There’s been a lot of chatter over Facebook’s latest blog post, which addresses the declining organic reach of Facebook Pages. Having worked with Facebook advertisers for years, we at SHIFT want to provide our take on the reasoning behind Facebook’s decision, and show you why Page Likes really do still matter.
Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. At its core, this means giving its 1.3 billion monthly active users access to everything going on that’s important to them. With Facebook, brands have an incredible opportunity to reach a specific and real audience in a meaningful way, but Facebook’s #1 priority is providing a great experience for its users. That means people, not brands. Constantly trying to “improve the News Feed experience for people” is one way of doing that. Another way Facebook is enhancing that experience is by showing people more relevant ads from brands and Pages that they’ve already expressed an interest in.
Going along with that, while a brand’s organic reach might lessen, their paid reach will in fact increase. That’s right, Facebook is “increasing the frequency for which a person can see an ad in News Feed from a Page they already follow, with the potential to show up to four ads per day from the previous one ad per day from a particular Page.” This is why the Page Like still matters! Because by becoming a fan of your Page, that user — one who is more likely to convert towards your business goals — becomes far more reachable. Affinity towards your brand, as expressed through a Page Like, leads to greater exposure of your content.
The crux of the issue is that Facebook is simultaneously trying to help brands find the right people, and help people discover the right content from the right brands. They’re accomplishing this by ensuring that a majority of the content a person sees is from Pages they have ‘Liked.’ So yes, the Page Like still matters. It enables brand marketers to target the people who are more valuable to your business anyway — four times over. In addition, because a fan can now be shown an ad 4x per day vs a non-fan who can only see it once a day, having an indication that fans find the creative to be positive will drive down your costs when advertising to them (and subsequently their friends if they engage with the creative).
If you have any questions about the change in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, or would like to learn how to build and manage effective paid advertising campaigns on Facebook, please reach out to us on our website or by emailing info@shift.com!