The Facebook Disconnect

Adam Steele here, writing my first blog post on our newly re-designed website. This blog will be mainly a selfish outlet for my take on industry news, techniques and theories. Although a passion of mine, I certainly do not claim to have any real talent or skill in writing, so for those accomplished writers out there, I apologize if I offend you. However, this is not intended to be a literary work, but rather just a means of communicating what I think is important information for business owners and industry vets alike. Lucky for you though, a couple of my staff members have asked to contribute, both of which are accomplished online marketers and have been published on many notable websites. We encourage you to leave your thoughts and we would be thrilled to answer any questions you might have. Cheers!

Nightlite Media has come a long way since its inception. What began as somewhat a naive fantasy of changing the way small and medium-sized enterprise advertised has since blossomed into a successful, well-oiled machine. At the beginning we only planned to offer Social Media Advertising via Facebook Ads. Our plan was to reach out to businesses, specifically night clubs, who wanted to benefit from a more updated media, and save money at the same time. And why wouldnt they? After all, with Facebook Ads, one can define their audience based on an infinite number of relevant variables, allowing super targeted advertising. Not only that, when compared to more traditional methods, targeted or not, Facebook still offers massive cost savings. So, armed with a solution and purpose, we thought this makes sense; we are going to revolutionize the way small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) advertises. Great, we were on our way to success and were going to change the world while we did it. NOT. Unfortunately, we soon found out that SME business owners have never heard of Facebook Ads and wanted nothing to do with it. Whhhaaat?

Although the Facabook Ad platform has only been around since late 2007, in 2010 it generated 1.3b in ad revenue! At an average cost per click of .25, Facebook users clicked on ads a whopping 5.2b times in 2010. Which if you do the math, 4% of users click on an ad per day. Not bad, but take into consideration that those producing these ads arent all created equally. By that I mean, many suck. Quite often my staff and I get asked by business owners, why cant I do [Facebook Ads] myself? We respond, you can, and we will teach you. So, happily at no charge or obligation, we walk them through the ad platform and get them going. 99.9% of the time they come back to us asking for us to run it. This is not because Facebook advertising is tough, because it is dead simple. The reason they ask us to do it because it is one thing to adjust the targeting, upload a couple pictures, add some catchy text and let it run. It is another thing to do extensive research on the demographic, upload 100 pictures designed specifically to attract said demographic, conduct extensive multi-variate testing, generate 100s of thousands of views, 1000s of clicks and provide comprehensive detailed reports. But, I digress.

So, how could something so powerful still be a secret? And for those who do know about it, why arent they using it? We believe it comes down to two things: education and skepticism. Education because it is simply not something that the majority of business owners are exposed to. They know Facebook exists, and appreciate its reach, but many are only now understanding how Facebook Pages/Groups etc can be leveraged and yield positive results. Skepticism because people have been robbed time and time again by advertising companies promising the world and a fat ROI to boot. Facebook is a little bit different. Although there is no realistic scale to measure what a like, click or friend is worth, one begs to question then, why would so many Fortune 1000 companies be dumping millions into a black hole? Simple: Conversation. By stimulating conversation around your brand, not only are you introducing yourself to potential clients, but you are opening a channel to create dialogue between your business and your customer base. Very powerful and valuable stuff. However, impressive or not, Facebook Ads will continue to be dominated by the likes of affiliate marketers and Fortune 500 marketing execs until these problems are solved. For those who do decide to get in now, Like Adwords in the early days, clicks are cheap and competition isnt fierce. Those able marketers made a mint, and experienced huge ROI. This same scenario is occurring right now, and personally I want to be a part of the group who made a mint, dont you?

What some folks label risk, we call opportunity. There will always be the skeptics, and rightfully so, but before you completely dismiss it, entertain a conversation with myself or our Social Media Strategist, Jackey Chen. Wed love show you how weve turned so many naysayers into believers with robust ROIs. Lets Chat!