subject: Is Marketing On Facebook A Really Good Idea? [print this page] The great thing about the internet is that it is loaded with choices for small businesses to advertise and bring in new customers. The drawback is that it is loaded with options for small companies to advertise and attract new business. The point being is that as with most forms of advertising there can be too many possibilities to choose from and for small business owners that don't have a lot of time or money to put towards marketing advertising in the incorrect spot can rapidly get pricey and if it is a failed venture then it can leave individuals aggravated and unwilling to try once again.
So to help make things much simpler we'll be reviewing the different ways to market a company over the net and main points about each particular avenue.
And the selection for today is Facebook Advertisements.
Merely to be clear we are not talking about Facebook Business Pages. We're talking about the advertisements you see on the right side of your screen when you are logged into your account. If you didn't realize it those little ads are the reason Facebook is worth so much money. Like Google, Facebook makes the majority of their cash from advertising income. Literally billions of dollars are spent each year by companies that want to reach Facebook's users and with hundreds of millions of people utilizing Facebook it's a rather big audience that advertisers can easily reach.
The Question though is whether it's a great way to advertise for small companies?
On the surface you may think so due to the fact that it has such a big user base. But for a lot of small businesses you would be wrong. Of course now you need to know why? It actually boils down to 2 main reasons.
1. Facebook Ads are Interruption Based
Think about this, even though you can target the advertisements to show to a specific market making use of geographic targeting, demographics etc. the ads are still being shown to individuals that don't necessarily need just what you have to offer at that specific moment. It's the internet equivalent of a billboard by the side of a freeway. And most individuals have come to be used to tuning them out since we see ads on a lot of internet sites. We don't even pay attention anymore.
2. Geographical Targeting
Ok so Facebook has hundreds of millions of members. Let's slim that down. Say for example you own a plumbing business in Nashville, Tennessee and your company just does business in Nashville. Well your target audience just went from the hundreds of millions to 600,000 which is the population of Nashville. Now narrow it down further by subtracting the people that don't make use of Facebook, people that have accounts but aren't active, and so on. The moment you narrow it down your target audience gets a great deal smaller sized.
The net provides a plethora of options but for small companies with minimal budgets many of them are a waste of funds and utilizing Facebook's pay per click ads can be a big waste of money or at the least a big waste of time for small business owners.
