4 Critical Considerations for Marketers Following Facebook’s News Feed Updates

Facebook’s latest News Feed announcement about ‘bringing people closer together’ is yet another example of the ever-changing social landscape where marketers must pay (even more) to play as they continue to alter their Ad Spec, algorithms for performance, and edgerank exposure in the News Feed for brand pages. Many of the changes present challenges that cause marketers to have to retrofit their content or rethink their approach.

Adjusting your strategy is critical as Facebook continues to dominate the social landscape for connecting with customers.  In fact, Facebook's daily user base at over 1.65B is more than 4x the second social media platform in line, Instagram, at 400M.3

Whether it’s upper funnel engagement (driving discovery, awareness, and consideration) or lower funnel (customer engagement, retention and customer service), 32% of Facebook users engage with brands, including leaving over 5 billion comments on brand pages monthly.   Facebook’s messenger app has also made it easy for brands to help with customer care issues via Chatbots, to the tune of 15 billion daily messages sent.2  

Facebook’s latest update focuses on ‘bringing people closer together’ by “connecting people to meaningful posts from their friends and family in News Feed.” From our unique perspective, we believe this means several things for marketers and brand pages:

1. User generated content or sharing will receive higher priority in the News Feed than any other content (historically this has been true when comparing non-promoted Brand Page posts but will now also include some paid content, too).

2. Attracting more social followers will have little incremental value as it will be an uphill battle for views.

3. Limited inventory will drive CPA and CPM much higher than before as marketers compete for views.

4. Motivating consumers across owned channels to share your content organically on Facebook is key.

The good news is, savvy marketers have an incredible opportunity to leverage this update to their advantage by incentivizing and empowering consumers to share authentic content from your brand organically. Peer recommendations remain one of the top influencers on purchase.   83%1 of people trust the opinions and recommendations of friends and family and make purchases based on those opinions.

So, how can marketers tap into this powerful and organic method of influence to drive purchase? Marketers need easy, effective and scalable ways to get their message out through organic user sharing. Most social sharing programs are stagnant, passive, and take weeks or months to build exposure. Traditional user-generated content campaigns lack the participation numbers that will drive meaningful results.

Quikly offers turnkey solutions that help marketers run blitz campaigns to maximize exposure through peer-to-peer social sharing organically. Within days, tens of thousands of participants are motivated to share brand content generating millions of organic impressions. Best yet, clicks can be converted into rich CRM profile data to boost email, loyalty, or mobile subscriber lists and can ultimately generate incremental revenue with purchase-driving offers.

For example, a leading consumer retailer runs monthly campaigns on the Quikly platform that regularly delivers 25,000 or more social shares within days. In addition to exposure/impressions, these campaigns achieve two critical KPIs: new customer acquisition and revenue generation. On average, each month, 35,000 new email subscribers are acquired and $750,000 or more revenue generated within 7-10 days.

Interested in learning more? Get in touch today to find out how to capitalize on Facebook’s latest updates by boosting social referrals and maximizing your organic reach! hola@quikly.com

Learn More about How it Worked:

SETUP: A branded microsite was created using existing brand assets and featured limited time offers coming sometime soon and to be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

• Campaigns were launched within five hours

INITIAL PARTICIPATION: Demand began from owned media channels such as email, mobile app, SMS, and/or social teasing the campaign and ability to sign up to be notified the moment the offers were released.

• Nearly 1 in 2 clicks became participants in the campaign (50% signup conversion rate)

MOTIVATE SOCIAL SHARING: Participants could earn insight into when the offers would be released by referring friends to the campaign on Facebook. Shared content included the brand’s product image and link back to the campaign.

• Over 40,000 participants chose to share the campaign with friends
• Each referral invited an average of 7 friends
• More than 1.2 million organic impressions were created on Facebook within three days
• Nearly 35% of all campaign participants were generated from social referrals

RELEASE OFFERS: Participants were notified of the Live Release via text message and email to claim offers before they were gone. Offers were then redeemed within days generating store revenue and foot traffic.

• 70% of all participants claimed an offer within 15 minutes
• $850,000 in immediate revenue generated in-stores

Interested in learning more? Get in touch today to find out how to capitalize on Facebook’s latest updates by boosting social referrals and maximizing your organic reach! hola@quikly.com