Using Facebook As A Marketing Tool
FaceBook is taking off like wildfire much like Google did back in the day. I set my account up around six months ago then largely forgot about it, but in the past few weeks friends from all over the world have linked to me, turned me into a vampire, asked me to save the world with them, sent me pictures and music or just generally asked to “be my friend”. In Finland this month the network trebled in size. As soon as I saw the system earlier this year I thought this could be a winner for the owners due to the advertising possibilities and indeed FaceBook have not been slow to capitalize. They set-up flyers back in March 07 based on a general CPM model (cost per thousand impressions) and also in September set-up an adwords like CPC (cost per click) model.
It will be interesting to see if they ever set-up a CPA (cost per acquisition) model too (so you only pay when someone buys).
What’s also interesting is the market research you can do. While limited to a poll type of question it is helpful because you can specifically target areas, interests, age groups and more. The best thing is that this is very cheap. The individual can easily do this kind of marketing as well as the company.
Implications for web analytics & conversion rates? I think well thought out campaigns which don’t have a sales approach to them might work well with audiences.
