Facebook has become one of the most convenient tools to market commercial loan brokerages. It allows brokers to connect with both current and prospective clients, providing them valuable insights and knowledge while maintaining top of mind awareness. Additionally, Facebooks options for paid advertising (and its associated micro-targeting controls) can ensure that a broker’s page is seen by the right audience.
Organic vs. paid content
There are two types of content on Facebook, organic and paid. Organic posting is done through a company’s Facebook page, similar to sharing content on a personal page. This is a free process to use but requires hard work and dedication to build a following.
The other form of posting is paid advertising, which places a small ad off to the side of the viewers Facebook page, or into their feed. Different ads cost different amounts based on the type of ad and how many views it receives. Facebook uses a unique system of bids to buy ads, with more popular ads paying less per ad but being seen more often. This makes navigating a paid social campaign a tricky undertaking, but one that can be profitable when implemented properly.
You can use paid advertising to target directly your niche.
Facebooks paid to advertise allows the user to target specific niches based on job title, company, income, and location. This allows a broker to directly target their niche or geographic location, which means they are able to control who sees their ad, and when. This takes a lot of the hard work out of organic advertising but does require a deep knowledge of how Facebook’s advertising algorithms and processes work.
Additionally, paid Facebook advertising requires a steady stream of attention as ads may need to be tweaked based on how they are performing. This ability to fix the targets of the ads allows the campaign to be more tightly focused, but the best results still come from continual, active management.
Which is right for you?
Choosing between paid or organic posting requires an understanding of how the process works, and how your target market uses Facebook. So before jumping into the Facebook ecosystem, it is smart to get a full understanding of what your market looks like. If it seems like the field of potential customers is smaller, or less active on Facebook, then paid advertising may not be the best option. But this needs to be balanced against the platform’s outstanding ability to target across a broad range of career and personal profile metrics.
Social media marketing has evolved over the years. There is no one correct way to use Facebooks software to plan an advertising campaign. If you are looking to learn more about Facebook advertising, and how to better leverage social media to improve your brokerage, take a look at our training session and classes.