Facebook Launches Another Interesting Ad Option: Featured Stories

(Happy New Year! Having completed my latest project, news-op.com, it's time to get back to sharing information that can help small and mid-sized businesses enhance their marketing and advertising efforts)

Facebook, (which in my humble opinion is one of SMBs greatest web resource) has done it again.  By now, everyone is familiar with the recently launched Sponsored Stories.  These are similar to regular Facebook ads, in that they are fee-based, but they differ because they are about your Friends' and Pages' activities on Facebook--stories that are already eligible to be in the news feed.  However, Sponsored Stories are almost always in the ticker, and identified as being a  "Sponsored Story".  But still, Sponsored Stories are a step above a regular Facebook ad.


But wait, there's more. Today, Facebook launched it's Featured Stories. Now we're talking about ad exposure!  Featured Stories will be embedded in the news feed and will not be identified as an ad.  In other words they will look like any other posts.  Users will only be able to determine the "post" as ad by the word ‘Featured’, which is greyed out underneath the post. When you hover over the word it will show you exactly why a particular post has been featured in your feed.  Facebook is guarding against flooding users' news feeds with paid ads by promising that just one Featured Story will appear each day in a users' news feed.


Undoubtedly, this new advertising option will drum up debate, both pros and cons. But for the small and mid-sized business owner, let's welcome another opportunity to advertise on a larger, yet comparatively inexpensive scale.

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Another Way Technology is Leveling the Playing Field

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, in business, technology is really the great equalizer. Small and mid-sized businesses can compete in ways they never would have been able to just a few years ago. They can pretty sell anywhere they choose, tapping into previously unapproachable markets. If you sell soap, the Internet allows for a global client base. No longer do the mom and pops of the world have to sit back and dream about expansion. Anyone with a well-designed website that has quality shopping cart software, and the appropriate fulfillment and distribution systems can have the same web presence as a multinational corporation.

Marketing and advertising options have also greatly improved for SMBs thanks to technology. And the one device that I believe holds the most promise going forward is your cell phone. A great example is text marketing or Short Message Service (SMS). In fact, SMS marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing channels, and for good reason too. Mobile phones are everywhere; audience measures on mobiles are 9 times more accurate than the Internet, and 90 times more so than tv.

The benefits are quite significant; when a mobile user texts your business, it's to request information or participate in your offer, so that's even better than permission marketing; you can get started for well under $100; you can create promotionals that require a quick response--and get it; you can develop creative promotionals that require an action such as forwarding your text to a friend, and of course the mobility factor can greatly increase traffic into your place of business.

Are you currently using text marketing? If you haven't thought much about using text messaging in your marketing plan, then perhaps it's time to consider it. Send me your feedback.

An Advertising Opportunity that Small Businesses Shouldn't Miss: Pt. 3

So, why is Facebook the leading destination for web advertisers eventhough they have only average clickthroughs?  And why do I believe that Facebook is a great place for small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to advertise? In a word, I think it's because of "friends."  Research (and lots of it) shows that social media and peers influence purchasing decisions.  This is a big difference between Facebook and say, Google for example.  Granted, Google is a search engine, not a social media site, but therein lies the difference.  And it's not just Google, the same can be said for AOL, Yahoo, or any of the others on the comScore Ad Matrix list. Yes, they have better clickthroughs, but if we're talking influence, then Facebook has the clear advantage.

Google has many positives.  One that immediately comes to mind is that when people put in keywords to search for something, it's for something they want, and probably sooner rather than later.  Google does a great job matching your ad with the users' search queries (of course you provide them with the info and must bid on placement order for your ad), and their tracking tool for conversions is excellent.  Google Places is also a great tool for promoting your business.

But Facebook takes targeting to entirely different level.  There are numerous targeting option available.  You can target by geographical location (and even micro target this option), birthday, age (exact or broad), sex, workplace, likes and interest (the sky's the limit here), colleges, universities, college majors, education, friends of connections, you can build a community around your business, you can add images and do much more. Plus, there's the option for people to "like" your business which can be another influencer. 

Small businesses spend approximately $12,000 on advertising, with $2,300 dedicated to online advertising according to the Borrell Associates survey, Outlook 2011: SMBs Everyody's New Best Friend.  Without question, making Facebook a part of your online buy can be a great investment.

I want to be clear, I'm not here to promote Facebook or to be unnecesarily critical of any of the other web publishers.  My purpose is to offer SMBs information that will help you accomplish your marketing and advertising goals, while maximizing your resources. 

I've had this article, Social Network Marketing: What Works? on my website for sometime, it's a short read and very relevant to this post. 

If you're using Facebook for advertising, what was your experience like?

An Advertising Opportunity that Small Businesses Shouldn't Miss: Part 2

In part 1 of this post, I mentioned that there's a shift taking place in online advertising, and that the shift can have a positive impact on the advertising and marketing efforts of small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and non-profits.  The affordability of online ads can help you expand your advertising campaign.  I hope that if you're already using media, you have incorporated online as part of your mix.

But if you're not, for as little as $50 you can test how well online can work for you (actually, this can be done for much less, but spend at least $50 for better testing analysis).  For a small amount of money, you can start advertising online, increasing your exposure in a meaningful way.  However, it's important to note that buying media, whether tradional or new, requires a knowledge base.  In other words, there's more to it than simply buying space. Knowing the difference between CPA and CPM or various display media channels is critical to your success.   Learn as much as you can or hire a company to work with you.

But the shift in online advertising comes from the battle for market share between top web publishers.  According to data from comScore's Ad Matrix,  Facebook has emerged as the leader garnering more than 31.2 % of the 1.11 trillion display online ads in the fourth quarter of 2010.  This represents a 23.1% increase over the third quarter.  Here's the breakdown (percentages represent market share):

Facebook 31.2%, Yahoo 10.1%, Microsoft sites 4.8%, AOL 3.0%, Google sites 2.5%, Turner Digital 1.6%, Fox Interactive Media 1.1%, Glam Media 0.9%, CBS Interactive 0.8%
Viacom Digital Media 0.8%

The above data represents big players, but there many others to choose from, and in a competitive market, buyers are in the position of strength--even with so-called fixed rates.  So don't cast off this information as only being important to large advertisers.  As I mentioned in part 1, small and mid-sized business owners are quickly becoming the belles of the ball. Your small ad dollars matter in a big way.

When it's all said and done, getting conversions is the bottom line for your online campaign.  One thing that really jumps out at me about the comScore list is that although Facebook is in the number one position, their ads are known to have lower clickthroughs (that's when a visitor actually clicks on your ad and goes to your website) than the industry standard, about half (according to Webtrends).  So what's behind the popularity of Facebook for advertising?  It's really not a big mystery, but I think the answer bodes very well for SMBs.  Well take a look at this in the third and final part of this post.

Have you used online advertising before?  If so, did it work for you?  If you haven't, why not?