Avoid These 2.5 Common Mistakes When Promoting Your Food Business on Facebook

Maybe you’re new to the whole idea of using Facebook as part of your marketing strategy for your business. Awesome! It’s never too late to jump on the band wagon. Marketing on social media has become an industry norm and I congratulate you for finally accepting the fact that social media advertising is essential for the future growth of your business.

Maybe you are a business that has been using “Facebook Ads” but have not been using the full potential power of the marketing tool. I say “Facebook Ads” in quotes because there are still many businesses that “boost” their posts and think that is the extent of the Facebook advertising tool. You cannot be more wrong.

Perhaps your business has been using the Facebook Business Manager, you properly create campaigns and use all the tools that are available to you on the Facebook platform. Great. Then this is a refresher for you and you can probably agree with what I am going to share.

Boosting: Stop Boosting and Create a Facebook Business Manager Account

As I mentioned before, there are still many businesses that are “boosting” their posts on their Facebook and they think they are using the full extent of Facebook’s advertising power. In my personal opinion, I consider boosting a very pointless way of trying to market and a waste of money spent. If you are in this pool of an inefficient user of Facebook ads, then you need to stop and first create a Facebook Business Manager account. You can click here for the guide in doing that. Come back here when you’re done create an account. The only good intention I have found in boosting a post is if you’re on the go, and need to promote a post. On a mobile phone, you can’t do what you can do on a desktop. So boosting a post from your phone is the best option.

When it comes to my clients, sometimes they post something when I am away from my office and they want it promoted “like yesterday” (like right the F now). I have to settle for boosting it until I get back into the office. Other than that, I don’t see any point to boosting a post.

Wrong Campaign: Use the Right Campaign for the Goal You Want to Achieve

What most amateur advertisers don’t know is that there are campaigns specifically made for what you want. For example, if you want more engagement with your posts – there is a campaign for that. If you want people to view your video – there is a campaign for that. You want people to visit your website – there is a campaign for that. This is where the WTF common mistake lies. There are still many businesses that have the Facebook Business Manager, and use the engagement campaign with the intention of sending people to their website. There are businesses who use the ‘engagement campaign’ to get more social engagement, but the videos are created with no social call to action engagement. Tools and campaigns are designed specifically to do what they are named. If you mess this up, you are not reaching the right people and it’s probably the reason why maybe your ads suck.

Wrong Audience: Different Campaign = Different Audience

Now this is something that maybe most advertisers don’t know. An ad that is created under the Engagement campaign is not only delivered to people with your choice of demographics, age, geo-location and interests. There is another level to that. They are delivered to people under that description AND who are known for engaging. Are you tracking? Now let’s say you want to create and advertise a video to that same demographic of people who engaged with that ad created under an engagement campaign. You should probably use the Video View campaign for that. But it may not reach the same exact people who previously engaged. Why? It is because you are reaching people of that same demographic description but who are known for viewing and engaging with videos. Still tracking?

If you are still confused, here is a visual representation:

Solution: Other Ways to Target an Audience

 Are you able to specifically target people who engage in your posts so that they can also watch that video you created? Absolutely! This is the beauty of using the Facebook Business Manager. There are tools specifically to do that. Facebook can track many things including movement of traffic. Facebook can track if someone visited your website and then 3 days later, made a purchase or downloaded a coupon. There are many combinations of trackable items. Before we dive into a few scenarios of tracking, let’s first get your Facebook pixel installed. This is what makes tracking possible. Follow this guide in installing your Facebook pixel.

Now that you have your pixel installed, here are some examples of how you can reach an audience that has already seen or interacted with your content. These are what you call a Facebook Custom Audience:

1) Webpage Views

               a) People who have visited a specific pages

               b) People who spent a certain amount of time on a specific webpage

2) People who have engaged on your Facebook page

3) People who have viewed you Facebook videos

4) People who have responded or engaged on a Facebook Event

5) People who have interacted with your App

6) People who have interacted with your Instagram profile

These custom audience creations are a key component of what makes the Facebook Business Manager Account such a powerful marketing and remarketing tool. And if you are familiar with Google Analytics, Facebook now has an integrated tool that tells “the story” of each online visitor. It is good to both track data given by Google and Facebook. Facebook’s analytics tool will help fill in the unknowns that Google Analytics doesn’t tell.

Overall Solution: Understand the Basic Fundamentals

 The use of this tool may be tech heavy for the average user. There is certainly so much to know and can be understandably overwhelming. Understanding the fundamentals of the capabilities of the analytics platform will give you a better understanding of your audience. And you audience is what drives your business to grow. If your business isn’t making money, then it isn’t a business. And to make your business to become a money machine, you’ll need to understand your audience. If your business uses the Facebook tool correctly, you’ll be able to find out what they like and what they don’t like. You’ll be able to tell what keeps them on a web page. You’ll be more efficient in putting out quality content because that is what you’re audience is interested in. You no longer have to be mass marketing blindly. Understand the fundamentals of how Facebook delivers your message and you’ll be getting more bang for your marketing buck.