A few years back, Facebook organic reach was epic.
You could grow your audience really easily, you could reach a large portion of your audience.
It was amazing.
You could have 1000 likes and have anywhere from 50-80% of them see your post.
These days you’re lucky to have two percent see your stuff.
It’s crazy.
Same with Facebook Ads.
A little while ago, you could literally be horrendous at paid ads and still generate some sort of result.
Just by being in the game you could win something.
Facebook Ads are becoming more like Google Ads are these days.
Google Ads went from being easy to kill it, to these days where most markets have become very competitive and simply ‘showing up’ doesn’t guarantee results.
You may still be able to generate results, but chances are you’ll need to either take a lot of time to learn the process in detail or hire an expert.
It’s important to be aware of the ‘tides’ in marketing.
There will always be that hot new app or tool to help you grow your business.
They all have a lifespan.
If you can learn to spot them early and hammer the absolute shit out of them while the going’s good, you’ll be able to grow your business way faster.
The cool thing is that even if say Facebook Ads become useless (or ridiculously competitive) in future, you still lock in all those leads and sales from when it was good.
The people who jumped on Facebook Ads early will still have the bulk of those leads on their database.
I feel this way about Instagram right now, even still.
It has awesome reach and engagement generally – as per Forrester Research:
Image from Forrester
Facebook is now owned by Instagram, and I have no doubt that as Instagram gets more popular – the reach will inevitably go down.
Those whose customers are on Instagram should really be hustling right now to build their following, make the most of the resulting website traffic and capture leads with that traffic while the going’s good.
Three questions to ask yourself so you identify a wave before it goes mainstream:
- Are other people getting results without spending extensive time learning about the platform? (ie. they don’t seem particularly smart but even they are killing it)
- Have you been able to copy their strategy and be able to generate similar results also with a short learning curve?
- If it’s an app or service, do you personally enjoy using it? If you genuinely love using it prior to it being ‘popular’ that’s usually a great sign. If you like it, there’s probably plenty of other people who like it too.
What’s one platform/strategy which you feel hasn’t hit the mainstream and is in it’s ‘golden era’ right now?
Let me know in the comments section below.
