Elaine Fogel

Facebook ads

I’ll facebook-twitterbet your small business or nonprofit organization spends considerable time on its Facebook page and Twitter account trying to engage new people. After all, aren’t these two social media sites the most effective in reaching prospects, customers, and donors?

Not anymore says a recent Forrester study. “It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave. Yet most brands still use these sites as the centerpiece of their social efforts — thereby wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources on social networks that don’t deliver value,” says Nate Elliott of Forrester.

Now get this… “In the next 18 months… Facebook will become nothing but a repository for display ads,” Elliott predicts. Holy!!

So now what?  Continue reading

Targeting younger audiences with your Facebook ads? Mafacebook-adsybe it’s time to rethink your social media marketing strategy. They’re spending way less than older audiences.

First, here’s some background why paid Facebook ads have increased…

Based on a recent study by Nanigans, we’re learning that organic reach on Facebook is shrinking, so marketers are investing in paid advertising to maintain performance. This corroborates Social@Ogilvy research released in February of this year which demonstrated the average reach of organic posts had declined from 12.05% in October 2013 to 6.15% in February 2014.

In fact, Facebook stated that increased competition for limited space in news feeds was the reason for brands getting less exposure. 

So, if your business or nonprofit is now paying for Facebook ads in order to stand out and generate revenue, you’d think your efforts would be fairly effective, right? Well, not if it’s targeting younger audiences. Continue reading

If your business or nonprofit has purchased Facebook ads, you’ll want to know the results of this recent survey by Ad Age and Citigroup. It appears that marketers who buy ads on Facebook are more focused on building brand awareness than accumulating fans! Surprised? So much for an emphasis on ROI.

In order of priority:

  • 45.9% building awareness and sentiment for their brands
  • 17.6%  driving traffic to brand websites
  • 12.1%  building fans or likes
  • 11.9% staying in touch with customers
  • 8.4% generating sales leads
  • 2% social commerce

What this possibly demonstrates is that Facebook “likes” are not necessarily translating into an increase in sales, donations, new customers, etc.

If you’ve bought Facebook ads, what was your marketing objective? What has been your experience in reaching that objective?

Check out my new book!
Sign Up For My Newsletter!
Subscribe to My Blog

Use your favorite feed. 

Contributor to:
SmallBizClub
MarketingProfs-Logo
My Company
Solutions Marketing & Consulting
Categories
Archived Posts