Facebook a Good Strategy for Biz Growth?
The other day I listened to an archived video from Duct Tape Marketing called “Facebook for Small Business”. There were 4 panelists and consensus was that every small business needs to be on Facebook marketing their product/service or company in general. I must admit that I only watched the first 20 minutes or so of the 58:55 minute video, but here is what I heard:
1. Facebook is now the top relationship site
2. Facebook has over 350M users = huge captive audience
3. Easy way to reach out to your target market
Now, let me preface what I’m about to say next… I am a fan of Duct Tape Marketing.
However, I disagree that every small business needs to be on Facebook:
Yes, FB is one of the top relationship sites, but the majority of it’s users are on the young end of GenY. And yes, Facebook does have a large audience, but it’s filled mostly with women. Neither of these demographics fit every small business target market.
Lastly, FB can be a more simplified way to reach your audience (not to mention it is cost-effective – for now), but when does it become a monetizable strategy? Aside from their advertising model, which is mediocre at best, how do you know if you are reaching your audience and is your product or service something that the FB market is interested in purchasing?
On a positive note, Facebook users age 35+ is growing and could surpass the GenY group, but before you put all of your stock into Facebook as your 2010 marketing strategy, know your audience and do your research.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8f592af0-c81b-4b7a-923a-06abd3e6d0de)
February 8th, 2010 at 8:24 am
[...] Brooke’s post on FB as a marketing [...]
February 12th, 2010 at 7:31 am
My question to you would be… what happens when your audience IS using the tools represented in the above post like Twitter and Facebook?
The wave is coming… is already here.. the fastest growing group on Facebook is 60+.
It is important to educate yourself on using the tools because I would rather be educating to use than to be slow and destroyed.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
My question back to you is why is this 60+ demographic growing so rapidly?
… because they are looking to socialize or buy a product?
February 12th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Interesting.
I recently contacted someone from my past via FB. I’m working on a medical device project and wanted some feedback from this person. Here is an excerpt of her response:
“…I don’t want to insult you but I use FB as an escape and I don’t wanna read about politics or business or religion, so when that happens I usually ignore for awhile, then if that is the majority of someone’s postings and I don’t hear about family or see pics or get updates on the actual friend, I unfriend them…”
While I don’t have actual data, only anecdotes, I believe the sentiments expressed by this friend represent a very large percentage of FB’s 400M users.