Marketing consultant Mari Smith addresses Facebook's untapped potential for businesses

Six years ago, Facebook created fan pages that allowed businesses to promote themselves to customers and friends who "liked" them. It was a move that lowered the cost of marketing and allowed businesses to reach potential customers who were already connected to their existing customers. Even before then, Mari Smith, a Canadian marketing consultant, had recognized Facebook's potential for marketing and started teaching companies about it. This year, Facebook itself hired her to be a presenter in a four-city roadshow to reach out to small businesses. That event came to Minneapolis in July. Smith was back in town this past week for the Converted conference hosted by LeadPages, the firm that offers online sales tools.

Q: How did you first get on Facebook?

A: In early 2000s, I was doing e-mail marketing, relationship marketing, teaching and talking about the power of networking, participating in both online and offline events and very active in my local community before social media began to grow in popularity. In 2007, I first got on Facebook. I was on a beta test team for a game app. And I just fell in love with the platform. I thought, "Wow, there's something profound and powerful about this." Within about three weeks, I was asking everyone I met, "Are you on Facebook?" When Facebook fell in my lap, I just knew it was my next career.

Q: Why was Facebook different from other social networks?

A: I had an account on LinkedIn and one on Ryze. I could never get into MySpace. When you looked at MySpace, it was all of these animated GIFs and videos and colors and no two profiles looked the same. When I saw Facebook, I loved the white space and the uniformity of the profile. You know exactly where to find where a person lives, what they did, interests, mutual friends.

Q: How has marketing on Facebook changed?

A: In 2008, Facebook first introduced the fan page, or the business page, where you could gather up an audience and post content to them for free. The company went public in 2012, and it's been a changed game plan ever since then. It's a diminishing organic reach, which has been very frustrating for a lot of businesses that have been there for a while. The good news is that Facebook is the most targeted traffic that your advertising dollars can buy. You can get so granular with your targeting because of the inordinate amount of data that Facebook has gathered from user activity and because they have partnered up with different data companies that provide information from surveys.

A: Absolutely. Eighty percent of Facebook users are looking on their mobile device and they're checking 14 times a day. It's an eye-popping stat for business owners. But if hundreds of millions of people are looking at that little screen, that's coveted real estate. You've now got an excess of content, an excess of posts. Every time someone logs into Facebook, they can see thousands of stories or posts from friends. Facebook uses a complex algorithm to knock that down to around 150. It's very, very filtered. Back in the day, a business could get 50 or 60 percent reach. Say you have 10,000 fans on your page and you make a post and it goes viral, meaning people share it, and you go beyond your 10,000. Now, it's trickier to do that because of these tightened-up algorithms. Facebook would much rather that businesses pay for placement vs. getting that organic, viral reach. You're much more effective and likely to create success by having a solid ad strategy including getting your content in that coveted news feed in front of the right target market.

Q: What can a small business do?

A: I've used a three-part formula for years, and it pretty much works for all social networks. It's basically content, engagement and conversion. Facebook actually hired me earlier this year doing these live events called "Boost Your Business" for small-business owners. The common thread in the businesses that Facebook is featuring at these events is they're very good at telling their story. The second thing is, you've got to have that engagement. So responding to fans, liking comments, excellent customer care. And the third part is converting. That's where the paid component comes in, making special offers, drive people to a landing page, collect e-mail addresses, integrate a direct e-mail campaign. LeadPages plays a role because they make really excellent landing pages.

Q: Do small-business owners really understand all of this?

A: The vast majority of small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to keep up and struggling to know where to focus. They get overwhelmed when another social network comes on the scene, like Periscope with its live video. And then, Facebook is always changing its features. The ad tools are not that easy to understand so they delegate. Facebook did a similar tour last year, and they heard that people wanted custom help. So they asked me to sit down and talk one on one to audience members at their events. I thought I was going to hear, "What's a pixel?" and things about using Facebook. Instead, I heard, "I've got a restaurant, how do I get more people in my restaurant?" Invariably, businesses just need more help with marketing.

A: Right now, what Facebook has is a couple of things. They have some online self-study modules called Blueprint. You can find them at facebook.com/blueprint. And if a business is spending a certain amount per month on their ads, they will have access to one of Facebook's ad managers. There really is this big gap that the "Boost Your Business" tour is designed to fill. I think what we're finding on this tour is people need a lot more help than Facebook even realizes.