Facebook is the largest online social networking site today and, in fact, it is the second most visited site in the world after Google. Whenever something this big comes up online, the big question on every marketer’s mind is how they can use it to their advantage. Facebook actually offers an amazing opportunity to drive traffic to your website, with significant advantages over traditional advertising mediums. Here’s a look at how you could use Facebook for your website, and what advantages it might have over other options.
Facebook is a giant social networking platform that allows a user to easily connect with their friends, colleagues, siblings, family members, and more. It’s not gender specific, race specific, age specific, or anything like that. Any realm of people who own a computer can be found on this site, and therein lies the key to your success using it. Unlike the newspaper or TV, where you basically launch an ad to everyone who expects a response, Facebook allows you to target certain people you can reach, so you can get the most out of your efforts. In other words, you can have a direct impact on your core demographic unlike you would anywhere else.
For example, event organizers who want to target people interested in attending a talk about investing in the past will have to pay a large amount of newspaper advertising fees, especially if they want the ad to appear in certain categories of the newspaper. With Facebook, there are no such “upload fees” for targeting your main demographic. You can select based on the country or city you live in, your gender, your age group, your interests, your marital status, or even your workplace.
Other benefits of Facebook advertising over traditional media include the ability to start with a small budget and faster turnaround time. Going back to the event organizers example above, not only is the investment huge, but the process of reserving advertising space in the newspaper can take 2-3 business days. It will also take time to conceptualize and develop the artwork for newspaper printing. With Facebook advertising, a daily budget of US$10 will get you started advertising and also gives you the flexibility to increase your budget according to different dates. The process is also very simplified, requiring only a simple image and a short description of the upcoming webinar. Your ad will then be reviewed and can start running in the next few hours, greatly reducing overall planning time.
Facebook continues to grow in terms of active registered users, so it’s important to understand not only the social aspect of using Facebook to connect with your friends and colleagues, but also the benefits of this new media advertising.