Even with all the marketing success stories that have sprung from Facebook, there are still a lot of businesses who doubt its usefulness.
Many of the reasons or excuses that businesses use for not utilizing Facebook’s marketing capabilities simply aren’t true though – and businesses are disadvantaging themselves by not having a presence (while their competitors profit from it). Here are five of the most commonly touted Facebook Marketing Fallacies, and why they’re not valid reasons to stay away from Facebook.
The Five Fallacies
Only youngsters use Facebook: This is one of the most ludicrous fallacies getting around; many business people (usually older people who don’t use the social network) believe that Facebook has no benefits for business because the majority of its users are young. They couldn’t be further from the truth! In reality, the older demographics are actually the fastest growing segments of Facebook’s audience.
Using Facebook is too time-consuming: It is true that marketing successfully on Facebook requires a significant time investment. However, if you determine the activities which deliver the highest returns and work to a structured schedule – you will find the benefits of your activities will far out-weight the time cost associated. In order to get the most from your time, it’s critical to have a strategy in place before you start your Facebook marketing campaign – this is the best way to stay focused and be efficient with your time.
Having a Facebook page will get you customers: While it would be nice if it were that easy – there’s a bit more involved than just setting up a page.
The main issue with this fallacy is that many businesses enter their Facebook campaign thinking business will boom overnight, and are disheartened when it doesn’t. Some even buy Facebook followers, thinking that equals sales!
The best way to succeed on Facebook is with a consistent strategy and by building relationships with your audience – once you’ve started building these relationships, you’ll start reaping the benefits.
You can’t measure the ROI of Facebook – In reality, the ROI of your Facebook marketing is much more measurable than that of traditional marketing methods. By utilizing information available (for free) via Facebook Insights, and matching this against the goals and objectives you’ve set for your campaign – you can keep close track of the progress you’re making with your campaign.
People might leave negative comments on our page – The truth is, if people want to say bad things about your business they’ll be doing it already on one of the many other platforms available. There are many examples of large companies who were totally unaware about a problem on social media for weeks or even longer, and only discovered it when contacted about it by mainstream media. The advantage of facilitating the feedback is that you are instantly aware of it, hence it can be dealt with appropriately straight away.
The takeaway
You can make all the excuses under the sun for not marketing your business on Facebook, at the end of the day though the evidence that it’s effective is overwhelming. With over 750 million users worldwide, and the enormous potential for engaging targeted prospects; it’s simply bad business not to get on board.
Are you avoiding Facebook marketing? What’s holding you back?