I was intrigued by a blog post written by Brian Carter entitled "SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page's Posts" and I recommend that you read the entire article as well as consider Brian's tips to increase engagement.

With everyone's obsession about collecting high number of Facebook Fans these stats remind me that high quality engagement and building the right fan community are so important.  The stats above were collected from Facebook Pages that had a combined 400 million fans. 

More Fans Equals Less Engagement

The chart shows that as the fans "increase" the visibility of your posts drops.  Could this be a wake-up call for business owners that are pushing for numbers and not quality?  You've heard the phrase "Junk In = Junk Out" so maybe this is the social media version of that warning.

Now aside from arguing these numbers if your page has higher stats, it's still a reminder about the potential direct impact of any one Facebook post or short term campaign.

Heck, in fact these numbers are less than the visibility you get with an email campaign which have open rates around 10-15% on non-segmented lists. I'm not thrashing Facebook, I use it regularly.  These stats just show that it can't be the holy grail to solve all your consumer marketing needs.

Building Segmented Communities On Different Marketing Channels

My takeaway from this article is that building focused, segmented marketing strategies is the way to approach the diverse base of consumers looking for your goods and services.  Business owners need to have engagement with consumers using multiple digital channels:

• Chat
• Texting Campaigns
• Facebook/Social Media
• Email
• LinkedIn/Digital Networking
• ReTargeting/PPC
• Mobile Websites/Apps

I have been amazed with the jump in leads when a dealer adds chat to these website. Dealer eProcess shared a great chart at a recent PCG Pit Stop that showed all age groups are using chat.  See chart below:

Are You Using Opt-In Text Campaigns?

I have also "seen the light" on texting campaigns since most people under 40 prefer to receive a text than an email or phone call.  It's amazing how fast a business can build a text marketing campaign.   When you consider that most people don't change our cell phone number often and that the phone is always with us, even in the bathroom, text marketing has an amazing delivery rate.

If you have ever watched the attrition on your email lists, you know how often people change their email.  15% of the US population moves every year and add to that how often people change jobs.  Keeping email contacts up to date is laborious.  Now consider how little attrition you will have on your text campaign database if you don't abuse it.

Offer and Manage Multiple Engagement Channels

To me fair, I have also seen great engagement on Facebook. Anyone who has tested different posting techniques knows that some posts start a fire of comments and others die on the vine.  Facebook is another channel, but it's value should not be inflated to greater than the data shows.

Business owners need to establish a multi-channel communication strategy for their market.  If you ignore any one of the methods listed above, you are missing an important part of your market.

Now that PCG has added these channels to our consulting services, I could not be more excited for dealers who want to invest and engage in digital marketing.  For me, there are many efficient and profitable ways to connect with consumers and that gives dealers more choice. 

The future looks bright!

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com