Social media has become a ‘pay-to-play’ arena, if you’re not paying, you’re not playing.
This is a very true fact in the world of social media for businesses now-a-days. The life of organic reach has reached its end. If you want your content to reach enough people you have to boost it, it’s as simple as that. But today I don’t want to talk about getting likes, comments and shares on a boosted post, today I want to talk about where in 2019 businesses SHOULD be putting their money – Advertising.
I understand there is instant gratification in boosting posts for engagement, trust me I love seeing a post with 1,000 likes and over 100 comments, but Facebook has recently come out with a report stating less than 1% of retailers’ revenue comes from consumers who engage with posts on Facebook/Instagram. This number may seem extremely low and this does not mean that the followers you have on social media are not loyal and true customers, but they are not your only opportunity and we need to utilize advertising to reach the consumers who will actually complete the call to action we want.
Reps from Facebook have started pushing businesses and agencies to switch more money into campaigns driving unique reach, website traffic, directions to a location, and website conversions (for sites with e-commerce). These campaigns have proven to result in more reach and conversions (click to call, in-store visits, online purchases) for less cost. The average CPC (cost per click) for Facebook advertising is below a dollar, with CPE (cost per engagement) being much higher.
And I know what you are all thinking, “but, how do we report on Social Media?” All Social Media platforms have the ability to track events on websites utilizing a piece of code placed onto the backend of the site, but this is limited to website conversions, so reporting on the conversions we ultimately want such as, purchases, can be difficult when a retail store relies on in-store purchases and not e-commerce (website purchases). This is a difficulty most digital marketing has had to battle with for years, BUT Facebook/Instagram has recently updated their tracking to allow for what they call “offline conversions.” Basically, this means that we can upload your store’s POS data dump into Facebook’s conversion tacking system and they can match the consumer who purchased something in-store to the profile who engaged with your advertising on Facebook. This new reporting is bridging the gap between online behavior and real-world actions, which means there is that much more of a reason to shift your spend away from boosting a post for likes to advertising to consumers who are truly qualified to purchase something instore.
The bottom line is don’t let instant gratification let you miss out on the true potential of your social media advertising.