More Face To Face, Less Face To Facebook – Reclaiming Your Brand In 2015
Facebook was admirably open about their less than admirable move to bottleneck direct-to-fan marketing. But the move they made to box bands and brands into paying to reach their fans may have resulted in them getting boxed out.
Facebook built a destination with Pages; a platform that until now, served as an opt in marketing platform for fans to connect directly to their favorite brands and vice versa. Now that Facebook has all but removed organic reach from Pages, brands and bands are left looking ways to recalibrate their online marketing for 2015.
The answer is to go back to the basics.
Refocusing your efforts to platforms you have total control of may seem like a bit of a headache, but that website re-design you've been putting off for too long, and that newsletter mailing list you haven't updated since the inception of Facebook's Pages – it's time for a revival. Why? Because you and you alone have the ability to control the messaging.
Your website should be a direct reflection of your brand, so if you've made updates, your website needs to reflect that. Many use Facebook as another branch of marketing, when it should be an over-arching mirror of whats being shared on your privately owned website.
Think about it – using Facebook as a funnel to drive your fans to your platform instead of theirs means you own the information, you can analyze the data, and you retain that knowledge for future use in upcoming marketing campaigns. With Facebook, they own that information and they're not going to let go of it. They're going to charge you to keep getting consumer data you'll never have access to.
How do you reclaim your brand in 2015? Start with your roots.
Build a marketing plan that focuses on bringing fans in – not outsourcing them to various social media channels. Let me clarify that you should absolutely be active across your social media platforms, but by being interactive with your audience, you bring them to you.
Social media isn't going to go away, but how you use it will continue to evolve. Think of social media as a funnel to your brand. What they see on social media should entice them to want to engage and/or know more. That's where the website comes into play. It's also where newsletters are making a huge comeback.
If Facebook isn't going to allow the organic reach consumers desire and brands demand, use those platforms to promote subscriptions to newsletters that will keep you in direct contact with your fans. When you're evaluating your marketing budget, allocate some funding to boost posts that drive traffic to your website with a clear call to action. Let your fans know you're missing them on Facebook and that you want to stay in touch. Fans crave authenticity. By removing the filter between you and them, you give them exactly that.
While Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. all have their rightful place in the landscape of digital marketing, taking the power of your brand out of their hands means putting it back where it's always belonged – in yours.
