When To Start Facebook Ads
Published February 12, 2021
You’ve heard the buzz around advertising on social media. Before jumping in, there are three points to consider to ensure great results. We love Facebook Ads, but they aren’t something a brand can just throw money into and find success. Social media works a hell of a lot better when you have a strong organic foundation. Let’s look at three things you should achieve with your organic Facebook before jumping into paid advertisements.
Understanding Marketing Buzzwords: What are “organic” posts?
Your organic social media presence is any posts that are not paid advertisements. These posts reach your existing audience organically. By comparison, paid posts are boosted to an audience outside your typical reach.
1. Active organic social media profile
Organic social content means posts are not boosted or supported by advertising dollars. These posts are what will define your success or failures on social media. You are either providing value to your followers or you’re going to be ignored.
Having an active profile is a must have if you want success with Facebook Ads. Many people will see your ad and want to learn more about you. If they click on your profile and see that you haven’t been active in over 3 months, that will throw up stop signs. Individuals may comment or send you a message which is great! But if you let them sit unattended, you’re missing out on a valuable part of social media. Not only are you passing up a chance to talk to a potential customer, you’re missing out on engagements. Don’t throw stop signs in front of someone who’s interested in learning more about your brand. Those warning signs diminish the effectiveness of your efforts.
What is social media “engagement”?
Engagement is the name of the metric that social media sites use to measure how popular a post is. It’s an umbrella term that includes the number of likes, comments, and shares on a post. Higher engagement influences how your post ranks in the site’s algorithm, so it’s important to keep in mind!
2. Find your path to success through organic posts
Marketing is often like a science experiment. Scientists don’t nail their experiment the first time. It takes trial and error to find your way. Winging it and going straight for advertising is taking a dart throw at success. Keep an eye out for what types of posts get the most likes without boosting them. Find what content is successful with current followers. That content will also be successful to your advertising audience.
Finding success organically also helps you create your target demographic. Social media platforms give you helpful insights to see who is follows you. Is it an even split of male and female followers? What age group has the most followers? Having a few hundred followers or more can give you more confidence in your ad targeting settings.
3. Consistency
How often should you post on Facebook? We get this question so often, when in reality the answer is up to you and how often you can be consistent. Not just how often you can post on a consistent schedule, but how often you can add a valuable post to your timeline. We’ll be honest, we do a terrible job with our consistency on many social media platforms. That has held back our organic foundation. Thus making social media advertising an inefficient platform for us. Instead, we focus on our clients’ social media accounts. That allows us to use digital advertising platforms to further their success.
Want further proof that consistency is a vital key to success with social media? Matthew Kobach attributed consistency to his personal brand’s success. Matthew committed to tweeting twice a day for a year to see what happened. Now, he is a marketing icon and is in the social media driver’s seat behind Fast’s accounts.
In Conclusion
Facebook Ads presents an opportunity for small businesses to take advantage of. But going in without a plan is no way to guarantee success. Before starting, make sure you’re active, consistent, and posting successful content. Getting those three things down will give you a strong organic foundation to start advertising!
