It's no secret that the portion of a brand's Facebook fans who see posts that aren't supported by ad spend is dropping. Recent changes in Facebook’s algorithm (EdgeRank) mean that the visibility of posts is only set to further decrease. Brands rushed to embrace Facebook because not only was it where their audiences were interacting, but it offered a good return for relatively little expenditure. However, it looks like the days of free reach for brands are seriously numbered. Now a listed company, Facebook has to demonstrate to investors that it is able to monetise the platform. So will we see brands deserting Facebook or will they seek to adapt their strategy?

For end users Facebook is free. This is not entirely true for brands as to stay competitive they’ll most likely need to allocate a budget to Facebook marketing. Brands and agencies spent large amounts of money on Facebook's advertising platform to recruit fans. "The more fans I have, the more people I'll reach with my stories". But Facebook never reached 100% of any page's fan base. The average figure was 16% until, recently, Facebook decided to reduce that number to approximately 5% and will probably reduce that even further in the future.

In their defence, Facebook (non officially) argues that visibility is never free on websites (that's called advertising right?) and that since you agreed to Facebook's T&Cs, you are at Facebook's mercy of any changes. That being said, what should advertisers do? Cut off all Facebook allocated budget? Move on to another platform? Stop investing in Social Media at all?

None of the above. It might feel like Facebook has forgotten the meaning of 'fair-play' but reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated. It remains THE untouchable platform and its acquisition strategy shows that it is evolving and preparing for the future. It is still a powerful social media asset for brands. It is the most visited website (after Google) in the UK and above all it's the website where users spend the most of their time (average of at least 18 minutes per visit) on the web.

With less of your fans seeing your posts, there is only one thing is left to do - adapt. The question is, how? Let's consider this in the context of a mouth-watering case study:

Top Pizza and Fab Pizza are two competing brands selling tasty pizzas throughout London. They're young, naive and start on Facebook by each investing a total of £1,000 into social ads.

Top Pizza has zero fans. The owner wants to grow his community and decides to invest the £1,000 in recruiting fans. At the end of his recruitment campaign - the "click like to become a fan!" kind of ad gets Top Pizza 1,000 fans (average cost per fan of £1). From now on, every post they'll share on Facebook will organically reach 50 fans of these 1,000 (approx. new organic reach rate 5%)

Fab Pizza also has zero fans. The owner thinks that content is a more important message to get across and decides to spend his £1,000 on Sponsored Stories targeting his core audience. With a CPM of £10 (average cost per thousand impressions), Fab Pizza can expect a reach of 100,000 with its content, even if the page will theoretically still have zero fans at the end of the campaign.

What's the best strategy here?

Well, Fab Pizza seem to have adopted the right one as it will probably take no less than 10 years for Top Pizza to achieve the 100,000 reach of their competitor (with an average of 200 posts per year and 50 users reached every time)

Learnings:

Unless having a mandatory nice big round number to show to your boss, consider the reach before the recruitment. Focus on content and boost it with Sponsored Stories. If your content is good enough, getting it in front of your audience will give you the results you want. It will also attract "organic" fans on your page that are genuinely interested in your content.

Don't forget that people are primarily on Facebook to connect with friends and family: having dozens of ads showing up in their newsfeeds wasn't specified when they sign-up to the service. No one enjoys intrusive advertising with no value or social context so the more relevant and compelling you can make your Facebook content, the better.

Advertising on social networks is a great way to reach a broader and a very targeted audience but brands still need to understand the importance of relevance in social contexts. This insight will help you to create great content and generate a tangible return. The key is to remember to always keep refining your strategy, test what worked well and build on that.

 

By Raphaël Diai, Community Manager at Collider. 

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