Facebook Marketing

FACEBOOK RECEIVES MORE DAILY VISITORS THAN GOOGLE – YAHOO AND BING COMBINED – OVER 50% OF THEIR 700+ MILLION STRONG MEMBERSHIP LOGS IN DAILY!

Facebook Fans are reported as spending $71.84 more per year with their endorsed brand than non-fans are. Fans are showing an average of $136.00 per year, when you consider that 68% of Fans publicly endorse and/or recommend their favorite companies on Facebook, resulting in other people joining and buying your products or services.

Facebook is a social networking service and website that was launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2011, Facebook has 700 plus million active users. Facebook users create a personal profiles, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile and post what ads and products they “like”. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, common interests, social activities, school or college, or other characteristics. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY… FACEBOOK USERS BUY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ON FACEBOOK!

Small Business Saturday is an American shopping holiday created by American Express, held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. In 2010 Amex promoted the holiday via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign. Amex also decided to use part of the money they earmarked for this campaign to buy advertising inventory on Facebook, which it in turn gave to its small merchant account holders.

American Express publicized the initiative using social media and local politicians and many small business groups in the United States issued proclamations concerning the campaign, which generated more than one million Facebook “like” registrations and nearly 30,000 tweets.

BUT THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS…

A great deal of the companies that now advertise on Facebook “assume” that putting up a “fan-page” and a “wall” full of links is all it takes to either brand their company and/or create a fan-base. Companies with online stores that can track their visitors and daily sales report that this assumption is false.

Facebook unlike Google, Yahoo and Bing adjust the advertiser’s cost by the percentage of popularity of their ad… if one advertiser receives 0.5% and one receives 1.0% – 1.5% – 2.0% the advertiser with the low score will pay more for their keywords than the advertiser with the higher score.

Companies that do not have a “posting plan” or know what Facebook considers the best content and the most sharable words or incorporated news release service into their Facebook ad campaign will never achieve the high score it takes to lower their advertising cost.

8-VERY Important Questions that every Facebook marketer should know the answer to!

1. How often should one post?
2. What day should you post?
3. What time of the day should you post?
4. What days of the week should your news release post?
5. How often should your news release post?
6. What time of the day should it post?
7. What does Facebook consider the best kind of content?
8. What does Facebook consider the most shareable word?

BIG CHANGES TAKING PLACE: MARCH 2011 – Facebook for the first time introduced — Real Time Algorithms — Facebook has always used their member’s profile’s information to deliver specific ads, this is the first time they will be using “real-time” to deliver. Decoded that means that the company is doing nothing to change the actual algorithm of how advertisements are displayed – but the real-time algorithm will be much, much faster.

This algorithm allows for the mention of certain topics to yield relevant ads. This means that a user may not have “liked” any football pages or indicated that football is an interest, but by sharing their trip to the Super Bowl, that user will become a part of the Nike and/or National/American League and or Puma’s target audience.

A tinny discussion of a favorite makeup brand, health supplements, buying a new handbag or discussing your teen or tweens or new baby or menopause or going bald is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through fan-page likes or user profiles.

The moment between a potential customer expressing a desire and deciding on how to fulfill that desire is an advertiser sweet spot, and the real-time ad model puts advertisers in front of a user at that very delicate, decisive moment.

Facebook estimated ad revenue would grow past $2 billion this year. Facebook ad revenue was $186 billion in 2010 – this is round $1.12 billion or about 60% of advertisers that buy directly using Facebook targeting tools.