When you think of social media today, the first name that comes to mind will most

definitely be Facebook. Owing to its sheer size, Facebook has rightfully become almost
synonymous with the term ‘social network’. But have you heard of a Chinese platform
called QZone? QZone has over 500 million active users on the platform. WhatsApp is now
the most popular chat application, but China has its own chat app, WeChat, which has a
user base of over 1.1 billion users. Before you delve into social media marketing
techniques, you should have a broad understanding of the social media ecosystem and the
unique benefits they provide marketers with.

Some of the benefits social networks provide over traditional media are as follows:

1. Large, active user base

2. Numerous ad-targeting options
3. Word-of-mouth marketing and various methods to build brand loyalty
4. Credible information

Amplifying your posts on social media, that is, boosting their reach by applying the
marketing budget to this end, is of utmost importance, as the organic reach of any post
you create on a Facebook page is very limited. However, you will not want to amplify every
post you make on your fan page. There are posts that you will want to create only for

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hygiene purposes and posts that you will want a wider audience to view. As a marketer,
you will need to identify which content pieces need amplification and which ones do not.

The steps involved in planning and setting up a paid campaign are as follows:

1. Identifying the content pieces you want to promote

2. Identifying your specific target audiences
3. Defining the budgets and key performance indicators (KPIs)

It is extremely important for brands to be on Facebook, as it has a widespread user base.

This is especially applicable to India, as Indians constitute the largest proportion of
Facebook users, i.e., 290 million users.

It is noted that an average user spends around 35 minutes of their day browsing through
Facebook. Factoring in the number of Facebook users worldwide, you can clearly
comprehend the magnitude of Facebook’s impact on brand awareness (related to any
brand or product), making it one of the most important social media platforms.

After learning about Facebook’s role in the digital marketing world, you looked at the
types of content that exist on Facebook:

1. Video
a. Facebook video content includes uploaded videos and live-streaming
videos.
b. Facebook videos receive 8 billion views daily.
c. 85% of the videos are viewed without sound.

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 d. People spend three times more time watching live videos than pre-recorded
videos.
2. Photos/images
a. Facebook posts with images get 2.3 times more engagement than posts
without images.
b. You can create a series of images, tell stories and use photos, illustrations
and other images to offer something unique to your audience and inspire
engagement as a result.
3. Text posts
a. You can add updates, insights, facts and interesting thoughts and share
them.
b. You can include visuals and text in your posts; a combination of the two can
go a long way in improving engagement.
4. User-generated content
a. Sharing content made by happy customers gives you credibility and is a
great way to market products.
b. This also helps in creating a community around your brand/product.
5. Blog posts
a. You can share blogs that are relevant to your business and product.
6. Podcasts
a. You can share podcasts that can be somehow tied back to your brand or
company.

After learning about the types of content that exist on Facebook, you learnt about the
best time to post content on Facebook.

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Weekday mornings and afternoons show the most consistent engagement. Sundays are
generally not preferred, as people are relatively disconnected from social media on the
weekends.

Facebook provides a boost option to help users enhance the reach of their organic posts.

Facebook provides two boosting options:

a. Sending more people to the website

b. Boosting likes, shares and comments on the post

After choosing your budget options and the duration of the posts, you are set to boost
your posts on Facebook.

Paid advertising is one of the most popular features of Facebook. To understand this
feature, first, you looked at the account structure on the Facebook Ad Manager.

FACEBOOK AD ACCOUNT

Campaign - Promotion 1 Campaign - Promotion 2

(Objective) (Objective)

AD Set 1 AD Set 2 AD Set 1 AD Set 2

(Targeting) (Targeting) (Targeting) (Targeting)

AD 1 AD 1 AD 1 AD 1

AD 2 AD 2 AD 2 AD 2

AD 3 AD 3 AD 3 AD 3

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After understanding the account structure, you learnt about the different marketing
objectives that you can choose on the Ad Manager.

Facebook has oriented these marketing objectives to the different stages of the consumer
funnel.

1. Awareness
a. Brand awareness
b. Reach
2. Consideration
a. Traffic
b. Engagement
c. App installations
d. Video views
e. Lead generation
3. Purchase
a. Conversions
b. Catalog sales
c. Store traffic

The next important thing to consider in relation to Facebook marketing campaigns is

‘knowing your audience’.

There can be different types of audiences present on the platforms. These are as follows:

1. Saved audience
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 2. Custom audience
3. Lookalike audience

The major ad formats available on Facebook are as follows:

1. Video
2. Image
3. Collections
4. Carousel
5. Lead-generation ad
6. Canvas

You can learn more about these ad formats and more here.

These ad formats can have different placements on Facebook. The placement option on
Facebook allows you to place your ad on the platform such that it is visible to any user. It
may be placed in Stories so that it is visible to a user who is browsing through their stories
feed. It could be placed in the News Feed so that it is visible to a user who is browsing
through their Facebook feed. It may also be placed in the far-right corner, where it will be
visible to users browsing through the platform on a desktop; however, this option is not
available on smartphones.

Based on the type of consumer to be targeted, a brand can choose from a plethora of
placement options.

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After implementing a social media strategy (by converting it into campaigns and posts),
you must set measurable goals that are to be achieved. For example, if you are running
brand awareness campaigns for a local café, your measurable goal will be to reach
5,000–20,000 people in your town or city. In this example, the KPI is the reach the
campaign achieves. Metrics are the measuring tools that will further divide this KPI and
provide you with actionable insights.
Various metrics are used to analyse a social media marketing campaign.
At the awareness stage, there are certain important metrics to consider:
1. The number of page likes and followers is an important metric at this stage.
2. Impressions record how many times a particular message has been displayed on
your target audience’s screens.
3. Unique impressions or Reach determines how many users your campaigns are
actually reaching. This differs from Total Impressions, as a user could see the same
ad several times. Unique impressions will further help in determining the number
of times and the frequency with which an ad is shown to your target users.
4. Costs associated with the impressions, i.e., CPM and campaign costs are also
important metrics.

At the consideration stage, your focus should be on certain important metrics:

1. The number of likes/reactions, shares and comments on your posts is a key metric
at this stage.
2. The engagement rate is a comprehensive formula that gives you collective
information about the effectiveness of any of your posts. It can be calculated using
the following formula:

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 Engagement Rate = (Comments + Likes/Reactions + Shares) / Total Impressions
3. The click-through rate (CTR) shows you how many people, among those the ad
reached, actually clicked on your ad.
4. The costs associated with achieving those click-throughs can be determined by
measuring the CPC.

At the purchase stage, the metrics that will help you track performance are as follows:

1. The conversion rate gives you the number of conversions (product sales, lead forms
submitted, app downloads, etc.) from among all users who viewed your ad.
2. Cost per acquisition or CPA is the ratio of the total cost incurred in a campaign to
the number of conversions. A conversion could be any expected user action such as
a sale, lead form submission or an app download.

Finally, at the delight stage, you will need to keep track of these metrics to manage your
social media presence well:

1. Number of complaints or negative feedback

2. Turn-around-time (TAT) to respond to customer complaints
3. Number of brand mentions your brand received over a period of time
4. Brand sentiment ratio can be calculated as a ratio of the number of positive, neutral
and negative brand mentions divided by the total number of brand mentions.

5. Your brand’s share of voice can be calculated as the ratio of the number of brand
mentions you received to the total number of brand mentions for all brands in your
industry over a specific period.

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 6. Net promoter score (NPS) is a metric that gauges the loyalty of your customers. It
involves asking your customers to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely they are to
recommend your brand to their peers. Those who rate it from 0 to 6 are called
detractors; those who rate it 7 and 8 are called passives; and, those who rate it 9
and 10 are called promoters. NPS is calculated as a percentage of promoters minus
the percentage of detractors from among the respondents to your questionnaire. A
positive NPS (above 0%) means that a brand has more promoters than detractors.

Social media marketing is an interesting place to be in, as it gives you the freedom to make
mistakes and also helps you rectify them as soon as you realise them without losing an
exorbitant amount of money in the process. You can stop a campaign midway without
having to spend further amounts. The targeting parameters or creative goals, the delivery
type, etc., can all be modified in real time, giving marketers the power to explore various
marketing options.

Some of the major optimisation techniques that you can apply to social media marketing,
at both the mid-campaign and end-campaign levels are as follows:
1. Creative optimisation
a. A/B testing
2. Targeting optimisation
a. Behavioural targeting

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3. Performance optimisation
a. Scheduling
b. Ad rotating

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