“Why
should I market on Facebook?” This question is often asked by online marketers
who are unconvinced or undecided about the profitability of this social
networking website as a marketing tool. “After all,” they say, “Facebook is
nothing more than just a website where family and old friends can re-connect,
right?” This kind of thinking is not only dangerous, it can be costly as well,
especially considering just how much power Facebook wields in the consumerist
world today.
In
the past years, Facebook has quickly grown from being a social networking
website for college students in the United States to being the most popular
site, surpassing even Google in terms of visitor hits. In fact, people users
spend a total of 6 billion minutes on this website on a daily basis, which is
twice as much time that they spend using the search engine. Today, there are
over 500 million users on the website, comprising a large chunk of the
population that is ready and willing to pay for any goods and services they
perceive to be worth the price. In fact, more than half of the people who do
online shopping actually have Facebook accounts. Far from slowing down, this
number is projected to rise even more in the coming years, especially if the
developers of the social networking website continue to make innovations to the website
that will make people keep coming back for more. Like it or not, Facebook is
now here to stay. The fact that a large
percentage of their target audience is now on Facebook has not been lost on
online marketers. Recognizing the potential of this website to boost their
sales, a lot of marketers are now using this website not only to drive traffic
to their website, but also to increase brand awareness. This is because
Facebook allows them to do the following.
Facebook
Is Viral
Viruses
aren’t all that fun in real life, but the story is different when it comes to
the Internet. What makes using Facebook as a launching pad for marketing
campaigns so effective is that it makes it easier for the stories and the ads
to go viral, since the website makes it so much easier for people to share
information with the other individuals in their network. With literally just
one click of a button, one person can send the news article you’ve penned about
your product to thousands of people with little waiting time, and these
individuals can in turn send that story to those in their network. Facebook
essentially puts a different twist to word-of-mouth marketing.
Tapping
Into the Global Market
With
Facebook, you will not only be able to reach the people in a small
neighborhood, but also to individuals from all over the world. Facebook is
global, which means that using this as a marketing tool can actually lead to a
lot of sales, because you will be talking to a global market instead of just to
a tiny chunk of the population.
Reaching
Their Target Audience Directly
No matter how
appealing your ads on billboards, TV and radio spots, or magazines and
newspapers may be these may not actually click with youraudience, for the simple reason that
these are impersonal. The person model on the billboard won’t be able to pry
himself or herself from the advertising space to talk with people about just
how appealing the product he or she is selling is (imagine the mass panic that
will ensue if this is actually possible!) Facebook actually allows companies
and marketers to have direct communication with their target market. This in
turn builds the audience’s interest in what marketers and companies will say which
can then lead on to more sales. Simply put, the interaction between company and
consumer through Facebook can potentially boost your sales, because it makes
people more aware about what the seller and its products are all about.
Finding
More Information about Their Target Audience
What
makes a lot of ad campaigns unsuccessful is the fact that these are not
designed to appeal to the demographics that is being targeted. Not only does
Facebook allow them to reach their target market, it actually provides them
with information they need about their audience in the first place. Facebook
actually contains vital information about members of different demographics
that you can use in marketing. Because you have more information about your
target audience, you will be able to come up with more effective ad campaigns
that will draw their interest.
Driving
Traffic to Their Website
A lot of online
marketers don’t use Facebook for its own sake. Instead, they use this social
marketing website as a tool to bring traffic to their own websites, which in
turn can result in higher revenue.

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