Facebook’s recent changes haven’t been encouraging. Small businesses are losing access to at least 80% of their fan base and people suddenly have to pay if they want to get a message out to all their fans and friends on Facebook.
This has in turn led many to wonder if it’s even worthwhile anymore. In fact, it would appear that many are seemingly jaded about using Facebook. To make matters worse, it does look like lots of users are leaving in droves. A recent news article showed that over 11 million young adults and teens have left Facebook since 2011.
While 11 million teens and young adults may seem minuscule compared to the 1.2 billion Facebook users across the globe, the truth is that less and less people are using Facebook today as frequently as they did in 2011.
So, is including Facebook in your marketing mix still worth it? Can you still get some bang for your buck? So, for your commodity, products and services, can you get some decent returns on your ad spend and/or sweat equity?
After all, there are over 200 million users in the US and Canada combined. That’s a huge market right there, even if they seem unenthusiastic at the moment. And some, if not all of them probably like flowers or would want to send flowers to their loved ones on Valentine’s Day and other special occasions.
So, should you still bother with Facebook? That will depend on a few very important factors:
Market Viability
Is there a market available for your product? Is there an audience there that truly needs your products and services? Are they passionate and really willing to do business with you? Can you find them? Are they accessible, qualified and targeted? If you answered yes to over 70% of these questions, Facebook is a must-have marketing tool for you.
Audience Participation
This is usually an off-shoot of market viability. If people love and need your business, products and services, they will be willing to work with, talk to and relate with you easily. They’ll want to hear from you, buy your flowers and connect with you.
How Can You Maximize Facebook’s Audience?
Honestly, this article won’t be enough to teach you everything you need to know. However, if you need a few ideas that’ll help jumpstart your Facebook marketing campaign, then you need the following:
- 1. Organic Ranking and Marketing
This usually entails a lot of hard work. You’ll need to find your audience get them to join your fan page, do stuff that’ll help make your Fan pages popular and well liked. Or you could simply find data vendors. There are people with thousands of fans on Facebook who are willing to sell them to you for a price. If you are willing to go that route just know that there are some associated risks that go with that.
- 2. Paid Ads and Lead Generation
If you have some cash to spare on Facebook advertising, this is probably a smart way to go. It’s as simple as setting up your fan or business page, buying some ad spots and directing the traffic to that fan page. Quick tip: if you’re going this route, make sure that your fan page is very attractive. That way, your visitors get to stay and become your audience.
That said, there are brands that are doing well on Facebook. I’ll recommend that you study their tactics, adopt them, tweak and improve o them and then deploy them. Why reinvent the wheel when 70% of the work has been done for you? Good luck with your marketing efforts.
If your brand is already visible – even only locally – a Facebook page definitely can’t hurt. Actually, local businesses probably benefit the most from Facebook marketing. Online businesses would definitely take more work and cash because the market is so saturated.
I have to agree. I think a local business would benefit more because there is an ability to reach them with local information, events and customer experiences. Facebook has taken a few black eyes when it comes to businesses. I don’t use Facebook to promote on a full scale when it comes to marketing. I tend to use other mediums as a marketing ploy. I would rather put my time and resources in social media platforms that will allow me to reach a broader audience. But local businesses may find that tackling Facebook would give them that perfect base and understanding of audience appeal.
If you are a business, you have to have a Facebook Page. You also have to run it and have lots of fans. Will this generate more business? Probably not. But I think Facebook, if it it does nothing else, gives people a (false) sense of security seeing that you have tons of friends, likes shares etc. Great post!
Yogiyeager has a point. It’s beneficial for a company to have a facebook page with likes, fans and people commenting on the service. It gives credibility to a business. But like the article said, make sure your page looks really professional. Maybe hire someone part time to organize the content for you and make sure that all your posts follow a quality standard. There’s nothing worst than visiting a corporate page and seeing those awful tacky image posts and texts full of spelling errors.
I agree. That tends to cause consumers to avoid liking them. I tend to unlike or ignore posts from corporate drones that put pictures up generic people smiling while trying to push some service or product that has nothing to do with what I may be interested in. Facebook has taken it’s beautiful trend downward, it seems when marketing on the site, you have to have a realization of ethics and how you want to operate. Someone can use your business facebook account to trash you personally or to post their own ” I made $7,500 in two days” scam ad. It’s sad how it’s all slipped downward.
Facebook pages are an absolute requirement for businesses. It does not take much time to create one, and all you have to do is update it once a day — or even three times a week, if you’re really strapped for time.
As a former social media manager, I can provide readers with a tip — engagement is the name of the game. Choose posts that people reading would be interested in; if I remember correctly, the most engaging posts are ones that ask a question. For example, a Realtor could ask: “What do you enjoy better, a bath or a shower?” The split picture attached could then be of a bath, and a shower.
Facebook is the best for advertising — I was at a trade show recently where it was put quite succinctly — “The cost of advertising is minuscule compared to the amount of reach you receive.” Facebook is the only place — so far — where you can target not only a person’s sex, age and interest — but area almost down to the zip code/postal code.
It’s amazing when thinking of those terms.
So all in all, great article! I highly doubt that Facebook is going anywhere any time soon.
I have to agree with you. There is a poetic dance associated with marketing with any social media platform and Facebook seems to be the first step on the mountain to marketing success. I think an important aspect of creating an appeal with your audience is realizing one platform wont do. The same message the business owner may want to convey on Facebook, they have to condense on Twitter. There are also ways you have go about putting your name out there in order to retain a reputation befitting the general niche of the business. I love marketing, every aspect of it but I realize the quicker an audience finds your information prevalent is the same amount of time the same audience can turn on you.
Very informative write up. I think is relevant in marketing online. Although I think they won’t be for long but for the short term, they should.
I think its always important for any business owner to create a lasting marketing plan. Business plans are imperative when creating the general ” bones” for a business, I feel the same applies when discussing marketing. Facebook offers a variable selection of plans and options when it comes to mass marketing but they are such an open social media platform, you tend to find yourself battling potential bad comments or rebuttals to bad experiences. Social media marketing to the extent offered through Facebook is only new based on the developed technology but marketing has always been achieved based on the advancements in technology and the value placed on the consumer by the business owner. Facebook may be here for years to come but they may fall in the wind like Myspace, consumer appreciation is eternal.
I have mixed feelings about marketing on Facebook. On one hand, it’s a huge hub of people and potential customers. On the other hand, I don’t know of anyone who goes there to buy anything.
Consumers go to Facebook pages for business to see what the overall reputation and to understand what’s being said about the business. I know Facebook implemented a shopping cart option for everyone to sell items on their site but I think the reputation of Facebook as a whole has taken a bit of a nose dive causing potential consumers to lose faith in viewing the page as something of viability. Facebook has turned back into the social media hub for teenagers and young adults. Businesses wanting to push towards that particular market should take serious stock in Facebook marketing but spreads themselves relatively thin by finding other social media platforms that will allow them to get in on the ground floor.
Facebook is the only game in town. There literally isn’t a competitor for the majority of the things people do with Facebook. I don’t know if I recommend spending money to advertise on Facebook, doing everything you can via the free options is a must. Could you imagine if companies like Ford, Coca-Cola or Nike didn’t maintain an active presence on Facebook (along with millions of followers)? Simply keeping an active presence with basic information about your business on Facebook cannot be overlooked.
Facebook is a great median for social media but the same was said about Myspace when it was out. There are social media platforms that are popping up daily that are pulling in more consumers than Facebook. It all depends on the type of audience you’d like to have. Sure, I wouldn’t suggest paying for advertisements on Facebook because if you have a pretty good grasp on your site and it’s reputation you are able to turn it around and do far better than any paid ad space by putting a little time behind your marketing approach but I think it’s also important to use large platforms that allow you to post on more than one social media site at once. No sense in putting all your efforts into Facebook when they lose more than 50 k users a day, most of the pages are made by scammers and some consumers have more than 5 accounts.
To be able to reach global audience, it is advisable to have a Facebook page. It will go a long way to help promote your business online. This is very important in this age.
I agree Yogiyeager that having a Facebook page is absolutely essential if you have a business, but I don’t think that directing a large part of your marketing budget and time to managing a Facebook page is a good idea as the younger demographics switch to different, less substantial social media. We all know that parents follow their children to different social media, so eventually Facebook will die. In fact, it’s already happening. I’d suggest going to Twitter instead.
Great article, it brought out the pros and cons from both sides and presented them fairly! Although Facebook may be cutting down on business to consumer communication, that doesn’t meant that there isn’t an audience to reach. One of the key things about Facebook is that you can know exactly who your audience is; you can find out their age, gender, interests, and more all from creating a small page. Facebook is still the world’s 2nd most visited website, and I think it shouldn’t be ignored for marketing.
I agree completely. Even if Facebook were to get 0 new members, there would still be a huge audience to reach that has already been there! Just because other sites are getting bigger doesn’t mean that this site isn’t big! It’s silly to throw out Facebook as a way to advertise and showcase your product!
All advertising is good advertising I’d say. Even with all the changes Facebook still has the numbers on it’s side and while the user base is dwindling there are enough people left to matter for your business. Still, it’s worth taking a look at the other platforms like Google Plus also, the time of relying only on Facebook is long gone.
Now, paying for advertising on Facebook? I wouldn’t do it. There are lots of studies made by individuals or companies that show how the money you spend buys bot traffic or brings people that are not even interested in your products.
I think it’s important to have a Facebook page for your business, whether it’s declining or not. I’ve found FB to be very helpful for me, and I’ve even had several sales come through there (I’m a freelance artist, so sales for me are commissions and so add up faster than selling products).
I think what a Facebook page is most useful for, though, is reminding some of your audience that your business exists and offers certain services. It ups your odds somewhat of someone remembering you at a time they might need what you have to offer. Also, it offers a chance at showing your business’ personality to people, making you possibly seem more likable.
It’s not something to invest all your time (and certainly not your money) in, but it’s a useful tool that shouldn’t be overlooked just yet.
People have been, let’s just say, “making use of” the fact that Facebook is a good way to market your business.
However, Facebook is apparently taking advantage of that certain need, and they’re charging people. I honestly believe Facebook could survive as a social networking site for social purposes rather than business purposes.
But Facebook could still be a place to have all your services and products shown. You can easily explain your business by simply sending them your Facebook link.
Well said. Having a Facebook page is commonplace nowadays, it almost looks bad for a business to NOT have a page! Although you can have your own website, Facebook is still a great way to showcase your things, and the user doesn’t even have to leave Facebook, which is very appealing in my opinion. And although Facebook is taking advantage of this and charging people to do so, I think they’re within their rights to do so!
Nope. In my opinion Facebook’s value is decreasing every year. Less and less people are going on it; friends family and more, it’s a great way to connect to people but ever since media has become so connected it just seems to be the average thing that was added to society. I think Facebook will continue to have a lot of registrations, but not as much time will be spent on it in the near future.
I think I’m going to disagree with you here. Although Facebook is becoming less and less popular, I still think having the word out on Facebook is of some value. Besides, think about this: the majority of people leaving Facebook are teens going to Instagram and Twitter, and I doubt florists are in the market for such teens, so losing the ability to catch their attention isn’t really that big of a loss.
Yes, Facebook should not be forgotten as it’s definitely a very powerful marketing tool. Even a lot of elderly have learned to use Facebook, but not the computer. With this, you definitely are guaranteed to have a bigger market when you maximize Facebook effectively in your marketing efforts.
However, since there are already a lot of information on Facebook, you need to make sure that you only post interesting topics. The more in demand Facebook is, the tougher the competition is for the audience.
If done right, I believe facebook is still a relevant part of marketing.
As mentioned in the article the audience is huge and you have the opportunity to reach out to people you may not otherwise be able to reach.
But the truth is that if you are going to do facebook marketing you should not put all you eggs into one basket so to speak but should expand your marketing efforts to other social sites as well.
There is a lot of people that you can reach on other social platforms that you might never reach on facebook so it is important that you tap into these as well.
I totally agree. I think everyone with the though that Facebook is the end all be all are in for a very rude awakening. I think it speaks volumes to understand that Facebook is merely one of the medians of information and reputation out there. You can’t sincerely put all your eggs in one basket.
I’ve worked with small businesses in the past whom spent the better part of their day trying to configure different Facebook posts or have tried to pay for fake users. It’s horrible. They pay thousands of dollars over about a year trying to reach an audience filled with mostly memberships created through blackhat marketing methods only to find that they have over 300k friends that may really be just one person.
I think making a Facebook page for any business is worthwhile. Even if you have to personally ask people to spread the word, anything is better than nothing. Even if you only reached a few number of people, there are many ways those people could spread the word about you to other consumers. At the very least, it’s worth the shot and I don’t see how it could hurt the company.