Facebook has decided to make it much easier for the biggest brands and celebrities to reach a vast majority of their fans on a regular basis– but these pages will certainly have to pony up a pile of cash in exchange for this premium feature. With Reach Generator, CPC (pay per-click) and CPM (pay per-thousand impressions) are replaced with a simple fixed fee based on the number of fans a page has. Facebook guarantees that pages will reach 75% of their fans monthly and 50% weekly and multiply engagement (2x) , a significant increase to the average of about 16% reached per week before Reach Generator.
Reach Generator Before and After - Facebook
This is great for big brands, but what does it mean for your average page? Currently, it means nothing, as a source at Facebook informed me that Reach Generator will only be available to top-tier clients of Facebook who spend at least $10,000 quarterly. Consequently, it’s safe to say that the cost of using Reach Generator will be start at no less than ~$3,300/month ($10k/3mo). So what can the vast majority of page owners who don’t spend $10,000 per quarter do to increase their reach and engagement? Well, we’re building something to answer that question, and you can get on our beta invite list here.
So how does Reach Generator actually work? It’s super simple, and it actually will provide lots of value for those using it, as Facebook does all the work for you (beside actually posting). Brands using Reach Generator won’t have to worry about targeting and optimizing ads/sponsored stories to maximize reach and engagement– that’s Facebook’s job. With an endless amount of internal data at their disposal, Facebook can undoubtedly succeed in showing the right posts to the right people at the right time. The statistics released at fMC support this notion, as they helped Ben & Jerry’s (pictured below) to achieve 3x ROI and reach an astounding 98% of fans monthly.
Ben & Jerry's Reach Generator - Facebook
One important note is that Reach Generator focuses on cultivating you’re existing fan base rather than attracting new fans– so these ads/sponsored stories do not ever reach non-fans directly. New fans will likely trickle along as a result of virality (side note: I know virality is not a ‘real word’, but it needs to be.) from seeing their friends (who are fans) create stories about a page through engagement- Ultimately, this will allow pages that use Reach Generator to finally reap the benefits of their huge audiences they amassed. Another key point is that posts need to be kept short so they can fit the character limit (<90) for Sponsored Stories, as I mentioned in this previous post. Any post that’s core message lies beyond the 90th character is rendered useless for Sponsored Stories, so keep it short and sweet and engaging.
Mike
