Digital
marketing on Facebook can be time-consuming, expensive and tricky. It can equally
be discouraging when the overall purpose of marketing is not achieved. This happens
when strategies used to gain followership are misleading and short-lived.
Tectono Business Review observed
that people spend a lot of money and time on Facebook trying to market using
the wrong strategies. Most marketers use phrases such as ‘Share and Win’ or the
‘the fifth person to comment wins’, to gain followership, which are unoriginal.
The over 1.5
billion people found on Facebook cannot be reached with these practices, but
most organisations want to be active on the platform because their competitors
are on Facebook. In fact, 80 per cent of the brands in Nigeria go about this
wrongly. They spend huge amounts of money paying for likes on Facebook and end
up just posting ideas on the platform. This is not the way social media is
meant to be used. This is a huge waste of time and resources. There are other
ways to leverage this wonderful platform to yield the result you need. If you
are an active digital marketer, you will remember how Facebook decreased their
reach and several brands went down for that. Facebook is meant to be used as a
tool to drive traffic to the business website and capture emails of the target
audience, but not to post ideas and beg for shares and comment.
These are
some incorrect tactics that should be avoided on Facebook.
Emphasizing
on Facebook likes
See, the
main reason why people post on Facebook is to get a large number of likes from
followers using the wrong strategies that are not sustainable. The number of
likes received from such posts is not the same as the number of people the
message reached. Most brands in Nigeria are just concerned about the number of
Facebook likes they can get. They measure their success by the quantity of
likes they have. A certain brand owner blew away millions of naira weekly just
to hit the top five brands in Nigeria with the highest Facebook likes. He
derived the value of his brand by boasting about the amount of likes on
Facebook. Well enough, he managed to hit over 1.2million likes. Then what?
Facebook decreases their reach. That hurts. What a huge waste of time and
resources.
Emphasizing
on reach
The purpose
of engagement is forfeited when the content of a Facebook post is poor. Drawing
the attention of people by making promises that are not fulfilled will only
weaken the engagement and defeats the purpose of the post, which is to market. See,
most marketers focus on metrics. The followers are sharing because they want to
win something, not that they want to buy something or they have learnt
something. So, the whole effort of engagement amounts to zero. The most
important thing is the action that follows after the share.
Emphasizing
on engagement
Brands with
values should neither deviate from it nor move away from the products which
they intend to market. Doing this will build followership of people who are
interested in what the brand represents and will attract a lasting engagement,
not just a brief one.
Congrats!
You have built a fan base of people who just want to win something from your
page. Then you focus on metrics to justify your act. Then you start to share
pictures of celebrities or shoes and bags asking your audience to choose one.
If your brand is not in entertainment or fashion, this strategy is totally
useless.
With memes
like ‘Iyanaya and Flavour which one of them is hotter?’ just to seek for
engagements will just build you a followership of people who don’t care about
your brand and you are gradually deviating from the values of your brand. You
are not on Facebook to share memes or post celebrity gossips. You are there to
build followership that connects with your brand and buys your products.
Focusing
on sales
In addition
to other wrong strategies, offering products to the wrong people with the aim
of selling is not likely to work. People who have just started following a
brand on Facebook will be disappointed when they are asked to buy products
immediately. See, most brands just focus on sales. They just care about the
bottom line which is sales. This can be likened to proposing to a girl on the
first date, you don’t just care to build the relationship. I think that’s
weird, don’t you? This people hate being sold to especially when it’s constant
and if you are selling to the wrong people. They likely wouldn’t buy. They
rather wait for your freebies.
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