Inspired Magazine

The Facebook Phenom – Advertising for the Now Generation

Posted: 15 Apr 2010 05:25 AM PDT

The advertising market today is not the same as it was 20, 15, 10, or even 5 years ago. The world has changed, which includes the marketing world. We’re spending more time online, particularly on social networking sites such as Facebook, even if we like it or not :-] And while you’re here be sre to check out How TO: Set up Facebook in Order to Promote Yourself Effectively

So this is a post covering Advertising for the Next Now Generation – Facebook ads are especially useful because they target a smaller, and potentially more likely, market for your products by focusing on factors such as location, age, education, etc., while weeding out the least likely customers.

Facebook is now one of the most popular online social networking websites; passing MySpace as the "place to be" ages ago and Twitter, despite a strong following, cannot compete with Facebook's numbers. People spend ages on the site making new friends, interacting, and playing games. An advertising message transmitted over Facebook will result in more website traffic, more inquiries, more interest!

How to use this veritable gold mine of possibilities? Two of the most successful and popular ways to advertise are social ads and fan pages.

Social Ads

Social Ads are the little square boxes that appear to the right of every Facebook page, targeting people based on age, gender, interest, marital status, location, almost any piece of information located on their own Facebook page. By targeting customers in such a specific way, less time is wasted on general advertising. Target markets are selected with a much higher chance of success. For example, perhaps you run a wedding planning company if the ad targets only engaged women, you have already selected the core group your client base would come from!

Fan Pages

Fan Pages are very common for advertisers. Once creating a fan page for a company or product, anyone who clicks on 'become a fan' will have your information automatically added to their home page feed. You can post promotions, discount codes, and sales on the page, and reach every single person who had chosen to become a fan. As the fans invite their friend's numbers will rise exponentially. You can use this medium also to gather valuable feedback from people who use your products. For example, Holyclothing, a popular online retailer of plus-sized clothing, has a large fan page including 6.513 fans as of 1 p.m. on April 12, 2010. This retailer uses her site to request fan opinions on possible clothing styles so she can focus on what her customer base wants.

One can find fan pages on Facebook for hundreds of companies. Wendy's, the popular fast-food giant, has a fan page that as of 1 p.m. on April 12, 2010 had 354,234 fans. McDonalds' tops this with a staggering 2,069,604 fans, and even Burger King is playing the game with an impressive 221,341 fans. Companies big and small are discovering the possibilities of a Facebook fan page, and best of all? It's 100% free to create! A single employee can maintain and run the page for an entire corporation. The output of money is nothing compared to the influx of sales and customers.

That’s all for now, what’s your take on this?

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Thursday, April 15, 2010