How to Expand Digital Marketing Reach despite Decline in Facebook’s Organic Reach – Data & Metrics that Matter

This is the last and final part of ‘How to Expand Digital Marketing Reach despite Decline in Facebook’s Organic Reach’ series.

The only KPI that matters when it comes to social is reach. The sign of an effective digital strategy includes one that optimizes each level of buy cycle. However, a marketer should go beyond Facebook’s metrics like PTAT and count, and venture into optimizing all social efforts for ROI.

The campaign team should report on social referral traffic that comes to the site. The way to know contents that work is by studying posts that help drive many site visits. It is vital to monitor sales and click-through traffic from campaigns to the website by making us of Google Analytics, using UTM parameters for unique links. Tracking sales and ROI can be done to know what’s working if the brand has an e-commerce presence. The cost per subscriber and email acquisition should be done across all social networks.

It is also important to always remember that the value of social media does not lie in just measuring direct responses but leveraging the learning from campaigns to improve performance across the entire spectrum of marketing programs. For example, one may come to know that participants of a social promotion are interested in an offer – addressing this fact; one can include retargeting pixels in campaigns to serve only relevant advertising in order to drive more conversions. Another strategy could be, as a part of social giveaways, capture email addresses and then following up with targeted email offers – to increase response rate by interacting with segmented audiences.

One can learn from social, the content kinds that work with consumers and the subjects that they enjoy interacting about. Then, make use of this knowledge to generate new ideas for campaigns and to allow better crafting of advertisement content/copy and better re-evaluation of merchandising.

Data mining can help make better choices for all programs, increase the buy cycle and eventually drive more revenue for the organization.

How to Expand Digital Marketing Reach despite Decline in Facebook’s Organic Reach – Channel Diversification

Although Facebook may be the most popular network among social networks but there are other networks that are fast growing and can help brands achieve success. Marketers should develop strategies for such networks to take full advantage of them in a time when Facebook reach may start declining. As each of those networks is distinct with a discrete behaviour, every different network requires a tailored approach. What may have been successful for Pininterest and Instagram may not apply on another network.

In the real world, one may find it easier to establish reach on Instagram whereas Twitter for achieving word-of-mouth and engagement with users. Additionally, the architecture of Pininterest makes it perfect for commerce and driving traffic. To harness the best out of networks, the marketers need to constantly track and harness the impact of campaigns on activity and conversions, and then optimize based on what seemingly works. Priority should be given in prioritizing resources, budget and right approaches that give the biggest results for a business.

Another important feature of social media that should be harnessed well is hashtags. Since, they are a common feature across social media networks, marketers must put them to use and unify promotions across networks. This allows followers to participate in whatever way they like, enabling more reach for a contest. Branded hashtags, another feature of social media is ideal for aggregating content generated by the users like jokes, videos, clips, photos etc. – fans inspire more contributions from their friends and followers when they share creative and visual contents on social media. On top of this, marketers can pull all posts and turn it into a dynamic and attractive feed, resulting in even more participation.

Marketers should not limit campaigns to social networks alone, they should run multiple campaigns that touch every part of a consumer journey and captures audiences across multiple channels. An 88 percent of marketers believe that multi-screen campaigns that are integrated will become inevitable in the next few years. Trans-media campaigns that are well connected start conversation and captures audiences across marketing mix.

Some tips on running successful campaigns that are connected:

It is important to promote campaign hashtag across all channels of which, social media is just one and others like direct email, radio, television etc. A campaign hashtag can be embedded on the brand’s website increasing visibility and eventually participation. One can also monitor real-time responses to a campaign and showcase through a branded collection published on the campaign’s website or a landing page. A gallery of in-store digital photos of users can also be featured encouraging a brand’s in-person customers to interact through digital and mobile. Campaigns can also be shared across email and social networks to further increase reach.

As part of the campaign, email addresses should be collected that can be used to target in future campaigns. Emails can be made social to help extend reach – web versions of the same email can be created with share buttons. It is vital to feature social channels and promote special offers or social sweepstakes. Driving ecommerce and site visits can be achieved by including coupons and links to products in a campaign.

How to Expand Digital Marketing Reach despite Decline in Facebook’s Organic Reach – Drive Consumer Content Sharing using Social Campaigns

Consumers today are more empowered than any other time to create and share content, thanks to the emergence of content-sharing networks like Instagram. Despite decline in organic search, brands can still increase their reach through consumer sharing. This is done by encouraging followers and fans to create and share content by mending bonds with them. In a 2013 survey by Nielsen Global on Trust in Advertising, 84 percent respondent trusted word-of-mouth than any other means as source. The idea is to attract new customers by incentivizing current consumers to share a brand’s message.

How can you make use of word-of-mouth for expanding reach? Some tips:

Marketers can create contests and subsequent giveaways that provide incentives. This can come through one of the many social marketing apps that can be used to run contests, which provide incentives when users enter quizzes, sweepstakes or take part in polls etc. Generally, customers enjoy sharing amazing offers with friends.

Encourage customers to promote existing campaign to their friends and family through extra benefits such as extra chance at winning a sweepstake for sharing. Building sharing benefits among people can do wonders in promoting a campaign. Another strategy that works well in drawing engagement is by running a photo contest. You can start by asking followers to submit a number of photos and share the campaign, also encourage their friends and family to visit and vote.

A close association with a celebrity influencer can help get outstanding reach and participation. Influential brands and celebrities with a big Facebook base can offer a potential massive exposure for your campaign if they share your campaign with their followers. It is an efficient way to reach masses quickly than building one.

Partnering with brands that can help your business by tagging your brand in their posts can lead to wider reach. This tagging feature of brands in posts has been available on Facebook for some time now. This can be turned into advantage by working together on partner campaigns.

The St. Louis Blues is a perfect example of a brand that made use of these strategies. They ran numerous Offerpop Referral campaigns where their fans filled out their information through a sign up form following which referred their friends to like their page. They were rewarded with exclusive access to games and attractive prizes. Blues pushed their campaign across different networks including their website and they witnessed a 65 percent of people visiting referral forms signing up who went onto referring their friends.

End of part 3 – part 4 will be posted soon.

How to Expand Digital Marketing Reach despite Decline in Facebook’s Organic Reach – Post-Performance Facebook Measurement and Optimization

This is the second part of 4 part article series that explains how marketers can reach out to audiences on Facebook despite the recent decline in Facebook’s organic reach.

If the recent research is to be believed then the engagement on Facebook has actually increased since the changes were introduced. The content that users are likely to interact with, Facebook will still serve them, which means the existing loyal fans will still get to see your content. This calls for marketers to shift focus to metrics that indicate deeper relationships with the consumer; measuring and optimizing engagement.

Ways to increase Facebook Post Engagement

Marketers need to promote the right content and do their ad-spend on content that can make an impact; promotions, coupons, product listings etc. Since everyone loves deals, they should post coupons and sales. They can increase likes and shares by mixing content with latest offers. They should also post a variety of contents like photos, videos, links and status updates. However, they should refrain from posts like ‘share us with your friends’ or ‘Like our page’, which may be taken as violations by Facebook and the post may get penalized.

Sharing links is another important aspect on Facebook that gets preferential treatment on the newsfeed, as per Facebook own admission. The more a post with links is commented on, the more it is likely to reappear on the news feed later of users. Moreover, linking to a brand’s marketing campaign and website can drive conversions from Facebook that may be a marketer’s key metrics to measuring a campaign’s success.

It is also important to time the posts based on days and times when they are likely to get most traction. This can be known by making use of Facebook’s analytics to find out when most friends are online. Marketers should also make use of geo-targeting for posts that may be only relevant to certain targeted audience from a certain region. Another important aspect that gets ignored is interaction with Facebook users, which gets ignored by most brands. A community sense can be created by asking questions and then responding to them on posts. It all boils down to creating quality and informative posts that attracts users and motivates them to click.

If we take the case study of Logo TV in US, they manage over 30 Facebook pages for their digital properties and television programs. They effectively made use of Offerpop’s Posts feature to study what kinds of content work. And, with the use of Offerpop’s customizable keyword tagging, their team created a series of content categories for contents they shared on Facebook including for popular subjects like Lady Gaga and other broader content types. The purpose of this keyword-based rule was to ensure that future filtering of right category against content is done automatically. This helped them drive organic growth of their Facebook pages upwards substantially.