Why Buying Facebook Likes Will Hurt Your Business In 2024

You want to buy Facebook Likes, as you’ve heard it’s a common practice in the business world, but something inside you tells you to wait. Rumor has it that although it’s not technically illegal, it can violate certain Facebook policies and damage your business. So where does the truth lie?

In this guide, we’ll explain why you shouldn’t buy Facebook followers, likes, or similar assets and show you how to increase your traffic organically and obtain high-quality likes and followers that will benefit you in the long term.

But let’s start with two frequently asked questions about this subject to clear the air.

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Is It Legal To Buy Facebook Likes?

Officially, no government regulations render them illegal, but fake accounts and click farms can breach laws. While click farms are not formally illegal, they aren’t exactly legitimate either.

Practically, no harm is caused when someone buys Facebook fans and likes packages. It is, though, morally questionable. For starters, fake Facebook likes destroy healthy competition, which has a bad impact on innovation and improvement.

Another thing to consider is that if you buy Facebook likes you consent to abject working conditions. Click farms offer a poor working environment and extremely low pay.

Why Do People Buy Facebook Likes?

Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms for businesses, with many owners and marketers relying on it to boost brand awareness and increase their sales. Its algorithm favors accounts that receive high engagement rates, translated into likes, comments, and shares.

Therefore, buying Facebook likes enables businesses to:

• Boost brand awareness faster
• Show social proof to other Facebook users
• Save money from setting up Facebook ads – at least, temporarily

There are many websites where users can buy different kinds of likes, such as Facebook page likes, post likes, and views, at a low cost. However, even the best sites can follow questionable tactics at times.

Therefore, it’s challenging to ensure that these are real Facebook likes and don’t come from bots, fake accounts, or even worse, click farms, which can severely hurt your brand reputation and metrics over time.

Let’s dive more into the cons in the next section.

5 Reasons To Avoid Buying Facebook Likes

If you need more evidence on why you should skip this practice, have a look:

1. It Will Harm Your Personalized Ranking

You may have 10.000 Likes on your Facebook page, but this doesn’t mean you also have an engaged audience. And bought fans don’t mean much to your business, as the Facebook algorithm – also known as Edgerank – won’t easily favor you for those.

Likes, shares, comments, and all kinds of interactions can determine which posts will be displayed first in people’s feeds. If you only post quality and relevant content, people will eventually engage with it, which leads to a good ranking.

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With bought likes, engagement remains low, which means that people will rarely see your posts in their feed. Only an authentically interested fan base can keep your rankings high over time.

2. It May Impact Your Brand Reputation

You see a page with a couple of thousands of likes. And then you scroll down to the first, the second, the fiftieth post, and you barely see any likes and comments. What would you think?

Your real followers will understand this as well, and then you can say goodbye to your page’s trustworthiness and sales opportunities. Remember, the true purpose of likes is to help your page reach the desirable audience, so you need real people in you pipeline to raise brand awareness.

So, if you succumb to the temptation, you’re basically spending money on people that will never become real customers. Instead, building a credible, verified Facebook page is a strategy that requires your money, time and effort. But it’s totally worth it.

3. It Can Reduce Your Organic Reach

Organic reach on Facebook is the number of people your posts are exposed to without any paid actions behind them. It’s a very important part of your marketing strategy, and you should always pay attention to it since it changes fast.

If the majority of your likes come from fake followers, you’re most likely not going to improve your Facebook social reach because you’re targeting the wrong people.

So considering that your Facebook page is a lead generation channel, only real Facebook users will turn into high-quality leads and potential customers. Therefore, avoid buying Facebook post likes or any similar interaction assets, but focus on obtaining more organic likes.

4. It Can Expose You To Hackers

Facebook like sellers may sometimes be hackers. By giving them your business information, you expose yourself to a number of web vulnerabilities. You probably don’t want to hear this but not all sellers are good sellers.

Low-quality ones might be using stock software to manage their payments, which can cause more than one security breach. Worst case scenario? Some sellers might even get just enough information to hack your account.

 5. It May Destroy Your Analytics

Analytics is one of the strongest weapons of modern marketing. Without it, it’s impossible to know whether your efforts are profitable or not. Here’s how Meta displays Facebook insights to its users:

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However, fake likes can harm your metrics and give you false impressions. Consequently, you won’t know which Facebook tactic works and what you need to optimize to increase your traffic if you cannot rely on your current data.

How To Boost Facebook Growth Without Buying Facebook Likes

In this section, we’ll present you with the best alternatives to buying Facebook page likes to help you establish your brand and reach your target audience.

1. Define Your Target Audience

Fake likes only bring you followers who will most likely never become customers, which won’t eventually lead to higher engagement. Instead, you should aim at collecting likes from people that will value your brand and truly engage.

A great way to start building your strategy is with the help of buyer personas. Determine the demographics, habits, and preferences to create relevant posts for them to get the number of followers and likes you deserve.

Finally, you can also build customer journey maps to understand what your audience needs at different stages and target them accordingly.

2. Share Great Content

To get more Facebook likes, you must first start with your existing audience. Take advantage of your fans (no matter the number) and aim at pleasing and inspiring them.

Create unique, useful, and relevant content that your audience will want to share, and go the extra mile by creating videos since they are among the most popular types of content that consumers want to see on social networks. That’s why TikTok is on the rise.

Here’s a great example by Nike:

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If they like your posts and think they’re valuable enough, they will most likely share them with their friends. Which will then become your friends, too!

3. Make Your Business Page Easy To Find

When improving your page visibility, you increase your chances of getting likes and follows. To achieve this, you should have an easy-to-discover page name that ideally combines your business name with a keyword.

This is even more important if your business is new or in a niche market. So add the right keywords next to your name to appear higher on the searches. Also, don’t forget to add Facebook Follow and Like buttons to your website or blog.

4. Host A Facebook Giveaway

An effectively run contest is a great way to build a following and brand recognition, that’s why influencers prefer them to gain a great number of likes fast. Inviting people to like your page in exchange for a prize is a great way to increase your followers since it’s an offer they can’t refuse. Just make sure you’re offering something really valuable to the right audience.

Check out this contest by Modern Cat Magazine showcasing a product from a specific pet brand:

The copy above includes a description of the product, how Facebook users can win the contest, and when the lucky ones will be announced. Thus, you increase the likelihood of attracting a lot of likes and positioning yourself among active users.

5. Run Facebook Ad Campaigns

Facebook advertising is a great tool for expanding your reach and growing your likes. You don’t need a high budget to run ads, and considering how efficient targeting is in the platform, it’s worth spending a few more dollars.

All you need is to choose the type of ad you want to use, such as video, image or, carousel, based on the goal of your campaign. For example, Closca Design went for a sponsored photo ad that does a great job showcasing their products and empowering their message with the right copy.

You might want to check what your competitors are up to before you decide. The ad will appear on the target audience’s news feed, with a CTA that invites them to take action, visit, like your page and more. You will be surprised by the numbers you can gather in a few days, with only a low budget.

6. Combine With Email marketing

Yes, email marketing is a powerful tool in every marketer’s hands. With just one simple automation workflow and some clever content, you can reach your email subscribers at critical times throughout their journey. So if you already have an email marketing strategy, it’s time to combine those forces for your own benefit.

For example, you can inform your email subscribers about your later Facebook contest and invite them to like your Facebook page to increase your following. Or add social media buttons on the email footer, as Huckberry did:

You can easily design a similar HTML campaign using an email marketing service like Moosend, that comes with a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. Sign up for a free trial today and experiment with our features.

7. Interact With Your Audience

It’s not just a beautiful Facebook profile or relevant content that can increase your likes. A strong social media presence can take you a long way as well.

So can you make this happen? Build relationships with active users and prospects and interact with your fans on a regular basis. Ask questions and comment on posts to grow steadily and create a memorable Facebook presence worth following.

How To Spot Fake Facebook Accounts

The bad news is that fake Facebook accounts may hamper your social media marketing campaign even if you didn’t ask for it. However, attracting fake followers is bad for your business because you’re engaging with no one.

Plus, fake followers could easily hack your real followers’ accounts or yours. And even if they don’t, they mess with your page engagement, rankings, and conversions. So let’s see how you can spot them:

• Pay attention to the profile picture: Usually, fake accounts use a low-quality profile photo downloaded from somewhere else.
• Count the photos: A fake user usually has one or only a couple of photos, usually generic and low-quality.
• Check the URL: Many fake accounts will have a different name displayed in their URL.
• Comb through their activity: Fake Facebook accounts have a fairly empty timeline with next to zero activity.

The Takeaways

So when it comes to Facebook likes, choosing the “dark” side not only doesn’t help you reach your marketing goals but also hurts your page irreparably. Succeeding on Facebook is not rocket science. You just need to offer good content, be consistent and focus on your target audience. And the rest will follow.

Are you looking for an email marketing service at an affordable price to streamline your email marketing along with your Facebook services? Sign up for a Moosend trial today and explore our amazing features!