Using Facebook Insights to Boost your Marketing Strategy

We’ve previously talked about how powerful Facebook Ads Manager is. There is a wealth of data to work with with the audience insights available there which can help you to target your Facebook (and Instagram) ads to the right audiences. But, if you don’t advertise for your brand, that doesn’t mean that you’re left in the dark! If your brand has a Facebook page, then you have access to Facebook’s analytical tool called Facebook Insights. If you want to know about your audience and boost your marketing strategy, this is the place where you need to go. Here’s how you can use it to improve your strategy

Facebook Insights is there to tell you everything you need to know how your page performs with your audience. When you go to your Facebook Page, you’re able to select the “Insights” right at the top of the page. These insights are broken down into multiple sub-topics like Overview, Likes, Actions on Page etc. A few of the sections, like Followers, Likes, Page Views and Actions on Page are more dedicated to tracking the growth of your Facebook page so we won’t touch on them in this blog. But, these are definitely helpful to aid you in tracking the growth of your page in every single way that matters.

What we’ll focus on instead are the sections that will help you in your decision making when it comes to running your page. So let’s get right to it!

Start Things Off

The first thing you’ll see is the Overview, where you’re given a Page Summary, insights on your 5 most recent posts and a section called Pages to Watch. The Page Summary shares a snapshot of how your page performed over today, the day before, the past week or the last 28 days. Metrics on the page summary include page likes, reach, post engagement, and views, among others. Below that, you’ll see your 5 most recent posts which give you some quick knowledge on which posts got the most reach or engagement.

While you’re still trying to figure out what works best for your brand’s Facebook page, you’re likely trying out many different tests and experimenting with different content. Maybe you wanted to see how posting content in different languages influences reach and engagement or wanted to compare how curated content performs in comparison to your branded stuff. That’s what this section of Facebook Insights is for; right from the onset, you can begin to notice some trends happening on your page. Once you see that a certain type of post consistently outperforms the other, you then learn to keep posting that kind of content in the future.

The last section in the overview is the Pages to Watch. Facebook will suggest some pages to you that they consider relevant to your brand. Here, you’re able to compare your Page with those of your competitors. You get insights on their top posts for the week which is a great way for you to see how you stack up against the competition and also get some inspiration on what kind of content works for their audience. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover something that your brand should give a try as well. If you’re both interested in the same people, chances are that they’ll also appreciate similar content coming from you, right? Another little way we like to use this section is as a tool to keep track of industry trends and leaders. While this isn’t exactly the intended purpose, it’s pretty efficient way get access to curated content that you already know people found value in!

Get To Know Your People

If you’ve taken any marketing classes in the past, you know how much importance is placed on the wants and needs of the customers. It’s all about finding out what products or services they are interested in, or figuring out their habits and trying to decode what goes on in their brain. Basically, your job is repeatedly asking the following question (albeit in a more structured way):

Point is, you really need to get to know your audience if you want to develop a brilliant marketing strategy. And, of course, like the friend that always gives, Facebook is there for you. Before you can plow on in your endeavor to figure out what the people want, start off with finding out who the people are. This is where the People section from Facebook Insights can be of some use to you. Instead of basing your marketing strategy on who you think you’re reaching, these insights paint a complete picture of the actual people connected to your page.

Here, you can see the aggregated demographic data about your fans, followers, people reached and even those engaged. If there is a close match between your followers and the people who engage with your posts, then you can expect a higher conversion rate. The people who connect with you actually are enjoying what you’re saying and interested in your offerings. That’s why we recommend noting down any deviating characteristics from your fans and followers to the people who engage the most. If the bulk of your followers are females between the age of 25-34, yet their engagement is low, then it’s time to revisit the content that you’re posting.

Another interesting way to use these stats is to compare this information to the prospective customers you defined in your overall marketing plan. Is there a match here or no? You might discover a new unanticipated audience that is apparently interested in your offerings, or at the very least, get confirmation that you are on the right track in reaching your marketing goals.

Dig Deeper Into Your Posting

Once you click on the Posts section, you’re able to get a bit more information on your content than what you were first able to see in the Overview. The first is data on what times your fans are online. Now, while there isn’t any golden rule for what time you should be posting, there is value in knowing when your fans in particular are active. While you may want to jump the gun and post the most when your fans are on Facebook, there are a few things to consider. First, ask yourself if your fans are online at the time when basically everyone else is as well. Just like on Instagram, news feeds are compiled based on an algorithm which means that a lot of posts get lost and never seen. If your best time is also a competitive time, one tip we can give you is to post 2 or 3 hours before then. That way, you can start building up engagement and up the chances that Facebook will serve your post to your fans later on when they are active on the site.

Secondly, be mindful of time zones. If you studied the data on the people, you have a clear picture of where your fans are living. If you have a wide variety, we encourage you to start targeting your posts based on country and scheduling them around the best times for those in that particular part of the world.

Another thing that you see in this section is how different types of posts perform in terms of average reach and engagement. This easily lets you see whether you should continue putting in efforts into videos or photos in comparison to posts with links for instance. If links get the highest levels of engagement, you know what you have to do: post more of them! Lastly, you can check out the performance of all your published posts in terms of reach, clicks and all reactions. Unlike the average data, being able to individually judge the posts will give you a more nuanced view on what content works best. Say, for example, that you found out links are your best post type, then the next thing you should do is study all your posts will links. That way you can see at all the posts will help you to see whether it’s curated content that gets them or links to your own blog.

To boost your marketing strategy, it all comes down to making proper use of the information that you have available to you, especially real audience data like what Facebook Insights gives you! These are just a few ways how we use Facebook Insights to help us out as we plan our marketing, particularly when it comes to benchmarking, planning our content and finding new avenues to discover.