Changes to Facebook Fan Pages Breathes New Life Into Email & SMS Marketing

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If you are the CEO or owner of a business, or are in charge of your company’s marketing efforts, you are probably already aware of Facebook’s recent algorithm changes and how they are dramatically affecting the reach of your Facebook page. It used to be that you could market your products or service on Facebook virtually for FREE and reach a HUGE audience without paying anything. You simply needed to post content that people would react to and engage with. However, Facebook has throttled down reach SO much that it has become almost impossible to reach the same numbers of people with your Facebook page, especially if you are refusing to pay Facebook for sponsored posts and advertising. It does not matter if you are still creating original and engaging content; yes, it does help a little and you will notice your reach go up a little bit, but there is no way you are going to reach the same numbers of people you did before Facebook’s algorithm change on April 14th. So how do you combat this dramatic change in your company’s brand exposure? You would be surprised where we found our answer.

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Facebook Fan Page Reach Drops to below 3% on Average

First, let’s take a look at the numbers. Due to Facebook’s recent changes to reach, you now reach about 1-3% of your total audience with any given post. That means that if you have a page of 200 thousand Likes, you are reaching a little over a thousand of those people with any given post. That is PUTRID compared to what you used to be able to reach.

In fact, we actually did a data analysis regarding this using our sister companies’ Facebook pages which have a cumulative total of 1.4 MILLION fans. Historically we used to be able to post something on any one of those sites and we would reach a vast majority of our fans, or even more through sharing! However more recently, after finding out the total number of people we reached per post, we then divided that number by the total number of people who saw ANY post we posted during that particular time period. The resulting number is the AVERAGE PERCENTAGE of the people who saw the post who also LIKED the page. We ran this test in the month following Facebook’s change on April 14th and the results have been staggering. Of the five pages we ran this study on, NOT ONE post on any page even hit 3% of our audience! To be specific, the average percentage of the people who LIKED our pages who actually SAW our posts on each page read like this: 2.9%, 1.3%, 1.3%, 2.3%, and 0.069% respectively!!! That is an average reach per post of 1.574%.  No, we are NOT kidding. Also, keep in mind that we changed NOTHING as far as what we posted, when we posted, and how we posted.

Along with this startling information, any post you put on Facebook will die within 2-3 days, or even sooner! So not only are your Facebook posts reaching far fewer people, but they are also being erased from the socialsphere much quicker than ever before. So how do you reach these people when you don’t have the gigantic Facebook megaphone you used to have?

So where do you turn? Many marketing directors and agencies have begun to fall back to Email and SMS Marketing.

Email Marketing Advantages over Facebook

Email marketing has a relatively strong reach, or open rate in email speak, when relating it back to the reach you are currently getting on Facebook. Email open rates are generally 15% of your database, which means that about 15% of the emails that you send to your email database will actually be opened by the receiver. Knowing that you are barely reaching even 2% of your audience on Facebook, email marketing has experienced a rebirth due to its reliability and efficiency relative to the results you will get on Facebook.

It is also important to note that email open rates also experience a diminishing return. This means that with each email blast you send out to your entire database, your open rates will gradually diminish. This is due to people either unsubscribing from your database, trashing your email, or your emails are being sent to people’s spam folders. So you will either have to switch methods again to make up for this loss, or find a way to consistently grow your email database while you are employing email marketing as the driving force behind your marketing campaign. Regardless of how you look at it, it would be extremely difficult for any marketing campaign to survive on Facebook and email alone, so where do you turn next?

SMS Marketing Advantages over Facebook

SMS absolutely CRUSHES Facebook when it comes to effectiveness and efficiency. Think about it; SMS has a 99% open rate and a 97% open rate within 3 minutes! This means that almost literally EVERY message you send yo your SMS database WILL be seen by your subscribers. They HAVE to! Have you ever been able to delete a text message without looking at it? Exactly, you can’t. Additionally, SMS messages NEVER die until they are deleted by the receiver. That means that ANY message you send to your subscribers WILL be read. They HAVE to be read to even be deleted!

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So STOP banging your head against the brick wall Facebook has built when it comes to exposure. You WILL NOT get the same reach you did before, Facebook has made it a point to make that absolutely impossible to attain. Switch your marketing efforts to SMS and send messages that you KNOW people will see! To put it simply; SMS will ALWAYS reach 99% of your audience, NO MATTER WHAT! Can you possibly think of a better medium to market to your audience through?

We couldn’t either.

Social Media and Mobile Marketing for Moms

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Recently, overwhelming evidence has been uncovered regarding mothers’ and their use of mobile devices and social media. More specifically speaking, they are 20% more likely to use social media than the general population, and a whopping 91% admit to using social media on a regular basis. That is a 20% increase from 2 years ago in 2010. This, however, is just scraping the surface of what appears to be a much larger demographic than previously thought by mobile and social media marketers.

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The study, which was conducted by BabyCenter and comScore, focused on measuring mothers’ social media patterns and habits. The findings displayed a landscape where mothers are not only becoming extremely social themselves, but they also expect their friends, family members, and colleagues to be social as well. Statistically speaking, 22% of mothers claim that if their family or friends aren’t engaging in social media, then those family and friends are not as big a part of their lives as the ones who ARE active in social media. This might sound a little harsh up front, but as a marketer, you should be looking at these numbers with eyes wide as saucers.

Let’s take a look a a visual representation of how mother’s are overtaking the social media landscape.

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You’ll notice that not only are moms 14% more likely to be on Facebook than the general population, but they are also 260 times more likely to be engaging with Facebook via a mobile device. Need a little more? They are also more likely to online shop and more likely to own a smartphone than people in the general population.

Their reach doesn’t just centralize on Facebook, however. They also have a strong reach across YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Google+. Most notably, 61% of all mothers have used Pinterest within the last 6 months, which is almost double the 30% usage rate of the general population.

In the infographic below, you’ll notice that mothers are literally using social media more than any other demographic. In fact, it’s not even close.

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Oh, and by the way, mother’s are also starting to dominate the mobile landscape as well. They are 49% more likely than the general population to own smartphones, 45% claim they are emailing less due to increased communication on social media, smartphone ownership is up 25% among moms while tablet ownership is up 79%, and an astounding 89% of moms with smartphones access Facebook via those smartphones.

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As you can see, mothers have obviously gone social and mobile. So naturally, this affects their shopping habits. Now moms are starting to take to the internet for their shopping wants and needs as opposed to walking into brick and mortar stores. Despite only making up 18% of internet users, mothers still accounted for 32% of online spending in the last business quarter, 78% follow brands for discounts and coupons (compared to 55% of the general population), and 73% depend on online social media recommendations concerning parenting. They also admitted that posts from friends of theirs are 16% more likely to influence them than a post from a brand, and posts from other mothers are 55% more influential than any brands’ post.

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The numbers are there. Mothers have become the quintessential demographic for mobile, social, and online marketers. If you are an online marketer, and you are not marketing with mothers in mind, then you are fighting a losing battle. With a majority of social, mobile, and online engagement coming from mothers, it should be obvious to marketers where their spending should be allocated. Don’t delay! Use this information to your benefit and watch the mothers of America grow your bottom line!

(Infographics pulled from marketingprofs.com)

Mobile Marketing and Social Media in the Restroom | Where CAN’T You Market?

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If you are new to the mobile marketing industry, then you probably have no idea that there is virtually no place that you cannot market to. Actually, we might be able to use the word “literally” instead of “virtually” now because of newly discovered information regarding mobile marketing, social media, and where they are commonly used. We already know that 91% of all adults have or own a smartphone, but where are they using them?

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For starters, we know they are using them on the streets, in stores, at restaurants, at the mall, at work, at home, before bed, in bed, in the morning when they wake up, and basically everywhere in between. And when we say everywhere, we mean EVERYWHERE. A recent study conducted by CreditDonkey has found that a whopping 52% of American social media users admit to using Facebook while in the restroom. Of that 52%, 54% were men and 40.4% were women. Along with these restroom numbers, it was also found that 51.4% of men admitted to using social media while drunk, while 41.4% of women admit to using social media while drunk. Of course, women are probably thinking right now, “Well obviously the men’s numbers are higher, men are pigs.” Which may be the case, but the numbers are still prevalent for both sexes and should be seen as huge windows of opportunity for marketers.

Speaking of the battle of the sexes, women actually have a higher propensity to use social media while watching television, with 83.3% hopping on social media while their TVs are on in the background. Only 79.8% of men do this. 72.5% of women and 69.5% of men visit sites while traveling, and both sexes are guilty of getting on their phones while at work with 62.4% of men and 58% of women messing around on the clock. Who do you think used their phones more while shopping? Men right? While the women are shopping? Nope. 44.1% of women used social media while shopping relative to 36% of men.

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Probably the biggest and most frightening of these statistics is the fact that 14.8% of men and 11.8% of women admit to hopping on social media while driving. To be more specific, 19% of social media users have accessed Facebook while driving and 15.1% have used Twitter. Of course, this is nothing we endorse in any way shape or form, but it does illustrate how people are using their smartphones literally EVERYWHERE. You can now add the restroom, while watching TV, while drunk, and while driving to our initial list at the top of this article. We are still trying to find places where people AREN’T using their smartphones, but those places are becoming few and far in between. It will eventually get to the point where we may never find a place where no one uses their smartphones again.

So what does this tell us? The fact that everyone is using their smartphones EVERYWHERE?! Well, you might want to start by implementing a mobile marketing strategy into your overall marketing strategy. The best part about mobile marketing and marketing on social media is that it is CHEAP compared to any form of outbound marketing (television, radio, billboards, print media, etc.) This should not be a hard decision! Integrate mobile marketing into your marketing strategy today and take advantage of all these users who are on their phones all the time!