Facebook organic reach has plummeted since 2012… and may soon reach 0%! What does this mean for small businesses?
Anyone who has been running Facebook Brand Pages the past 3 years can tell you that the average reach for a post has dwindled to insignificance.
I remember when we would run Brand Pages for our clients just 2 years ago that we would brag about how we could get 50% of the Fan Page to see their posts. We spent hours testing what types of posts would yield engagement. We had so much engagement that on the rare occurrence when we did post a link to our website or landing page, our click thru rate was phenomenal.
Now, we’d be bragging if we could obtain a 15% organic reach on Facebook.
It turns out that we’re not the only ones seeing our organic Facebook reach dwindle. According to a study (chart shown on right hand side) performed by Social@Ogilvy…
…organic reach hovered at 6 percent, a decline of 49 percent from peak levels in October. For large pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach hit 2 percent in February.
Was this intentional? Is Facebook purposely killing it’s organic reach?
In December 2013, AdAge obtained a deck Facebook had sent to partners, in which they found the following statement from Facebook:
“We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”
Yes, it seems intentional. There must be some reasons for this change, right? Here are a few highlights from an article written by Robert Brady that tries to explain things from Facebook’s perspective:
-In response to why organic reach is declining: “More and more content is being created and shared every day.” Good point.
-In response to a question about not just showing everything: “The real-time approach has limitations. People only have so much time to consume stories.” Again, a good point to remember.
Latest Facebook statistics show that over 829 million people use Facebook each day, so with all the content on Facebook, showing every post in every person’s newsfeed real time would be almost impossible.
Given the data, what is a small business to do? Should Facebook Brand Pages still be part of a marketing plan, or is the idea of using Facebook for business dead?
If The Organic Facebook Reach Is Dead…Then What?
“H is for Habit, winners make a habit of doing the things losers don’t want to do.”
― Lucas Remmerswaal, The A-Z of 13 Habits: Inspired by Warren Buffett
When organic reach started slipping on Facebook, the obvious choice seemed to be switching to paid advertising on Facebook. Not surprisingly, most Brand Page owners were against paying for Facebook ads. Fear of loss has a powerful, irrational hold over people. Many Page owners just couldn’t get over the fact that they used to be able to successfully utilize Facebook for free… but now they would have to pay to use it.
This change made them angry. This anger made them refuse to pay for Facebook ads. Their online marketing performance declined.
Our company found this type of thinking by our competition advantageous. After all, as the quote above points out, doing thing that others won’t do can make you successful!
The two realities about Fan Pages are this:
1) You cannot live in the past. Yes, organic Facebook reach used to be easy to obtain for free. Now, you must pay for it.
2) Paid advertising on Facebook works very well!
3 Benefits Of Using Paid Facebook Advertising
As the organic reach of Facebook declined, we made the transition to paid advertising… and we strongly recommend that you do the same. Here are 3 simple reasons (out of dozens more) that your business should use Facebook Pay Per Click…
Very cost effective. In November of 2012, Mark Cuban made an infamous post about how he thought that Facebook was blowing it by asking him to pay for promoting posts. Specifically, he showed that it would cost him $3,000 to reach an estimated 1 million to 1.25 million fans. Again, this was an example about how it used to be free and now there is anger about having to pay for it. The reality is, as the chart on the left shows, there is really no less expensive way to target and reach your fans than by using Facebook. If Mark Cuban wanted to spend $3,000 on direct mail, how many people do you think he would’ve reached? Far fewer than 1 million.
Simple yet effective targeting. I can tell you how simple it is to target users based on their demographics, behaviors, and interests all day long, but to really appreciate just how simple Facebook ads are to set up… try using Google adwords! Plus, given the large quantity of daily users on Facebook, even the most niche of audiences will have a sizable representation for you to market.
Flexibility. Facebook pay per click provides instant results. Within 2 hours of setting up a campaign, you can see traffic going to your site. Plus, you can test to determine what is working and what is not. Based on this information, you can make instant tweaks, adjust your budget accordingly, and see instantaneous results. By comparison, SEO can take years to see traffic going to your site and direct mail can take months and cost thousands of dollars before you figure out what is working and what is not.
Summary
In conclusion, while the organic Facebook reach is in massive decline and projected to become non-existent, it’s not the end of the world for businesses using Facebook Brand Pages. In fact, it creates an opportunity to use Facebook pay per click, which will allow you to laser focus ads to your specific market quickly in a very inexpensive manner.
No luck with organic Facebook Reach and want to learn more about Facebook Pay Per Click? Visit here
Nick Bridges
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