A Crazy Facebook Strategy Worth Considering
Last month, L2 Inc., highlighted what I consider to be a very interesting approach to Facebook by beauty brand, Moroccanoil. L2 calls their strategy “sparse but paid.” I call it worthy of consideration.
Moroccanoil created their Facebook page back in the day aka when the Facebook algorithm didn’t stifle organic reach and before the platform was effectively pay to play. This means they had an easier time amassing their 450k+ following than they would if they started their page today.
This matters because they just need to get their posts in front of their fans, not focus on growing their fan base.
But let’s get back to that “sparse but paid” approach. L2 oddly said Moroccanoil “promotes posts just twice a month on Facebook, but backs every single post with significant ad dollars.” I assume they meant to say that they only post twice a month and put ad dollars behind every post, but made an editing mistake. Regardless, my takeaway from the L2 blog entry was that Moroccanoil was only posting a few times a month and turning every post into an ad to boost its reach into their target audience.
After looking at L2’s chart above and doing a manual fact check by scrolling back on their page, I determined this to be false. Moroccanoil was posting almost every day, like most of their competitors. The activity between large spikes had to be coming from somewhere after all. However, the concept of posting less frequently, but putting money behind every post has stuck with me since I initially read L2’s entry.
Instead of wasting time and resources on content curation/ creation and scheduling, why not put money behind higher quality, less-frequent posts?
With decent ad spend behind weekly posts, there would still be considerable action on their page. Someone would still need to monitor and respond to comments, but creative resources could be tapped for other purposes internally.
I would be willing to bet that this approach would net more engagement than many accounts would normally see posting daily without any ad spend.
This makes sense when you think about it. The industry has come to agree that organic reach for brand pages tends to float right around 2%. That means a page with 100k likes would have to post over a dozen times to get the same reach I’ve managed to get by spending $250 in the past. Think about the time and resources that would go into those 12+ posts — almost certainly more than $250 worth.
But it doesn’t stop at reach. Shares and likes have also been dramatically higher on the pages I run for paid posts vs. normal posts. Sometimes, to the point that a few weeks’ worth of posts didn’t net the same engagement as that single boosted post.
So why not focus on higher quality content, posted less frequently, with ad spend behind it?
I can’t come up with a good answer. Consumers today are bombarded with marketing everywhere they look. Posting in a manic fashion just to get more eyeballs on your content due to poor organic reach only makes things worse. I would argue that many brands could build good will with consumers by paring down their marketing and delivering something of higher quality to them once every week or two.
What do you think about this approach? If you’re in social media marketing I would love to know if you’ve tried this or if you would even be willing to try it. If you represent a brand, I would love to get your thoughts on whether or not this approach would be something you would consider. Comment below or reach out to me at Nick@WatchSM.com.
