These days everyone is looking for a winning strategy to implement on their Facebook business page. With the world shifting towards a digital mindset, it has forced B2B and B2C brands to extend beyond their traditional marketing efforts and evolve into a digital marketing machine. Facebook for many brands is where they want to be because there’s no other network that contains as large of audience.
Some analysts are suggesting that corporate Facebook pages may one day replace traditional websites. There are a number of offerings on Facebook that help businesses manage effectively. One new offering is sponsored storires. People don’t want to log-on to Facebook and be sold stuff, they want to check up on what their friends are currently doing and talking about. Facebook wants engagement to be the ultimate goal of marketers using the platform.
Marketers can create Standard Ads that meet certain specifications but the content, image, format and more must adhere to Facebook’s guidelines. With Sponsored Stories, you can choose from six different types: page like, app shared, page post like, check-in, game played and domain. With Sponsored Stories choosing images and ad creative is no longer an option. The reach of a standard ad is set early on by the marketer and has the potential to be seen by Facebook’s one billion users or could ultimately get lost in a black hole. But there’s always the option with Standard Ads to target specifically by user’s gender, age, location and more.
With Sponsored Ads, when a Facebook user performs an action like checking-in, that action is broadcasted in their friends new feeds. Marketers cannot choose who sees the announcement, which makes it more authentic than Standard Ad creation. “Facebook users are more likely to share opportunities to engage than they are to share opportunities to buy. By shifting ad focus from sales to engagement, Sponsored Stories have achieved higher click-through and conversion rates,” said Clickable.
With the introduction to Sponsored Stories, you must keep your content fresh in order to keep people clicking. The combination of Sponsored Stories, Timeline pages and Offers show that Facebook is putting their bottom dollar on marketers evolving from traditional marketing efforts to a new and improved way of reaching people, integrated digital marketing!