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It’s no secret that Facebook can be a great marketing tool for small, medium, and large businesses. The statistics you need to know in 2020 are quite impressive. However, marketing a brand, a product, or a service on Facebook is not easy. It has its pros and cons. Many pitfalls should also be avoided to ensure a successful marketing campaign. One of the most important steps in the process of marketing on Facebook is getting more followers. The more followers a Facebook page has the more visibility it is. That means a message that is posted on that page is seen by more people. Perhaps, this is tempting you to buy followers on Facebook now.
Well, that’s not the only way to get more followers. You can get more followers organically by being active, posting quality, relevant and engaging content, automating your posts, as well as sharing your page on other platforms. Once you’ve grown your following, you can now use Facebook as a marketing platform. But, that’s not enough. You need to know the pros, cons, and pitfalls of marketing on Facebook. That way, you will know what to do and what to avoid. Here are the major pros, cons, and pitfalls of marketing on Facebook.
Pros
Potential for a Large Audience
Facebook has a large audience. As of the third quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2.45 billion active monthly users. This makes Facebook one of the largest social networks today. Therefore, Facebook marketing gives you the potential to reach such a large audience.
Great Targeting Capabilities
Reaching the target audience is very easy, especially with PPC ads. That’s because Facebook pulls great information from users. Using this information, businesses can advertise to more specific genders and age groups. The information can also be used to advertise to specific professions and individuals that enjoy specific TV shows.
Direct Conversation with Customers
Not all customers get a chance to visit the blog of a company or even sign up for its newsletter to get offers and updates. Most people prefer seeing things whenever they log into their Facebook accounts. Apart from direct targeting of users that might be interested in the services or products of a business, starting conversations with the audience is easy. That way, a marketer can know their likes and dislikes. They can also respond to their feedback, thereby strengthening the brand and building authority.
Opportunities to Establish Lasting Relationships
Using Facebook to market a business provides a chance to create a community around a brand. That’s because the content that is posted and seen by more people can spark conversions. Discussions between the audience and the marketer can lead to the establishment of a community. This provides room for the ongoing addition of marketing information.
Multiple Marketing Tools
Marketing on Facebook means you have multiple marketing tools. These include Facebook groups, pages, and ads. You can use all these tools or platforms to enhance your marketing efforts and accomplish your goals.
Cons
Facebook Marketing can be Expensive
Facebook was a great place for garnering organic attention in the past. However, it’s now more of a space where people pay to play. This can be attributed to the high ad space demand on this platform. What’s more, the growing number of people that are marketing on this platform has shrunk the organic search. As such, marketers that want to excel on this platform have to pay for ads, especially when it comes to targeting specific audiences.
A Page Can Easily Go South
No matter what business you do, you’re likely to encounter disgruntled customers. A major con of marketing on Facebook is how fast disgruntled customers can take over a Facebook page. Apart from dropping negative reviews on your page, they can also post something negative on your posts. This can make maintaining your brand’s reputation difficult. And, when you have a large following, monitoring the comments of disgruntled customers can be a real challenge.
You Must be Committed
You must be committed to run a Facebook marketing campaign successfully. This can be a challenge for a small company that doesn’t have the necessary resources to keep a page updated and interact with the audience regularly. If unable to keep a Facebook business page updated, it might be wise to use other networks for marketing purposes.
Pitfalls
Setting up Incorrect Pixel
Setting up a pixel is important when it comes to tracking interactions with customers to ensure effective targeting. This should be done before getting into campaign settings. The pixel should be uploaded to a website and what your app and website visitors see and purchase. Without the correct pixel set up, a Facebook marketing campaign can’t yield the desired results.
Choosing the Wrong Marketing Campaign Type for Business Goals
To achieve business marketing goals, you need to determine and choose the right Facebook marketing campaign type. Facebook provides dynamic product ads. This enables you to come up with retargeting campaigns for directing customers to the purchase funnel. A common Facebook marketing pitfall to avoid is using a wrong campaign type for business goals.
Neglecting Tracking Parameters for Data Sources
A common pitfall that you should avoid when marketing on Facebook is ignoring tracking parameters for marketing campaigns. Without tracking parameters, it’s difficult to know the effectiveness or performance of a campaign depending on the data source.
Using a Wrong Campaign Strategy
The set up of a campaign should segment traffic into different objectives. Without a strategy, it’s difficult to accomplish the goals or objectives of a Facebook marketing campaign. For instance, when retargeting ads are separated from prospecting ads, managing the marketing budget and optimizing a campaign to accomplish different objectives becomes easy. A common mistake to avoid when marketing on Facebook is running a campaign without a formulated and thought-out strategy.
The Bottom Line
There are pros and cons of marketing on Facebook. There are also common pitfalls of Facebook marketing, that businesses and marketers should know before they launch their campaigns. Facebook can generally be a great marketing platform or tool for a business. However, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons, as well as, bear the pitfalls highlighted here in mind to avoid them along the way.
