Facebook Organic Reach is Dead. So Use Facebook Ads - Episode #18

Hi everyone. Welcome to Jim Talks, Episode #18.

Today I want to talk a bit about Facebook organic reach. What I mean by organic reach is the kind of return you get when you post your posts and you put them directly on Facebook.

What's happening now is when you place posts on your feed, not a lot of people are seeing them or the other thing is that people are seeing them but they don't really because there's so many other posts out there that you're not getting a good return on your post.

So although you may be posting lots, and some people see them, it's not like it used to be. It's because Facebook is really about direct marketing now. What happens is you're sending out these posts and you're expecting people to read these posts but they're not reading it. Sure you'll get the odd click or the odd like on it and it'll look like you're getting some kind of return but really it's not.

The only way now to be effective on Facebook is to run some paid advertising.

Facebook ads are out there. They're pretty effective. And the nice thing about Facebook ads right now is, and I've said this before, is they're undervalued. They're under priced. It's super cheap to run Facebook adsright now. And you can target with Facebook Ads. It's amazing how good Facebook ads are right now. 

If anybody who's been doing any kind of online advertising, any kind of online marketing for a while ... years ago banner ads were the thing. And then everybody became banner ad blind. Then we had all these pop-up advertisements. And then we have these pop-up blockers. And then we had Google Adwords. They're still out there and Adwords are still pretty effective. The problem with AdWords is now everybody's on it. All the big advertising agencies, all the big companies are buying up Adwords. 

So, to be able to get good keywords it's very competitive because the way Adwords works is it's an auction. It's a bid process to be able to compete for a specific keyword. What happens is to be able to get any kind of traction with Adwords you have to spend a lot of money. A keyword might cost you ten dollars per click. 

I know I was running a lot of ads with the word "real estate investing" and it was about ten dollars. So for a thousand dollars I was getting a hundred clicks and that's just for the click that's not for a conversion.

With Facebook I can use the same kind of approach and I only have to pay like $1 for a click. I understand that there is a difference with Facebook advertising and Adwords.

The big thing about Facebook advertising is it's cheap.  

So, what are the pros and cons of Facebook advertising versus Adwords?

Facebook advertising is cheap. It's very targeted so you can really specialize who you want to see the ads. Therefore when the ads appear, they appear to people who you think might be interested in it. The con or the problem is that it's not intent based ... meaning people who are looking at your ads aren't necessarily interested in seeing your ads, certainly not at the time that they are seeing your ads.

For example most people get on Facebook. They're going through and they're browsing through and they're just leisurely browsing because, for a lot of people, that's what they do with Facebook. They'll get on there and they'll just see a few posts and they're not expecting to see an ad. And in fact sometimes when they see an adand they get upset. I had one guy tell me "get out of my feed, get out of my newsfeed". He thought I had infiltrated his Facebook homepage or something. I forget the exact message.

What people don't realize is that those ads can appear at any time. And again, it's really direct marketing because you're putting it out like a commercial on the TV and on the radio right. You're scrolling through and then all of a sudden this ad appears.

So Facebook advertiing is a very direct marketing type of approach to advertising. 

With Google Adwords, people are actually searching on the term so when they see the ad they're more inclined to to click on those links and because it's intent based versus interrupt marking, which is really what Facebook advertising is. 

The key with Facebook though, if you're trying to get any kind of return on Facebook, is organic Reach is dead. You can't expect to get any kind of traction just by doing some videos and popping them up there and placing them and posting them. You're really going to have to publish those. Then what I would do is I would actually look at creating a post using those videos and maybe changing them up or putting pictures in a carousel. 

There's several things that you can do to really leverage your Facebook platform. But it's now obvious that to get any kind of return on Facebook you have to pay and the big plus right now is that it's super cheap. So, let's take advantage of that price point and go out there and start running some Facebook Ads to offset the fact that organic reach is dead.

Okay thanks very much and have a good night

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