure out what you are promoting and select an ad type. When running a Facebook ad, you need to know what you are promoting and why you are promoting it (much like your overall social media and/or Facebook strategy).
- There are three decisions to make –

What are you promoting?

Will your ad run via auction or reach & frequency?

What type of ad will you choose? (Hint: Awareness ads are best for small budgets)

Step 2: Select an audience. Selecting your audience is the most important part – more important than the ad itself. When selecting your audience, you are narrowing in to target the ideal customer/client.
- Your choices are to either –

Create an audience from the options you are given (which can make unlimited combinations).

Use a custom audience.

Use a lookalike audience.

Step 3: Ad Placement
- Your choices for placement are:

Desktop

Desktop Right Side

Mobile

Instagram

Audience Network (this lets you extend your ad campaigns beyond Facebook to reach your audiences on mobile apps, mobile websites and videos. We use the same Facebook targeting, measurement and delivery to make sure each ad on Audience Network helps you reach your campaign goals at the most cost-effective price.)

Instant Articles (See more here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/825186870955247 )

In-stream Video

If you’re not sure, Facebook will recommend using the default placements for your objective:

Brand awareness (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram

Engagement (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram

Video views (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

App installs: Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

Traffic (for website clicks and app engagement): Facebook and Audience Network

Product catalog sales: Facebook and Audience Network

Conversions: Facebook and Audience Network

For more information on ad placements, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/175741192481247?helpref=related

Step 4: Set an ad budget and schedule
- Ah, the budget. Here’s where you determine how much you are going spend for your ad. You have two choices: daily budget (how much you spend per day) or lifetime budget (how much you want to spend for the entire campaign). Yes, you can run an ad for as little as $1/day but not every ad will let you do that. Here are the spend minimums:
  - If the ad set gets charged for impressions, its daily budget must be at least $1 a day
  - If the ad set gets charged for clicks, Likes, video views, or post engagement, its daily budget must be at least $5 a day
  - If the ad set gets charged for low frequency events like offer claims or app installs, its budget must be at least $40 a day
  - For more information on ad spend minimums, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/203183363050448

Step 5: The ad. Now the second-most important part of the whole process – creating your ad. You can choose an existing post as your ad or you can create one from scratch. If you are creating an ad from scratch, you have 5 formats to choose from –

Note: Formats will vary based on the ad objective you have chosen.

Step 6: Track your ad. How do you know if you Facebook advertising is working (or did work)?
- You can view the results of your ads in the Campaign Dashboard and view each ad (as shown above). You can customize your reports through Columns and Breakdown.

If you’d like a more detailed guide to Facebook Advertising, you can download my Facebook Advertising 101 Guide here.

Of course, how do I know if my Facebook efforts are working?

Welcome to Facebook Analytics!

There are many programs on the web that can pull detailed information for you about your Facebook page and your Facebook content (Sprout Social, Simply Measured, etc.), but Facebook Insights work just as well.

Here are some main metrics to track:

Engagement
- Clicking a link, sharing your post, making a reaction, or leaving a comment
- The more people interact with your content, the more they will see it and the more it will show up in Facebook’s algorithm because it signals to Facebook it’s popular.
Reach
- The number of people your content is seen by by either paid or organic efforts.
Impressions
- How many times your posts were seen (does include multiple views by a single person).
On your website – how much traffic Facebook is referring to your site. You can view this in Google Analytics.
Page Likes & Follows
- Look for growth each month. Give yourself a goal of 5-10% growth each month.
Video Metrics to track:
- Video retention – how long people are watching
- Video engagement
Advertising Metrics to track:
- CTR (click-thru-rate). Average across all industries is 0.9%. When Facebook sees your ads are getting impressions but no clicks, it logically assumes your audience doesn’t find the ad relevant. This can result in paying more per click and overall poor performance.
- CPC (cost per click) & CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Average CPC across all industries is $1.72.
- CPA (cost per action). Average cost per action across all industries is $18.68.
- Ad frequency

That was A LOT of information thrown at your about Facebook Marketing. But it’s not all that hard and it’s easy to manage. Here are some tips:

Schedule Posts on the Page or through a program such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
Check analytics at least once per week.
Have a Facebook advertising budget.
Do not be afraid to go out of the box and try something new!

Facebook can be a great place for your business to see success in the social sphere. If this still seems daunting to you, don’t worry – we offer Facebook management in our social media management services and would be happy to talk with you about it!

Did I leave anything out? If you have questions about your Facebook strategy, contact me or comment below!

in Advertising / Entrepreneurship / Featured / Social Media 0 comments