Facebook marketer’s worst nightmare has come true. Over the last month, the reach of posts on Facebook Pages has plummeted. For pages, Facebook reach has been halved or worse, killing off the biggest source of engagement. Marketers no longer have the same access to the news feeds of Facebook users who have liked the page they manage.
There are two major reasons behind this change. First off, Facebook is trying to clean up now overcrowded newsfeeds to give users increased access to the content they want the most, the content from their friends. But ironically, a major part of why the newsfeeds became so crowded is because Facebook gave advertisers a lot of real estate in Facebook news feeds.
So we come to our second reason. Facebook want to push marketers to advertise. Yes, the day where Facebook lets restaurants market to customers for free has past.
The numbers don’t look good for those that want to rely only on the quality of their posts and the loyalty of their customers. Lets be honest too: not every post will be a home run and even home runs aren’t what they used to be. So restaurants who have 2,000 likes on their Facebook page may now receive the same reach as a page with under 1,000 likes.
The clear solution, although it is to some businesses blasphemy, is to have a advertising budget for Facebook. Putting even a few dollars on a post will normally exceed the reach of the same post before Facebook changed their algorithm. With Facebook pages that make many posts and it would not make sense to boost every post, the budget can be employed strategically. Remember that with all Facebook ads you should still look for engagement as a sign of success. You do not want to force anything down people’s throats, especially those that have liked your page. So don’t allow the practice of boosting a post with ad dollars prompt you to make less high quality posts.
You should still be concerned with:
This reflection applies across the board to even regular news feed ads. Engagement matters and you will see that the reach of boosted Facebook posts work synergistically with the organic reach. Indeed, different types of Facebook ads actually can cause a lot of positive effects beyond their core objective.
The ad budget does not have to be large but for many that have an effective and popular Facebook page, you should take the leap to maintain your momentum.