4 Common Facebook Marketing Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid
June 7, 2018 By Ashley Orndorff, aka Marketing Geek
As one of the largest social media networks, Facebook can be a valuable asset to your marketing efforts. With its large reach, it’s likely your audience is on Facebook, which makes it a great platform to connect with current and potential customers. As you get started, watch out for these 4 common Facebook marketing mistakes businesses should avoid:
1. Focusing Only on Self-Promotion
Social media networks are communities. You have to provide value to the community if you want to get anything out of it. You have to reach the right people at the right time and give them a reason to want to connect with you. This means your posts cannot be all about you or all about selling. Many businesses just getting started on Facebook tend to share posts that are all about their business all the time.
Sure, you want to promote your business, but it needs to be balanced. You need to provide value to your potential customers. This could mean curating and sharing articles from other experts in your industry and sharing helpful information from your own blog. It could also mean sharing motivating or inspiring quotes or funny jokes.
To become a page people want to like and engage with on Facebook, you need to figure out what they want and give it to them. Are they on Facebook to be inspired, to get ideas for a project, to laugh, to learn, or something else? Figure it out, and provide that for them while maintaining your brand. You can talk about your company, promote your business, and share company-related updates – just remember to keep it balanced.
2. Ignoring Conversations
Facebook is a social network, with an emphasis on social. You don’t have to pose a question in every single post you share, but you should be trying to reach out and start conversations with the people who like your page. And, if they happen to message you or comment on a post, answer them!
People value businesses who respond quickly and value their input. By responding, you are not only letting potential customers know you are listening to them, but you are also demonstrating that you value them. Both are very important to positive customer interactions.
If you don’t respond, you’re sending potential customers the message that you don’t value them. People don’t work with or buy from business who don’t value them. This is particularly important with reviews, both positive and negative.
3. Responding Emotionally
Facebook is a popular network for reviews. Customers will be sharing their experiences on your page, both the good and the bad. You need to respond to these; otherwise, your brand’s reputation could be in trouble.
One of the biggest and most common Facebook marketing mistakes small businesses make here is responding to negative reviews emotionally, usually in anger. A simple Google search for any variation of “Facebook brand fails” will bring you plenty of examples to help identify what not to do.
Negative reviews can be hard to hear. However, as long as you’re not being trolled, they indicate a problem somewhere in your business. For every one customer who complains about 26 others have remained silent. So, pay attention to your negative reviews, and respond to them.
First, take a few minutes to walk away and calm down. Then, consider the review with an open mind. Determine where the problem occurred, how large of a problem it is, and what you can do to fix it. Next, draft a calm, professional response in a document outside of Facebook. Thank the customer for their feedback, apologize and own the mistake, and then attempt to bring the conversation offline for resolution with that specific customer. Review it and have a few other people review it before you post to ensure your tone remains professional.
After that, make sure you take steps within your business to ensure that problem will not happen again. If one customer complained, it likely happened for multiple customers; many of whom may have just silently left and gone to your competitors. If the same issue happens again because you didn’t do anything to fix it, the backlash will be even larger from the next customer who complains because a previous interaction for the same problem already exists.
Any feedback you get from a customer is invaluable – make sure you’re listening. And, if the feedback is public like it is on Facebook, make sure you’re responding. After all, everyone who visits your page will be watching, and then evaluating your business based on what they see. Check out our Beginner’s Guide to Online Reputation Management for more tips managing your brand’s reputation and responding to reviews.
4. Not Using Paid Ads
Organic reach on Facebook continues to drop for businesses and pages. As a business, you can still have success on Facebook without paid ads, but it takes a lot more resources to accomplish than most small businesses have available. That’s where paid ads and boosting posts come into play.
A small budget goes a long way on Facebook. Granted, the bigger your budget, the more results you’re likely to bring in. However, a smaller budget can still bring in a lot of engagement and leads, if you’re setting your content up right. You’ll need to set up an account for Facebook Ad Manager. Once you do, you’ll be able to create audiences based on your potential customers’ interests, demographics, and more.
In doing so, whatever budget you do have for ads or boosting posts will be used to help you reach the segments of people that matter for your business. If you’re still skeptical, test it out with a small amount on a post, see what happens, and then adjust upwards from there. Even if you’re already doing well with organic reach on Facebook, boosting posts is a great way to supplement your efforts and continue to grow.
These are just a few of the common Facebook marketing mistakes to avoid. And, engagement on Facebook is great, but getting Facebook users to visit your website and convert into leads is even better. Contact us for a meeting of the MINDs to make sure your website is up to the challenge and performing its best!
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