FaceBook’s Advertising and Marketing Potential

By: David Skul


FaceBook is quickly becoming the giant of all social networking sites, and as its popularity grows, so does the marketing and advertising opportunities it offers to businesses of all sizes.

Whether you simply want to post your profile on FaceBook to gain a little extra exposure or embark on a major advertising campaign, the latest social networking phenomenon offers a number of choices.

Before you begin any marketing or advertising campaign, you should get to know your audience. On FaceBook, the majority of users will be in the 18-25 age range so you will need to appeal to a fairly hip audience. However users over 25 years are the fastest growing segment. Companies are beginning to use the site for networking with existing clients.

Although the jury is still out as to whether FaceBook ads are worth the price tag, there are a number of ways you can advertise on the website.

You can buy traditional banner ads that are placed at the top of pages. Also, you can buy flyers that can be targeted to a particular university, company, or group. These are a way to target a specific audience and can be bought for as little as $5.

You can also buy more subtle advertising that will appear in a user’s news feed. These do not look like advertising and can be effective. But, as users become savvier, they may start ignoring these feeds more often.

If you are not ready to invest in FaceBook advertising and want to explore its potential as a medium for free marketing, there are a number of techniques you can use as well.

By its nature, FaceBook is ideal for word of mouth marketing. You can use the notes feature to write messages that all your friends will receive. You can even have your blog updates posted in your FaceBook notes, and your friends can receive your notes as an RSS feed. These features are just a small sampling of the potential to market your site or product.

One major ideal at FaceBook is the open source movement. In a radical shift, FaceBook opened its code to users for "widget" development. Hundreds of thousands of these widgets have been developed for the user community. If you're up to the task, it could prove very worthwhile to develop your own widgets. Just remember that your widget will need to appeal to a large user base to get noticed.

You can also share audio and video files, send out massive invites to events that you organize, or set up sponsored groups.

FaceBook marketing and advertising is still very much in the "wild west" stage as its growth continues to astonish the most aggressive analysts. If you're debating on whether you should take your business into the social networking realm, FaceBook's massive community should raze your doubts.


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