When you’re looking to increase brand recognition, drive traffic to your website, sell more products or book more services, Facebook marketing is a great channel to focus your time and effort.

However, like with any other digital marketing channel, you need a way to monitor your success and see what’s working and what isn’t.

On Facebook, there’s a common misconception that how much engagement your posts get, how many likes your page has or how many comments and shares that you get equals more business. But, that’s simply not the case.

4 reasons why you shouldn’t focus on engagement on Facebook

#1. You risk losing sight of what actually matters

At the end of the day, what matters more to you — getting more likes and comments on Facebook or driving traffic to your website, selling more products or getting more conversions?

If you’re like most businesses marketing on Facebook, likes, comments and shares are all nice to have but don’t pay the bills, and the bottom line is conversions or sales.

Too often, brands get so caught up in trying to drum up engagement that they forget about why they’re advertising on Facebook in the first place. On Facebook, it’s about setting up your campaign to address the desired business outcome, NOT about proxy metrics.

#2. You’ll be barking up the wrong tree

When you’re focused on how much engagement each post gets or how many page likes you have, you end up optimizing your ads for “clicky” users (users who are most likely to like or comment on your ads).

As a result, you aren’t optimizing your ads for someone who might actually want to shop on your website, schedule an appointment, etc.

Part of what makes Facebook marketing so powerful is the ability to target a specific audience, which allows you to create ads specific to your audience and maximize your ROI. But, that won’t happen if you’re targeting an audience that’s counterproductive to your goal.

Realize this, the vast majority of people who will actually make a purchase will never click on, like or comment on your ads.

That’s why engagement on Facebook is not an accurate way to measure how likely users are to convert. That has much more to do with purchase history and previous website behavior.

#3. Your ads will cost more

One big reason not to focus on engagement is that clicky users are a lot more expensive to target (typically 5 and a half times more!).

This is because only 10% of people on Facebook are “clicky,” and when you choose to target them, you’re competing with every other advertiser on the platform who also targets this subset of users.

Since engagement is such a popular metric for Facebook marketing, you can bet that a lot of your competitors will be targeting the same small group of clicky users. That will mean a lot of competition, and when you are able to break through the noise, it will cost a lot more.

Instead of targeting Facebook users most likely to engage with your ads, target users most likely to actually be interested in your products, services or brand. Take some time to analyze your existing customers to identify the ideal demographics for your Facebook campaigns.

#4. You’ll sacrifice real brand value for vanity metrics

Not only are click users being more expensive to target through Facebook advertising, but there’s also no correlation between someone clicking an ad and someone converting or buying a product (Nielsen study).

In other words, when you focus too much on engagement, not only will you have to spend more to target clicky users, but you also won’t see the kind of real brand value you’re looking for, whether that’s brand awareness or conversions.

According to a Harvard Business Review study,

“The mere act of endorsing a brand does not affect a customer’s behavior or lead to increased purchasing, nor does it spur purchasing by friends.”

Getting more likes, comments and shares isn’t a bad thing, and engagement can help to make your brand ads more visible on Facebook. But, for most businesses, Facebook likes are just Facebook likes, and they won’t provide a whole lot of real value for your brand.

How to generate real brand value through Facebook marketing

Instead of boosting your ads to increase engagement, get more profile views or page likes (unless, ultimately, that’s all you care about) focus your efforts on monitoring more meaningful metrics for success, like brand recall and conversions.

Drive real brand value and maximize your ROI on Facebook by targeting users who are most likely to pay attention to your ad (if your objective is brand awareness), watch your video (if your objective is video views), view your website (if your objective is landing page views) or purchase your project or book a service (if your objective if website conversion).

The objective you choose should depend on where the target audience is within the advertising funnel. For example, if you’re targeting users who are new to your brand, it makes more sense to focus on brand awareness; whereas, repeat customers or users who have previously visited your website are more likely to convert.

And remember, if you’re targeting users with one of these objectives in mind, do not expect engagement or get discouraged when you don’t get many likes! That is not your goal.

When you’re marketing your business on Facebook, understanding which metrics are worth your time and focus is a step in the right direction. Once you know what you hope to get out of your Facebook ads and who you’re targeting, you can optimize your campaign to drive results and maximize your ROI.

Need help getting it right on Facebook? Whether you’re looking for software and tools to help you create and launch Facebook ads, you’re looking for help with one aspect of your Facebook campaign or you want to work with a professional who can do it for you, Marketing 360® has a solution for you.

Learn more and see our plans and pricing. 

Originally published on 12/28/20