Published on the 19/11/2009 | Written by Newsdesk
Facebook hasn’t had much success with its advertising efforts so far, now it’s hoping that brand-oriented company Facebook pages will prove a winner…
Facebook has had a chequered career when it comes to advertising. It has also, despite being valued at around US$15 billion, yet to make money, until now it seems.
The company’s new regional vice-president for Australasia, Paul Borrud, flew into New Zealand recently to extol the virtues of Facebook micro-sites for businesses, and how they can be used to effectively market companies and the company brand.
He also revealed that Facebook, which is a private company, is finally, as of the last six weeks, making money, although he wouldn’t say how much. However, he did say that the micro-sites for companies advertising venture was helping make a financial difference.
To show how Facebook can help companies market themselves and their products, Borrud showcased two local companies – one Kiwi, one Australian. The Kiwi example was Yellow – formerly known as Yellow Pages – which is trying to re-brand itself as hip and online. As part of this, it has launched the Yellow chocolate campaign, which sees “Josh” run around trying to devise a “Yellow chocolate”, using the services of companies that advertise with Yellow. The television ads are one part of this campaign, the other is a Facebook page, or micro-site, that tells more of the on-going chocolate story.
Borrud talks about how Facebook “friends” become “fans” on these micro-sites, because it’s not appropriate to dub people “friends” when they’re clearly not in this case.
He went on to explain that by using Facebook micro-sites companies can have an on-going “conversation” with users and customers.
This isn’t hard-sell marketing, says Borrud. It’s more subtle than that and, usually involves the company giving away something too. He gives the example of Pringles, the upmarket Australian chippie company. It has used its micro-site to promote a competition whose prize is a party for 100, as well as to ask its “fans” about their favourite Pringle flavours.
Borrud also described how the famously media-savvy Virgin airline subtly included what was a mini-survey on its Facebook page. This asked what people would do with their laptop if they could access the net while in the air. Answers included checking their Facebook status and boasting to their mates that they were surfing the web at 35,000 feet. Virgin offers a wi-fi service which hasn’t had many takers so far, so this is a obviously a gentle attempt to promote the service.
Questioned as to whether Facebook’s youthful users would be interested in company micro-sites, Borrud said that users 35+ were the Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic. He also noted that New Zealand had 1.2 million active users, with slightly more – 57 percent of them – being women.
