Hello Brisbane! It’s been a little while since we’ve done a locally focused blog so we thought that we’d do a little something for you. You might have noticed from our last two blogs, website must-dos before digital marketing or SEO – part 1 and part 2 or the one before it that we’ve been covering off a lot around how to plan for new websites and endeavours and we’re going to continue in this vein for today, but rest assured this advice holds true for those with existing websites/businesses who are looking to dip a toe into the environment regarding online marketing in Brisbane (or beyond). These are the essential points to consider so that you don’t go diving in unprepared and end up wasting precious time and money. So let’s get to it!

1 – First and foremost: Is Facebook actually for you?

Anyone who says that Facebook marketing is for every business is selling something. But we’ll take it a step further and say that anyone who says that Facebook is even equally useful or able to be approached in similar ways between different businesses is not only selling something, but probably going to be offering a pretty cookie cutter service that will have mixed results. You need to strongly consider whether or not your product or service could even work on Facebook either as something to be directly sold via paid advertising or as something which you could generate a business persona and regular content around via a Facebook page. An adjustable example we can offer would be as follows:

a) Any company offering high end B2B (Business to Business) services could likely find it hard to reach the higher ups in the types of organisations they are targeting via direct Facebook PPC advertising. It wouldn’t be impossible but we’re willing to bet that the hit rate would not be high enough to warrant a PPC campaign for that purpose.

b) This company may, however, find that increasing overall public awareness of their services via a Facebook page could be a good way to use content marketing as a means of reaching them through their own staff and/or the general public. A well thought out brand awareness campaign could be exactly what the doctor ordered (or at the very least a good supplementary activity to engage in as well as the more strongly sales focused activities happening on other platforms such as Google Ads).

c) But, what if the services this company offers are something that you might want necessarily want to advertise such as document shredding (much as we can think of a few ideas to explore if there are any document shredders out there!) or other activities that might be essential, but not always great to advertise? In this instance, it’s worth considering the possibility that Facebook just might not be for you.

1 – What are your goals?

Do you want to sell a product? A range of products? What does that mean in terms of setting up your page or campaigns? Are you selling a service? What is the culture or message that you want to sell as a company? How do you know when you’ve achieved that? If you’re selling “brand awareness” then how would you define that?

You should never jump into this kind of activity just thinking “I need sales” or “I have to be here because it’s 2019” or “my customers can contact me”, all of which are the sort of non-approach that will ensure that you float about on social media aimlessly with no real sense of how well you are or aren’t doing. Make sure that you have thought long and hard about what you want to achieve, defined it clearly and set yourself some realistic targets. Think “I would like to sell X amount of products”, or “I would like 1000 engaged followers”, or “I would like to start a conversation around X”. Then you can start moving forward in an informed and purposeful fashion.

3 – Should you be using Pay-Per-Click Advertising, a business page, or both?

We actually did an in-depth blog on this not so long ago with a guide on social media advertising Vs boosted posts in Brisbane so we’ll let it do the talking.  Bookmark this blog and when you are ready to consider if advertising or just promoting your content is the right strategy is for you, head over to this blog.

4 – If you’re not tracking what you’re doing, then you’re flying blind.

Install your Facebook pixel. You and/or your web person need to get to know it well. It’s not the very simple URL or action tracker that it once was. It can now help your advertising campaigns learn and apply the data it gathers to continually increase the effectiveness of your activities without you having to do very much at all and there is more still to it, so take a good look at its functionality.  In this post, Shopify’s blog covers the basics of setting up and using a Facebook Pixel really well. The blog after this one will also cover how best to track social media’s impact on your website via Google Analytics. There are countless tools available to you in 2019 so there is no excuse not to have a firm grasp and how your digital marketing efforts are going.

5 – Make sure you are thinking ahead and taking action!

It’s okay if your web marketing goals are simply to see if you can get the activity turning a profit, but what happens after that? Have you thought about the fact that it is probably wise at that point to put aside a certain percentage of that profit to expand the activities that are going well and thereby increase your overall profit? If you’re making more than you’re spending then it makes no sense to just keep running at the same level forever.

However, even getting to that point requires a lot of steps. You need to think about what those steps might look like, how you might scale up at various points, and what data you need to be reviewing in order to know whether or not you’ve reached a milestone or are tracking toward (or away from) it. People in Brisbane have had it easy for some time now in that the competition has lagged a little behind other parts of the country and the world when it comes to online efforts, but make make no mistake about it, online marketing in Brisbane is getting tougher by the day and those who don’t have a plan will be even less likely to land on their feet as time goes on. So be prepared and map out your plan of attack!

That’s it again from us. As always feel free to leave a comment below if you think we’ve missed anything and if you’d like us to elaborate or would like any more info on social media marketing then please feel free to get in touch!