Part II-B: The Business (continued)
Picking up right where we left off on the previous post let's keep discussing the campaign types offered by Facebook. All marketing efforts need an objective...a result to justify the time, money, efforts, and personnel needed to execute the campaign. While the measuring stick of these objectives do not necessarily need to be monetarily based, the long term goal is always to funnel the intended target to conversion. For example, the objective of one marketing campaign may be lead generation and the acquisition of email addresses. The 'how we get those email addresses' will be explained shortly, but for now, let's just focus on the result of the objective. Can you pay your bills with email addresses? Will your employees work for a 'friends list'? Of course not...so how does this type of campaign benefit a company? Building a validated, engaging, and true email list takes time and money. Over time, sending promotional emails, drip-campaign emails, or simply brand awareness emails are designed to ultimately funnel that user down the path to conversion. So...looking back, the original investment in the lead generation campaign ultimately leads to a return in the form of a conversion in the future. There are several other benefits that was returned over that time too...information being one of them. Perhaps it took 18 email campaigns to be sent to that one individual before they convert...well, that means there are 17 emails filled with information about you, your business, your product/service, and your commitment to your customer base that has been absorbed before that user was convinced to purchase your product/service.
So how can you possibly analyze all of this AND run a business? The answer...as you might have guessed...is let others crunch the data for you. Build out the automated process using the tools at your fingertips so you can focus on other critical aspects of your business. Setting up your automated position with Facebook is more simple than most people think. Similar to the user, a business needs to set up a Facebook page (this must be linked to a user page...but that's merely for further data collection). While running through the onboarding process linking your business to Facebook, you will need to create a line of code in Facebook called the Pixel. The pixel is arguably Facebook's greatest achievement (from a business perspective). This line of code is embedded on the business website and communicates all engagement with Facebook directly...essentially transforming your website into the same data collection machine that Facebook has created on their own platform. On Part III of this series, when we discuss the 'mothership' known as Facebook, I will explain how the creation of the Pixel has branched Facebook's reach to virtually every business on its platform...thus transforming off-Facebook websites, webpages, and landing pages into additional data collection gatherers. But now...let's stick with our discussion as it relates to the business.
So now that the Pixel is defined...where do you start with the marketing? Many businesses are unaware of the business portal of Facebook. (www.business.facebook.com) It is surprising to me how unknown this is, because this is literally the command center for all Facebook activity. Without diving into the setup of this portal...perhaps we'll save that for a future post...lets get back to the campaign types offered on Facebook. As briefly mentioned in the previous post, there are three primary campaign objectives to choose from: AWARENESS, CONSIDERATION, CONVERSION. Throughout Part II of this series, we will continue to break down all three and discuss how they are different yet complimentary in building a successful marketing plan. Every person targeted on any of these campaigns are segmented and positioned for retargeting efforts on future campaigns focused on different/same objectives.
Today's post concludes with a primary focus on Awareness.
AWARENESS:
This first arm of the campaign trio is very 'advertising' based. If you need a more thorough understanding of the difference between advertising & marketing, here...I'll google it for you: CLICK HERE. Awareness campaigns offer two sub-category objectives: Brand Awareness and Reach.
Brand awareness objectives show your ads to people who are most likely to remember them. That description is actually Facebook's definition of Brand Awareness, which should tell you how accurate they are with predicting user behavior. This objective is designed to target individuals who will most likely engage with future posts targeting the same audience. For example, if Dry Goods Athletic Spray Powder ran a Brand Awareness campaign showcasing some of the benefits that the spray powder offers...the individuals that are exposed to that ad are most likely not going to convert after seeing this type of ad for the first time. However, based on their engagement history, they are more likely to engage and even convert when retargeted by Dry Goods on other campaigns. Whenever explaining brand awareness objectives to clients, I usually encourage them to think of their own (unbiased) experiences with ads that they see on Facebook. Do you purchase after seeing it once? Maybe, on an impulse buy...but generally, you need to see it a few times before even considering to want to learn more about it. Brand Awareness objectives are the first step in guiding the user into the conversion funnel.
Reach objectives are a more broad form of Brand Awareness objectives. The intention is to show your ads to the maximum number of people...period. This is the 'billboard' marketing style for Facebook. The goal is to shovel as much sh!t against the wall and see what sticks. While you are still able to target the audience to your precise specifications, the Facebook algorithm will not segment the user exposer based on behavioral history. The benefits align with that of a billboard or shotgun approach...the more eyes on the product...the more potential of conversion. Reach objectives cast a wide net to show your ads to as many eyes, on as many platforms as possible.
As mentioned in the intro to the Awareness section, the objective output is advertising based. In short, the goal is simply to plant a seed in the user's mind about your company, your products, your services, your message...hell, even just your logo. The more direct that message is, the deeper that seed is planted.
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