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Marketing on Facebook – What Works?


Mary Varney - 24th October 2013 - 0 comments

161859632Nowadays, Facebook is a key component in most business marketing campaigns. Always developing, the new features for businesses, such as paid ads, hash tags and an ever-evolving insight page, can be seen as incredibly useful. However, is this really the case? Recent research has shown that sometimes these new features can actually be harmful to your marketing campaign, and consequently hurt your business.

Hash tags

The general consensus is that they should stay on twitter and not come anywhere near Facebook, simply because they do not work in the same way. Research has in fact shown that hash tags have had an effect on post interaction – a negative one. Not only do they make posts less likely to be shared, but it has been shown that people are less likely to interact with that post.

Paid Ads

In theory, these are a brilliant idea. They increase the reach of a post significantly; however they have a reduced number of click-throughs. Unpaid posts have a lower reach (except in the case of statuses) but a much higher click through rate. However, no-one can doubt they are a very efficient way to grow a fan-base in terms of reach, and promotion – but before investing in one, target audience and post goals should be firmly established. What is clear is that paid ads are more effective with lots of images – so that is definitely something to take on board.

Check-in Stories

Check-in stories show users an ad of a place they have previously checked into, and the end result is that they have the highest CTR. It’s simple logic that if a Facebook user sees that one of their friends has checked-in at a certain store or restaurant then they will click-through to see what this place is. The one downside? They are expensive. The high CTR and the opportunity to drive engagement rates might justify the investment though.

With Facebook always adding new features it is very easy for companies to just assume that these new add-ons will be effective and helpful in making a positive difference to their marketing campaigns. Sometimes though it’s worth reading the statistics before jumping in head first and always make sure you know your target audience and set your KPIs for the campaign before you start.

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Mary Varney

Mary is a Senior Account Manager at Snack Media. Follow her on Twitter @varns_social

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