I have been searching around on the hundreds of new Facebook pages created for businesses lately. Is Facebook a new median for pushing your products online? I found it can be very viral by getting a big fan-base on Facebook and then selecting “LIKE” which in return places a back-link on their Facebook wall/profile.
Has anyone really benifited from using Facebook like this? Have your sales increased as a result?
I did not say that you cannot make a sale through these channels. I said conversion rate is pathetically low for visitors through social media. Dell may probably be generating huge amount of traffic from Twitter and managing to make millions through sales. Not surprised at this point.
Though I will be very surprised if their social media conversion rate is higher than other channels. If you have energy and budget to do marketing of Facebook, go ahead you should do it. But it isn’t quality traffic.
I have been wrapping my head with how to incorporate our facebook page into our own marketing strategy. Right now I think almost half of our fans are kids under the age of 17, so our fan base is definitely not who were are marketing to for website creation. I do feel like many others in this thread that the facebook page has become one of those places where you need to have a presence in to improve your brand, but the results of those efforts are more intangible in nature. Now everybody can afford to advertise in multiple high traffic areas instead of in the past where the only few options you had could only be afforded by large corporations sponsoring major events. But that is how I feel as of today: the role of these social networks are constantly evolving.
I think the major problem on Facebook with fan pages is the segmentation of users. Many users who do “Like” your product or business are not your potential customers (or buyers). So I think that relying on a fact that you have 100.000 fans, and that with direct mail you can convert them to buyers is bold.
The problem here, i guess, is that Facebook is allready so full of everything, that people don’t even care that much. They just … Like it. End of story.
Alhtough… it is a great extention to your business (and for your ego)…
i have had great experience marketing local businesses on facebook…local real estate companies, dentists, chiropractors etc.
In my experience, I find FB helpful for automotive marketing ONLY as a reputation management tool. It is an excellent platform for addressing customer concerns, and for building your presence in an online community. As such, there is no succinct ROI involved in it (so don’t tell your prospect that it will increase leads by x amount,) however, I believe it is invaluable for building customer loyalty and accessibility (which you cannot measure accurately–at least to my knowledge.)
I am currently considering advertising my automotive clients on FB–as opposed to, or in tandem with Google Adwords. Has anyone any experience in this? Can you share your experience with advertising on FB?
Don’t mistake the ability to drive direct response sales with the ability to benefit as a business. Facebook is by no means a way to get people to buy buy buy immediately [unless you’re discounting heavily] but it can be a great way to build up a community of advocates and followers to whom you can deliver on going messages, engage with for feedback and learnings and empower with tools to reach into their network. It’s a different tool with different conversion cycles but the reach is something you don’t want to pass up.
Of course not all businesses have the same value on the platform, and yours needs to be right to make sense building for.
I have my doubts over FaceBook… People go there to have fun and not to talk to search about business products or services… I think its a cool medium for only a select class of businesses related to:
In all, basically only a certain class of B2C industries.
I am more in favor of LinkedIn and Twitter, as they are more engaging for a person with business intent, than FaceBook…
right, you’re solely looking at it from a transactional point of view rather than a holistic marketing point of view. A transactional point of view is still valid for some business, but for many its better to adopt a relational approach.
Twitter & Facebook is about building brands, even more it’s about connecting the brand to the consumer, making them relevant to them, putting them in the minds of the consumer so they don’t even go to Google and type in “laptop” but “dell”, not “mp3 player” but “ipod” (just to take another example).
In your case, if you’re so concerned about conversion rates, what can you do to keep them entertained, to make them more curious? what can or are you already doing to keep your brand in their minds? What about your existing customers, what are you/can you do to have your customers return to you? and what is the lifetime value of your customers?
Personally, I had fun reconnecting with some old friends when I first got on FB two years ago, but now I don’t spend 1/2 as much time there as I used to.
From a business and marketing perspective though, the viral nature of marketing on FB is huge and I think most businesses can benefit from being on FB - but one really needs to commit some time to post regularly and be visible for it to be worthwhile.
Just like permission based email marketing though, you need to provide valuable content to your clients/prospects/fans in order to keep them interested so you can continue to market to them, because all it takes is one click for them to take back that permission.
Steve
Well put c2uk. In short, Facebook is not simply about getting traffic to your site, it’s about creating a pressence where your customers / fans / users live and offering tools and information to engage them in a way they like. If you just think about impressions to your site you’re missing much of the world; people live on social and you want to be a part of that with content and promotions that drive your business right there.
Marketing on facebook is a good strategy to get more traffic to your site.
Why do you find facebook so annoying? I log in every day to check if facebook has found old friend’s I’ve lost contact with and or old elementary buddies (I’ve found 4 of them).
Facebook holds the more mature crowd which leads less of a myspace feel (lol @ half naked pics of 16 years olds)
As far as my knowledge is concern, facebook is a social networking site and so publishing about someone’s product is not a bad idea. Suppose there are millions of people out there searching for gadgets like blackberry cell phones and many of them like to. So in this case if being a fan you can get yourself linked with your favourite gadget and have an opportunity to share your views with other fans then isn’t it a great idea.
Most important is that no one is forcing anyone to be his fan. So it’s personal too. Thus i think facebook did a great job in this case.
Facebook works differently and has a different purpose than MySpace. Facebook is for connecting with people you know in real life, and utilising there an approach like you did on MySpace, i.e. randomly adding people as friends, will get you banned there.
A facebook fan page can connect with other pages though - at least that was possible at one stage, not sure about this at the moment.
To make your facebook presence successful, you need to sign up as your real persona, connect with people you know or have known in real life, catch up with them and ask what they’re up to. At some point mention your website/business and suggest them your fan page, but don’t push too much - a former fellow student of mine has been sending me event invitations to free iPads/iPhones/etc every other day, of course I’ve blocked her now.
In general, your facebook strategy needs to be tightly incorporated with your overall marketing strategy, add a link to your facebook page in your email signature, incorporate it in your website (see another response in this thread regarding the facebook like button, but you can do more than that), connect your twitter account and post your youtube videos, keep the page updated and response to comments left on it.
At the same time offer some unique content or promotions on your facebook page, think a little out-of-the-box, maybe run a contest or something like that.
Facebook is a great tool now to do online marketing. Due to it’s popularity, it has become a way for online marketers to promote their site or increase traffic to their site. With the right strategies, one can be successful using Facebook for SEO purposes. But above any SEO strategies, it is still important to focus on quality content of a site.
How do you drive traffic to your site? I am confused. I signed up with a page and I did not see anywhere where you could add friends. You people aren’t relying on Facebook users stumbling upon your page then becoming a fan, are you?
A few months ago, I started using Myspace to promote a site. Probably only about 1/3rd or slightly more of the highly targeted friend requests I made have resulted in people adding me. But, it did raise awareness of my site and bring a little traffic to it.
What’s the Facebook strategy for getting fans and thus getting traffic?
Maybe at some point I will jump into facebook, but am the only one that finds it annoying more than anything else?
Facebook has millions of member logging to it. I don’t have a company… but as one of Facebook users, I m often interested to click on the page link or group or profile of a company or shop to look what they sell and offer…
And I believe, there r more people as me… There’s nothing to lose of creating this 
You don’t pay but if people who click r interested n then go to your website or purchase your product, sure you will be benefited…
I’ve been using the “LIKE” button on product pages since Facebook announced the availability to sites. In that time we’ve seen thousands of likes happen per product. Consider that each Facebook user has over 150 friends and that’s hundreds of thousands of impressions gained.
The like button also has a secondary impact as it helps other visitors to a site see the interest in a product as a sort of implied value (if 50,000 people like something, there must be a reason why).
From a traffic perspective the “LIKE” button and facebook in general preform very well in driving both to facebook and back to a branded site.
You’re not the only one who finds it annoying. As much as I don’t like it, I build non-profit websites and if they don’t have a Facebook Fan page I suggest that they get one and use it.
For an investment of 5 hours a week, each day has 4, 15 minute posts and follow-ups, the return for my clients has been huge.
I’ve seen site traffic triple for the clients that use it.