2 Facebook Marketing Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making

Internet marketing, social media to be specific has grown in popularity as a great way for businesses market to and engage customers with out spending a lot of money. The question is how do business owners know how much revenue their Internet marketing strategies have produced?

I’m going to focus on Facebook but the ideas can be used for any social media site. Facebook marketers need to make sure that the site is worth the effort that they are putting into it as well analyze the results to make sure that they continually improve.

The only way to improve results on anything (including losing weight for you New Years Resolutioners) is to pay attention to the data. You can’t be sure that your plan is working, how to improve, or your return on investment unless you are using some sort of analytics to track the actions that lead to results.

So lets take a look at the 2 mistakes you are making in your Facebook marketing strategy.

Mistake 1: Lack of clear objectives and goals.

Many small businesses are excited by the idea and buzz around social media but fail to establish clear goals for why they are doing any type of Internet marketing. Facebook is just a tool used with set tactics to fulfill a strategy to achieve your goals.

If you don’t have clear goals you end up chasing meaningless metrics like fan count. The top reasons business give for using social media are to increase website traffic and improve brand awareness and reputation. I remind my clients that both of those goals are good but ultimately each needs to produce leads.

Once you set your goal determine how you will measure and track it. What metrics will show proof that you are on the right path. An example of tracking the wrong metric or not having enough data is counting calories but not getting on the scale or measuring your waist. How do you know if you are cutting enough calories if you don’t measure it against what you actually want to happen: get smaller. This is why fan count is a loose metric. What would you rather have 500 fans that buy from you or 5000 that just “like” you?

Mistake 2: Not setting benchmarks

To know if Facebook is providing a good ROI you need to set benchmarks to measure it against. Facebook shouldn’t be your only form of marketing so compare it to what leads you produce from other channels.

The returns are not merely based on money but time as well. Although using Facebook and setting up a page is free, your time isn’t. If you charge $100/hr for your services and spend 3 hours promoting and engaging with fans on Facebook then your marketing cost was $300. To set a benchmark, track the leads generating in a set time on through other marketing strategies. Multiple times is best to set an average. Compare this to your Facebook leads to know if your time Is worth it or what can be improved.