To be fair, I have been very bullish on Google marketing products. It is hard to find a person who hasn’t used this “answer machine” in the last 24 hours (if not 1 hour) to find a solution. As advertisers, that is exactly what we are looking for.
Brand or impression advertising has never impressed me. Running millions of ads for mega dollars is out of most SME budgets. And worse yet, success is hard to track.
I bend though when it comes to Facebook.
Why did TV ads command such big dollars years ago? Because there were so many eyes watching a small number of channels.
Well, welcome back Kotter!
In this infographic from 2010, Facebook had over 500 million users and if it were a country it would have been #3 in population.
Facebook now has over 845 Million users worldwide.
It is the number 2 site (behind Google) in both the US and Canada. Google is top visited - but Facebook trumps for viewer’s time.
In September 2010, Ben Parr noted on Mashable “However, in the race for user attention, Facebook is king. The average U.S. user spent a whopping seven hours and 46 minutes on Facebook in August. That’s a full 15.5 minutes the average American spends on Facebook every single day. Compare that to the average Google user, who spent just one hour and 46 minutes on the site.” And time on Facebook is only increasing.
Although this is still well less than time on TV, Facebook (the elephant of all social media) has tons of eyes AND is affordable to advertise on for small and medium business.
Through laser-target demographics one can specifically target a business’ version of “the right buyer”. You can get very specific (ie. Males aged 26 to 38, who like laundry or Singles, aged 42 to 64 in Brantford Ontario) which maybe is a small market. But if that is a good market, than it’s right.
Newer to market are Sponsored Stories Ads on Facebook. What are Sponsored Ads on Facebook? These great little ads act as referrals... they are explained like this “Sponsored Stories are about your Friends’ and Pages’ activities on Facebook—stories that are already eligible to be in your News Feed. An organization has paid to show the activity as a Sponsored Story so there’s a better chance you’ll see it. “
Still don’t get it? Well, word-of-mouth has been the best way to advertise for years. These ads act as a social media version, telling your Fans’ friends about them “Liking” your page. In turn, their friends can click your ad and get to your page, who often in turn Like your page too.
In the end, having Facebook Fans enables you to push messages into their news feed for very low cost.
And who doesn’t like effective, inexpensive advertising that’s trackable?
Need help with Facebook Marketing? Ontario is my focus and do manage ads for companies with markets throughout Canada and the US.
Rodney
www.Arrowfinger.ca