06 Jun Facebook – Pay to Play

Facebook is a dynamic market place with over 1 billion potential customers in one place; it is a Marketers paradise – if you know how to use it effectively.
PAY
It became essential to pay when late last year, Facebook acknowledged that brands would connect with less of an audience on unpaid posts. In fact brands are getting less exposure right across the board.
While Ad prices have gone up, Facebook has make no initiative to increase Ad frequency while News Feed, social media’s most coveted billboard has been prioritized focusing less on advertizing and more on personal news in the users’ streams.
The cost of your advertising on Facebook depends on the size of your audience and your budget, but from all indication you will get a much smaller audience than you anticipated.
So what exactly are you paying for?
You are paying to utilize the 1 trillion connections of Facebook to expose your brand and turn a profit.
PLAY
You might be paying to play on Facebook but you need to play well in order to get paid.
Most Facebook Marketing campaigns die a fairly quick death and it is partially due to the fact that Marketers fail to utilize insights to their advantage.
In the era of Facebook Marketing it seems like consumer feedback and market insights are no longer utilized by marketing managers to ensure that a product or service is represented properly, and to the right people.
Many internet marketers prefer to use third party sites to give information that Facebook Insights do not. Some interesting sites are SocialBakers, EdgeRankChecker and CrowdBooster. These services give administrators a picture of how people are responding to their campaigns and how campaigns can be altered to make them better, more targeted and more engaging.
There is no one set Facebook Marketing template.
Some fan bases hate when they are bombarded with post and updates, others look out for the posts because they cater to what the fans want to see. Instead of cluttering fan pages with numerous and irrelevant information which can be conveniently hidden from timelines or blocked, minimizing the posts, or better yet, finding out what your fans want to see or hear from you is a smart alternative.
Many successful marketing campaigns integrate some form of interaction beyond liking and sharing. By using Facebook Insights or one of the third party sites you can get answers to questions such as:

• Do my fans like videos, pictures or text messages? Can I combine them for a more effective campaign?
• Do my fans use the discounts or other incentives they gain when they like a post?
• Are my posts discussed, or do they start a conversation on the page?
• Is my campaign targeted enough to  make an impression on consumers.

That being said Facebook Marketing can be effective if you target your audience, use their insights to your advantage, engage them and ensure that your product page uniquely portrays the culture of the company.
If you have to Pay to Play then pay attention to the details and your investment will pay off in the end.