Who is Really Using Facebook for Small Biz Marketing?
Everybody talks about Facebook’s sales and marketing potential, but how do people use it to promote their small businesses? To find out, I posted a query on LinkedIn. My overall impression is: more selling through networking and widgets like IPromote, less selling through its Social Ads and classified listings.
Excluding people who responded about big company usage and Facebook marketing strategies, here are the results:
NETWORKING PROMOTION
Biana Babinsky (Online business consultant)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Biana-Babinsky/21490042776?ref=s
http://www.linkedin.com/in/biana
“I have received leads and clients as a result of my networking… I run groups and networking events for people I meet on social networking sites, I keep in touch and network, I write and optimize my blog, etc.”
Kevin Boyer (Director PR and marketing, marketing agency)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=837677590&hiq=all%2Cterrain
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinboyer
“We use the sites to reach influencers - people in nightlife and hospitality, people with a LOT of connections and “friends” - on behalf of food and beverage, nightlife, sports and music clients.
“We identify the people that we think are a match for us or our client and then contact them directly. Part of what we offer to our clients is the ability to reach “influencers.” We use the sites to identify more of those people and add them to our network. We then work to engage them in our product by inviting them to a special event, sending them a sample product, or encouraging them to post information about our client to their own blogs or to their friends.”
Cheryl Smithem (Owner, strategic marketing and PR firm)
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/563/704
“When I was working this fall on a campaign for townhomes in a small southern town, I did create a Facebook page for the company and posted photo albums of the townhomes There was little to no traffic to them–even though I had lots of people who were my friends. I think that for cool products, things that are in demand, for smaller items than houses, it might work better.”
AD PROMOTION
Sean Comeaux (Business development director)
(No public LinkedIn profile)
Sean reports “moderate success” with ads. “It was a customizable food product and I ran a valentines campaign for 12 days. I wasn’t able to “laser target” my segment, due to the lack of usable keywords, but was still able to come out with some tangible results.”
Kevin Boyer (see links above)
“All Terrain, and some of our clients, regularly use Facebook and Myspace. One client regularly advertises on Facebook because their demographic is 18 to 25 year olds.”
Scott Thomas (business development manager, marketing and technology company)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/smthomas
“I have used advertising space on Facebook over the last two years, and found it to be successful in creating a buzz, and getting exposure. I worked as recruiter for my fraternity, in starting new chapters on universities across the US. Granted, I “sold” fraternity to college men as “product” and I know that is a pretty random application, but it worked.”
Neal Evan Caminsky (President and founder, website and graphic design firm)
Red Dream Studios http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5804372281
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nealcaminsky
“Yes, we are [using it to promote] at Red Dream Studios, and have garnered success in doing so, connecting to clients who we wouldn’t have normally been successful at approaching outright using traditional means.
“Using Facebook, my own personal profile contains images and links to various elements of my business, and have over 70 people signed up to my company’s dedicated Group, in which we post updated materials, designs, videos, etc, to advertise what we are up to.
“This group was created to update our friends and clients of the going’s on at our company. This is also an open forum to discuss all things design and marketing-related or to receive general advice on entrepreneuring.”
LaShonda Matlock (Entertainment news reporter, blogger and publisher)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/lashonda
“I find that using Myspace and Facebook are great tools to market specific services such as nightlife and music related events. “
Jomar Reyes (business development director, digital media magazine)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jomar
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19200109680
“I ran a Facebook campaign for a new Music Forum that I have launched online. I got nearly 10,000 views and paid $70 And for 200 click throughs, and a couple of members sign up. It was an enlightening exercise, good value for money, and something I’ll do again with a larger campaign.”
Eric C. Wallace (Assistant manager of R&D at media firm, artist manager)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ericwallace
http://colum.facebook.com/profile.php?id=48603237&hiq=eric%2Cwallace
“I use facebook to market, artists, comedians, models, etc…. I also make money off of building facebook pages and working on them. Learned about Ipromote application for restaurants and bands, where you post event info and flyers directly to your profile. I have never run Social or classified ads.”
Have a story to share about how you use Facebook to market your small business? Why not share your experience and post a comment.
Peg Corwin
I have seen great results for our client - Okinawa Slim on MySpace, he is a professional pool player (Top African American trick shot artist in the world!), http://www.myspace.com/okinawa_slim
I have also had good results in promoting a pool table company on MySpace through networking with groups etc. It is sometimes more difficult for an “agency” to maintain the groups / profiles etc, because it is a SOCIAL network and that requires the involvement of the clients, or a specific community manager. This is especially true for small businesses because there is often not enough money to have a community relations person to continue growing the profiles and pages.
As a result, I am very excited about the potential for Facebook …
We have a client who makes arcade-style joysticks for xbox 360 and PS3 that is doing advertising there. The reality of Facebook advertising is that it is great for reaching specific individuals, but it is hard to make them do an action. This is in part to the fact that the ads are so small and in a not very visible place. These are issues you can overcome through connecting it to social actions, designing better copy, and improving the image etc. of course.
We’ll keep it as part of the overall strategy, but it might be more effective as a tool to get people to join a group or other social action on Facebook, than to buy a product. Display ads worked better on a per-click-cost because of this. Like I said, it is part of our overall branding strategy … so that when they see a review or are looking for something in the future they hopefully think of the client first.
My feeling as to why Facebook works like this is that FB people are relatively sophisticated and because they tend to be older, and better educated than other Internet media, they have a limited amount of time to spend - so they are more focused on FB stuff rather than just browsing the web type activities.
jameshills
May 14, 2008