To Ad or Not to Ad? The Pros and Cons of Facebook Advertising

While social media channels were originally built as tools for people to network, they have proven to be extremely successful for brands to connect with their audiences as well.

Have social media replaced more traditional marketing tools like ads? Or do ads still play an important role in social network building? $4.28 billion dollars spent on Facebook advertising in 2012 say they do. While social channels focus on two-way communications and are supposedly free (are they really?), millions of businesses use ads in conjunction with their organic networking efforts. So should you pay for ads on ‘free’ networking channels, or can you get the same results with organic  interaction?

The pros…

• Ads can help you grow your online channels faster. Unless you have an amazing online campaign that’s attracting a lot of new fans, buying ads to promote your network is simply the fastest way to grow.
• Thanks to Facebook’s Power Editor, you can target very specific audiences, even more so than you can with your regular posts. Growing your online audience is nice, but if you’re investing time and money anyway, wouldn’t you rather invest it knowing your audience is of high quality? You can even target your current clients and leads by uploading your email list.
• Ads can help you grow your online fan base or bring traffic to your website, but with promoted posts you can increase the reach among  your current fans.

The cons…

• While Google Adwords’ click through rates are around 2% on average, click through rates for Facebook advertising are a lot lower: The average is around 0.025% for the travel industry (Report by BI Intelligence, June 2013). This percentage can be increased by using more targeted ads and ads that show up in the Newsfeed only.
• Social media’s main goal is networking, not selling; people are not on Facebook because they want to buy your trip now, they are there to get inspired.
• Advertising overload causes people to stop paying attention to ads. It’s hard to make your ad stand out from the crowd.

Fact is, Facebook relies on income from advertisers, so it’s not surprising they offer so many opportunities to increase reach and impressions through paid activities. Like it or not, non-paying Facebook users are not Facebook’s main concern. It’s keeping advertisers happy.

Or as Metafilter user blue_beetle put it: ‘If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.’

With that in mind, I personally think using ads is perfectly fine and a great way to compliment your social media efforts. Advertising can be a valid and useful part of your social media strategy, but should serve only to support it, not overpower it.

Source: http://goo.gl/TkD9rJ