Facebook marketing has been a popular and extremely prevalent platform for marketers and businesses of all sizes for over a decade now, and itâs evolved a great deal. Best practices have come and gone, and the platform looks completely different now than it did when we all first signed up for our first accounts and it looked a lot more like a cleaned-up Myspace reboot.
Since so much has changed and the platform is now almost dizzingly complex to those who arenât familiar with it, itâs not surprising that thereâs so much information out there that some of it just isnât quite right. There are some misconceptions that come innocently, and some that are spread by marketers who want clicks on their blog posts or to sell you on their services.
With all the Facebook marketing myths out there, it can be difficult to know whatâs true and what isnât, so we wanted to clear some of that up for you. In this post, weâre going to take a look at EIGHT Facebook marketing myths and shed some truth on each one.
1. Facebook Ads Are Too Expensive for Small Businesses
This is one Facebook marketing and advertising myth that we hear a lot: That Facebook Ads is just too expensive for small businesses. How could a one-person LLC possibly compete with a mega corporation with a $100,000-a-month budget?
This myth, of course, is false.
You donât need a $100,000-a-month budget or anything even close to that to market on Facebook Ads. You can set a budget as low as $1 a day (which is Dennis Yuâs famous strategy), and youâll pay a âbidâ price on the action youâre optimizing for. You could pay $1.50, for example, for 1,000 views of your ad, or a click on the ad, or a 10-second video view.
You can set bid caps (pictured above), which allows you to determine the exact threshold youâre willing to reach when setting a bid. If you know, for example, that itâs not profitable to spend a penny over $0.79 per click, then you can set your bid cap right there. This can impact placements if your competitors are consistently bidding higher, but it still gives you a chance to participate in the ad system.
Facebook Ads is also one of the relatively more affordable ad options out there, particularly once you factor in retargeting campaigns and its overall potential for conversions. While some small businesses may find it hard to squeeze some extra ad spend out of an already-tight budget for Facebook advertising when other methods are working for them, that doesnât mean that itâs too expensive across the board. In many cases, Facebook Ads are at least worth testing, even if your budget is small.
Wondering exactly what you can expect to pay? A lot of variables goes into the specific cost, but you can see some benchmarks here.
2. Facebookâs Organic Reach is Dead
We hear this all the time. At least once per year, youâll probably find an article thatâs dramatically proclaiming that Facebook is dead as a doornail and itâs time to close up shop. This is often attributed to the always-declining organic reach and the stingy algorithm.
Even though the writers of these articles seem extremely impassioned about their beliefs, we can confirm that this is another myth that is false.
The declining organic reach is true, of course. Itâs been more and more difficult to have our content show up in our followersâ feeds for more than five years now, and each algorithm update seems to make it a tiny bit more challenging. But that doesnât mean that all of organic Facebook marketing is useless.
Consider the following:
- The more your followers engage with you, the more youâll show up in the algorithms. High-quality content can still have content showing up in the feeds of top-followers semi-regularly if youâre making an effort to engage your audience and post frequently.
- Facebook Groups is currently prioritized in the algorithm, so content you post to a group that you create will be more likely to appear in membersâ feeds, giving you better reach and a stronger avenue to connect with your target audience.
- You can use events to generate interest on platform, and when someone clicks on âinterested inâ an event, itâs shown to the majority of their friends.
- Facebook is often used as a search engine, and the ability to collect reviews and UGC on platform in a place that new customers may discover you is incredibly valuable, even if they arenât seeing your posts regularly.
It is important to adapt your marketing strategy knowing that organic reach has been affected, but the ad system isnât the only way that Facebook is valuable to marketers; organic content is still key.
3. I Need To Use Hashtags On My Facebook Posts
Hashtags have never seemed to fit in on Facebook or taken off the way they have on Twitter and Instagram, but you see some marketers proclaiming that everyone should be using them nonetheless.
Hashtags really donât have much of a place in Facebook marketing. You can use them if youâd like, but theyâre not necessary and they donât serve much of a purpose. Unlike Twitter and Instagram, users arenât searching for hashtags to find relevant content.
The only exception here is if you run a Facebook group. Some group admins will encourage members to tag posts with hashtags like #jobposting or #resumerequest so that people can easily search the group later if theyâre looking for similar information.
Aside from that, though, keep the hashtags out of the majority of your organic posts on Facebook since theyâre not really serving much of a purpose.
4. Users Will Convert on a Great Facebook Ad the First Time
One of the biggest myths out there about PPC ads is that a user will see a campaign from a new brand or product and immediately convert. Sometimes this happens, but the reality is typically a little more muddled, particularly with discovery-oriented ads like Facebook Ads.
Instead, the reality is that most users will need to see multiple ads from the same company before theyâre willing to convert. Thereâs even a ârule of 7â in marketing that states that customers may need to see messaging from your brand 7 times before theyâre willing to convert. While 7 times may not always be necessary, the principle here is correct: Most users arenât going to purchase the first time they see one of your ads.
This myth can be a particularly dangerous one, because it causes many advertisers to abandon campaigns that are successful at generating the brand awareness or interest thatâs needed to eventually drive conversions. For best success, youâll typically want to create ad funnels utilizing retargeting to nurture users towards a conversion and show them increasingly relevant ads. Also, you want to make sure you're writing good copy for your Facebook posts.
Itâs more complicated than setting up a single ad, but itâs so much more effective, so this isnât a myth that you want to believe.
5. Facebook Followers Matter Most
Sometimes itâs easy to be swayed by the most flashy marketing metrics, and plenty of brands have fallen prey to this, believing that the number of followers an account has is the most important metric of success.
Followers do serve as great social proof, and itâs good to see your like count growing overtime because itâs an indication that youâre finding members of your target audience and successfully connecting with them. That being said, the number of followers an account has is not the biggest indicator of success.
Instead, engagement matters more, which is why you're selling tools like SEMrush's Social Media Tracker having an entire metric focused on engagement rate.
Your engagement rate, specifically, is one of the most important metrics to watch. We discuss this in-depth as it relates to Instagram here (and the principles are the same for Facebook). Essentially your engagement rate is going to tell you how relevant your audience finds your content and what percentage of your followers are actively liking, sharing, or commenting. Since a high engagement rate means relevance and a boost in the algorithm, itâs an important metric to track.
Follower count isnât entirely irrelevant, but it is more of a vanity metric. Look at your contentâs performance as a core metric instead.
6. The Secret to Success Is Posting As Much As You Can
There are some social media agencies that try to sell brands on the promise of the mass-posting strategies, attempting to beat the algorithm with a sheer number of posts that would put their competitors to shame.
Is anyone surprised at this point that this is downright false?
Posting frequently is a good strategy in and of itself. You do want to create content regularly enough that youâre able to keep your audience engaged and so that your Page looks alive and full. That being said, thereâs a limit. You donât want to be posting more than once or twice per day at the absolute maximum on average.
The reason why is simple: The more you post, the more youâre almost competing against your own content for those limited slots you could hope to get in usersâ feeds. When youâre flooding your own Page with content, the engagement rate overall per post will likely drop, which can ding you in the algorithm (and thus your reach).
Prioritize quality over quantity, post at ideal times for your audience, and remember to test posting frequency like you would anything else. Try increasing or decreasing the frequency of your posting, and see how it impacts your engagement rate.
7. The Clear History Tool Will Ruin Retargeting
Facebookâs Clear History tool has gotten a lot of attention this year from users and marketers alike.
Amidst all the privacy and transparency concerns, many Facebook users have been excited about the impending release of a new on-site feature that will allow users to delete their off-platform history so that Facebook isnât able to store it and use it for marketing purposes. Itâs easy to see why users are excited, and why marketers arenât.
If users delete their off-platform history and even prevent Facebook from collecting it in the first place, it can absolutely affect the retargeting abilities of brands trying to reach them. Some have started to say that the Clear History tool will therefore completely ruin all retargeting potential.
This myth is the one thatâs perhaps the closest to the truth on this list, but itâs still not quite right.
Hereâs whatâs true: Marketers making heavy use of retargeting based on app activity or site activity (like using custom audiences based on website activity) may find that these campaigns arenât reaching enough people anymore. You canât show someone a retargeting campaign after they visited your landing page if you canât actually track that they were there.
That being said, not all users will automatically disable this information, so it may still be possible to leverage these specific types of off-platform retargeting.
Weâll also still have the ability to use other types of retargeting, too. This includes retargeting based on on-platform activity (like video views, lead form activity, or engagement), and retargeting coming from custom audiences uploaded from a list of customer emails.
It will be an unfortunate loss if we see a big hit on retargeting centered around site activity, but itâs not the end of retargeting. It will just force marketers to get a little more creative with their strategies, and perhaps focus more on ad funnels using on-platform activity as a retargeting method.
8. I Should Promote My Business Information In Facebook Groups
This is another common misconception that we sometimes see small business owners sharing, not quite understanding how marketing in Facebook groups work. Theyâve been led to believe that they should join industry-related groups where they may find their customers and promote the daylights out of their own product or service.
Whatâs unfortunate is that this myth can get you labelled as a spammer, put a negative taste of your brand in the mouth of potential customers, and get you kicked out of the group after just a few posts.
If you want to use Facebook groups to your advantage, start your own group centered around your brand somehow. Make one for your customers, or for your target audience, and share insights.
Answer questions, build a community. Then you can promote your business as you see fit, and it will feel more organic.
Conclusion
There are a lot of Facebook myths out there, and whatâs scary is that itâs not just small businesses coming to agencies with misunderstandings of whatâs possible; there are some industry members who are actively (and often unintentionally) causing some of the misunderstandings.
Social media is always changing, and perhaps no platform touches Facebookâs consistently fast evolution. These myths, however, are all firmly debunked for now, so donât let them impact the social media work youâre doing for your own business or for your clientsâ. With all the right information, youâll be able to move forward and create more successful campaigns.
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