Recent changes with Facebook Marketing have left us a bit unsure whether Facebook is planning to say goodbye to marketing for businesses. Recently, I was working with a client’s Facebook Boost which requires us to fine tune the market based on net worth and interest in investing in land. What they are eliminating is all those demographics that would fine tune the audience and only allowing us to choose just interests in hobbies and sports.

When I first boosted the ads for this client, I didn’t include the net worth piece to my demographics. What resulted were comments and engagement that was, frankly, undesirable for my client. I can’t imagine going back to filtering out the negative feedback they will get. Without the ability to reach those people interested in land investments, I probably will no longer boost the ad on Facebook but instead find other avenues for marketing.

What other directions are out there for businesses?

Like the saying goes, where one door closes a window “of opportunity” opens. Well, maybe I added the “of opportunity” part to this saying.

We have found GYBO to be the saving grace for many of our businesses who no longer make sense to be on Facebook. With Get Your Business Online you are allowed to provide a variety of ways to drive business to your website. With posts which last only seven days, you can feature products or services and keep the content fresh. Every update to GYBO features more and more ways to include content to drive people to your website. With their buttons you are able to encourage people to call you, go to your website, and even come to an event.

Take a look at a monthly report you receive from Google. It provides information on a variety of actions that people will take when finding your profile:

• Amount of People who found your profile
• Asking for directions
• Visits to your website
• Calling you
• Reviews

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to claim your Google profile, I strongly suggest you do. It is a free service from Google. GYBO has replaced Google Places and Google Local.

Back to Facebook for a minute.

Have I given up on Facebook? No. Facebook is still very effective for those businesses who have events and the events have activities which can be shown on Facebook Live or provide a variety of photos of the product or service. Even for those businesses who don’t have the ability to engage with their audience, we still keep them on Facebook for those special events, like Birthdays, Anniversary, or even special days like … National Geek Day and Bosses’ Days. If you are a business that is very involved with nonprofit organizations and clubs, by all means, stay involved with Facebook.

Alyse and her team at Interlace Communications, Inc. help businesses to reach their target audience through online and print marketing. They can help you claim your GYBO page and work on a monthly marketing plan to take advantage of all the marketing available through Google. Interlace Communications is located at 10 Zion Church Road, Suite 201, Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. Give them a call at 484.709.6564 or email alyse@gomaava.com. Check out their site at iciconnect.com.