Advertising on Facebook
I read recently of an internet marketer who, a few months ago, surveyed about 900 social media marketers and wrote a report on how they use sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in their businesses.
Within two weeks, so it is claimed, nearly 30,000 people had read the report (15,000 in the first three days), 100+ media outlets and bloggers wrote about it, and it was reposted on Twitter more than 1,500 times.
The internet marketer in question also reports that he was offered $30K worth of work as a direct result of his survey. Virtually overnight, he was being called a ‘social media expert’ and podcasters and pundits alike were trying to book him. And all thanks to social media.
For all the grumbling in the mainstream media about the negative impact of social networking, I still can’t help intuiting that, potentially, at least, we’re on to something BIG. Networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Squidoo, YouTube and Flikr have between them attracted sign-ups in the hundreds of millions. In fact, with over 200 million active users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth largest in the world (and, uniquely, a land in which there would be zero risk of contracting swine flu)!
But what of the potential of advertising on Facebook?
Let’s be clear. Facebook is a great medium for certain kinds of online business, and in particular business to consumer. But it’s not for everyone. And here’s why: conventional pay-per-click advertising such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc, are triggered by keywords, i.e. terms which reflect as closely as possible the nature of a specific search. Master the keywords effectively, and you rule your market. Facebook ads, conversely, are triggered by profile information.
When people join Facebook they’ll most usually fill in a personal profile. In the process they’ll often reveal a great deal about themselves: education, qualifications, artistic tastes, political and cultural affiliations, professional associations, and so on. People go on Facebook because they want to interact with like-minded people. It’s all about community. For this reason, Facebook algorithms are geared to search for people according to their identities and not their immediate needs. Facebook search marketing is pay-per-click but never forget that, for this reason, it’s a different medium from conventional PPC.
Tapping into personal passions
In the hands of advertisers versed in the art of demographic profiling, however, this information represents a rich source of sales leads, because it’s possible to target very specific groups. And the more precise a person’s profile, the more accurately they can be targeted – at least in theory.
From what I’ve learned, getting a Facebook campaign to work requires much testing and fine tuning. Successful Facebook campaigns are those which tap into ‘positive interests, negative problem-solving and group support’, i.e. families, travel, arts, sport, music, hobbies, cooking, charitable and political causes, and so on. If you’re aiming at this demographic, give it a whirl.
You can make your Facebook ads image or text-based, and target them precisely by age, gender, location, etc. Choose to pay per click (CPC) or by impression (CPM). As with Google Adwords, if you target broad generic keywords you pay highly for your clicks and get poorly targeted traffic; if you target narrow niche keywords you get inexpensive clicks and accurately targeted traffic.
And, like Adwords, you can also optimise your ads, track progress with real-time reporting, gather data about who’s clicking on your advert and fine tune your ads to maximise results.
Search marketing
Just as there are products that aren’t easy to sell on Adwords, because nobody thinks to search for them, there are also products that are difficult to sell on Facebook because they don’t relate to a target audience. If business marketing on Google is all about keyword matches, Facebook is all about group identity. If you have a product that ties in strongly with someone’s identity, then Facebook is your perfect medium. If not, tread carefully.
Let’s keep this topic alive. If you have first-hand experience of online business via social media – positive or otherwise – share your thoughts here. We’re all keen to learn.
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