Boosting posts on autopilot? Try this.
Are you in the swing of boosting all of your Facebook posts by the same amount and to the same audience each time, without even thinking about it? Here’s some really quick thoughts that might help you refocus a little bit and make sure you’re getting the most out of that spend - since even £3 a time adds up.
Walnut Wasp is a creative design agency in Glasgow, Scotland, specialising in differential marketing for food and beverage and for the wedding market.
1. Plan a rough budget for the year
Have a think about what you’re regularly spending on social right now, pre-strategy. If you’re boosting posts without really thinking about it for £3 a time, and you’re posting about four times a week, then that’s almost £650 per year that you’re spending on Facebook. That’s not insignificant money. But - if you thought about it at the start of the year and decided that you would spend £650 a year on Facebook, would you choose to distribute it equally throughout the year in £3 increments, regardless of timing, content, etc? Probably not.
If you’re a wedding supplier, then there’s a good chance that there’s particular times of year that you’re not going to push for business. For example, you probably won’t be trying to push hard for bookings in December - when everybody has their mind on other things - or June, when you’re likely too busy to have time to properly court enquiries. There’s also a good chance that throughout the year you’ll have some excellent content - an end-of-year blog, a styled shoot you participated in, professional photos of a new product, etc. - and you’ll also have stuff that’s a bit less… marquee. So why spend the same on both?
The take-home:
Plan to spend more in the months that you want to properly push for business; spend more on your better content and less on your filler. They key word is plan!
2. Make custom audiences for different purposes - and save them
Think about each post from the point of view of its purpose. Some posts will be about straight-up sales (even if they don’t feel that way); some posts will just be about reminding people that you exist; some will be to try and encourage engagement with your existing community. The lines are obviously super blurred as the ultimate goal of any marketing channel is to drive sales, but the point is - each post has a purpose, and thus the audience you choose to show each post to will make a big difference.
You should spend some time in the ads manager, making different audiences and saving them (with instructive names) for different purposes. For example, if you’re a wedding band that plays lots of big band swing music, and you want to work within the Aberdeen area, then here’s a few audiences you could create for different post styles. You could do one audience that is just your existing community of Likers, plus their friends, in the Aberdeen area. That means when you push out a standard live video of you playing some song - some everyday content - it’s going to be shown to people who already Like your page firstly, so you can hope for increased engagement. It’s also going to be shown to their friends - hopefully with a healthy little boost of interaction already there in the Likes and comments - and so you’ll get the benefit of a perceived endorsement since their friends will see that they Like your page. That’s pretty basic but it can work just fine - and it’s a good way of getting it seen and noticed by a lot of people, even if the targeting isn’t particularly focused.
However, if you’ve got a 45 second clip of your best bits from multiple gigs, then that’s a piece of marketing that’s designed to introduce yourself to new potential customers. So in that case, you’ll want to create a different audience that includes, for example, everyone in the Aberdeen area who’s engaged, and who likes big band/swing music. Really basic stuff, but the point is - it’s a different audience for a different purpose. So this time, your video is getting in front of a lot of new eyeballs. It’s more targeted so the return in terms of reach should be lower - but the potential return in terms of conversions and new relationships with members of your target audience is higher.
The point here isn't just to make different audiences. The point is to make them once, and save them, with instructive names, so that when you hit Boost Post, those audiences are sitting there waiting for you to use them.
There’s so much more to get into on targeting and use of Facebook ads, and so many great tricks you can use to narrow your audience and get super-targeted - and we’ll have a deep dive on Facebook ads targeting which goes into considerably more depth on a future edition of the blog. This post is just about tweaking your autopilot habit to get a bit more out of it.
The take-home:
Each post has a purpose, and so you should create an audience for every purpose, and mix it up. Don’t boost all your posts to the same audience.
3. Experiment with including a primer
When you boost your post, you’re intending for it to find a wider audience either within your existing network or beyond. Well, it’s a good idea to experiment with adding a “primer” - a short line in the copy just giving some context about who your business is, and emphasising your key differential strengths. It may or may not include a link to a landing page as well - try it with and without a few times, and try to ascertain whether you think it’ll affect your reach (it might or it might not).
Here’s an example: sometimes when we post video content for Nick Bruce and His Blinding Lights, we include a primer at the end of the copy along the lines of “funk/soul vibes for your Scottish wedding reception: nickbrucemusic.com”. It means that if you’re seeing one of our videos for the first time and you’ve no idea of the context, then you understand instantly that this is a local band that you can actually book. Not just a viral video. Remember that Facebook timelines are getting busier and busier, and people are less aware of why each individual story is appearing in their timeline at all - so adding that crucial piece of context helps people to understand who you are, especially where geography is a factor. Not as important for e-commerce stores; pretty crucial for local wedding suppliers.
The take-home:
In your copy, add a short ‘primer’ - a line of context emphasising who you are, where you are, and what makes you different, probably with a link - so that people understand what they’re looking at.