Facebook Marketing Strategies: Something to Avoid
Marketing on Facebook is intriguing communiciations departments the world over. We know people turn a blind eye to most ads and that holds true on Facebook also. The consensus is that the cost per sale on Facebook Ads does not make a good business case. One bookstore cited customers acquisition costs of $80.
No wonder Mark Zuckerberg said "Ads is a good business." Good for him. Bad for you.
But that's only part of the story. Like many businesses unfamiliar with Social Media Marketing but intrigued by its potential, the bookstore in question went in unprepared. There was no plan in place, nor was there sufficient human resource allocated to monitor the Ad program and take the required remedial action. It was a passing notion. Let's dip our toes in and see what happens. The inevitable result was getting burned and a hiatus from Social Media.
"Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner." Anthony's Law of the Workshop
While this business was new to the game, many others had already ventured forth before them, if not locally, then internationally. They knew the fundamentals of online advertising from experience with Adwords et al. but they still took a country-wide targeting approach that drove traffic to generic landing pages that offered no continuity. Furthermore, there are lots of resources freely available on the internet to help with making an informed decision and create a proper testing plan. There's no excuse for getting it all so wrong.
With the online environment evolving rapidly, the correct approach is to have a strategy in place to experiment with and evaluate all social media marketing opportunities as they arise. Innovation is critical to the perpetual existence of any business. There's no such thing as a one product company. Nor do company's who operate in isolation of their market know how their customers' needs & habits are changing. I'd like to leave you with one idea:
Listen & experiment so the possibilities of new media can be properly evaluated & integrated into your strategic push towards achieving business goals.
Questions? Find me on Twitter @KunalKripalani
