Do or Die: 4 reasons why spending (even a little bit!) on Facebook Advertising will save your organic reach!

Last week we shared a few ideas on how you can manage and grow your organic reach on Facebook, not least because we know it's getting harder and harder to do!

Facebook has made no secret of the fact that it wants to change the balance, so that users feeds will be dominated by posts from friends and family to create more ‘meaningful interactions’.  So if you rely heavily on the network as a business marketing tool, you’d do well to start diversifying your approach.

And while it might feel as if you’re taking a step backwards, or worse, you’re being ‘bullied’ into doing it, you should probably reconcile to the fact that social ads will be needed to plug the gap that your organic reach will almost certainly be leaving.

But all is not lost - a little known fact is that combining paid and organic marketing on Facebook actually produces fantastic results and against the odds you will grow your organic reach.

Here’s how we know this.

Wordstream (the paid search social company) did some analysis! And we’ve grabbed the best bits just for you. By analysing a tonne of data on different companies’ metrics, they discovered that by spending a small amount on advertising each month on Facebook, businesses saw a knock on effect on the size of their organic reach.  The findings revealed that businesses that ‘pay to play’ outperform businesses that do no paid social in every metric - fans, clicks, impressions and friends of page fans.

Here is what they found:

1. Running ads grows your fan base

Facebook Fans are the people who have liked (and follow) your Facebook page. If a user ‘likes’ your page they automatically follow your page (meaning they are eligible to see your posts).

Within this group, there is a special kind of fan, an uber fan, these are people who have selected to prioritise your content and to ‘see it first.’

By running ads, you will not only increase your total number of page fans but it will also grow your lookalike audience, which means your ads will be seen by even more potential patients without needing to increase your spend.

It's a virtuous circle benefiting both your paid strategy and your organic marketing and what’s more, amongst these new Fans will be those super valuable ‘see first’ fans!

2. Running ads increases your clicks

Facebook page clicks, otherwise known as ‘post clicks’ or ‘other clicks’ refer to the number of times people clicked on any content other than your link clicks, photo views and video plays.

So, if your post has resulted in someone clicking anywhere else on your page, you’ve going to see your engagement score go up. But what’s this got to do with advertising.

Simple - it helps you identify your top performing content and allows you to cross fertilise content and creative between the 2 channels. The fact is businesses who run ads have seen almost 100% increase in page clicks. Try and see for yourself.

3. Running ads sees your page and post impressions mushroom

According to Wordstream, Facebook users with active ad campaigns see a 126% increase in page impressions and a massive 225% increase in post impressions That’s a huge number of additional people seeing your posts, just through spending a small amount of your marketing budget on advertising.

Just to clarify, in Facebook speak, a page impression means that content was delivered to someone’s feed - the user might not engage with the content, but it will still counts as a page impression. One person might therefore be responsible for multiple impressions for a single piece of content. Page and post impressions is the total number of earned engagements, including reactions, shares, comments, event RSVPs, page likes, page mentions and check-ins

More impressions means more people are seeing your posts more often, and typically means higher levels of engagement. And, if your audience are already engaged with your content, which better-than-average page impressions suggests they are, then your followers are going to be even more likely to respond to your advertising, which means higher conversions.

Importantly, these folk could be fans or non fans, and if your organic content is reaching non fans, then you’re beginning to build brand awareness outside of your core audience at no extra cost.

4. Running ads increases your Facebook Fan’s Reach

Finally, Wordstream found that by advertising on Facebook your organic posts receive a 90% boost. That’s 90% more of your unique fans being reached, without paying to do so. If you’ve been happily thinking that your posts reach all of your fans all of the time, then think again. Facebook limits free exposure to only a handful of your fans. The only way to bridge this gap is to boost your post unless you’re advertising, and if you’re advertising, you are not only proactively lead generating at a predictable cost, but you also benefit from 90% more of your fans seeing your organic posts. Quids in.

The fact is, with all the rather ugly publicity Facebook has received this year and its published position being that it wants to create ‘meaningful interactions’, it would be foolish to ignore the direction of travel.

For our dentists, we generate Facebook enquiries at an average cost of around £7 per new patient enquiry. Even a small amount of advertising spend can generate good volumes of leads. So if you want to protect your organic reach and actively use Facebook as a lead generation tool, then you would do well, to start spending on the network.

It’s long been the understood that advertising across multiple networks and channels creates a sort of compound interest and the true is same for those businesses who compliment their organic activity with paid advertising.

By running the odd campaign, you can improve key organic metrics by upwards of 100%.  Conversely, if you’re already advertising on Facebook but you’re not doing any social media management then you’re missing out on some really really well qualified leads, patients who already know and like you and their friends and family.

If you would like to speak to us about how we can you get better results from your Digital Advertising and Social Media and SEO, grab a 15 minute slot with our team below.