Recently, the consulting firm comScore released a study detailing how Facebook Ads influence on consumer behavior. This study looks at paid advertisers and free media exposure from status updates and likes from larger companies and major retailers and is a follow up on an earlier study regarding how to reach customers with social media.
This is in response to a recent research poll which suggested that 4 out of 5 people haven’t purchased products that they saw advertised on Facebook. Essentially, this is to show that this assertion isn’t true.
The Truth About Paid Facebook Ads
As for fans who tend to like certain products or certain brands, the research showed that they outspent other fans of different brands. This spending information was derived from credit card companies, third-party collectors as well as loyalty clubs.
One example of this was with fans of Target and the friends of these fans. This group viewed advertisements from Target and liked the site, thus receiving regular updates. The next group were not fans of target and got no updates. Both groups have the same purchasing behaviors.
Over a four-week period of time, however, those users who received messages were more likely to purchase products at Target than those that didn’t see messages. The improvement was 19% to 27% more likely. Similar studies were done with other retailers and as expected, the results were the same both before this study and after the study as it relates to the power of paid advertising.
However, some of these groups only were 16% more likely to buy goods at a particular retailer as opposed to the 19% to 27% increase for Target. In addition’ Facebook also initiated research on over 60 paid advertising campaigns in order to determine the advertisers return on investment.
Roughly 70% of all paid advertisers received at least three times more business from the money spent on advertising. In some cases advertisers experienced five times more business.
When it comes to the effectiveness of social media marketing campaigns, the challenges for established advertising businesses on Madison Avenue have proven to be extremely varied. While this may come as a surprise to many, this isn’t anything that people involved in the advertising business have known for a long time.
The challenge is that it’s difficult to determine how many people view a specific ad and how many of those people were able to identify with the advertising message in order to make a purchase is even more difficult. Especially if the people in question aren’t followers of the company in the first place.
About the Author: Tom Bukacek is CEO of Black Box Social Media LLC, an online marketing company which utilizes the latest web 2.0 strategies for its clients in order to increase your brand recognition and help get you found online. Black Box Social Media is also the creator of the all in one, do it yourself training program known as ‘Social Media In 7 Minutes’, which has over 50 videos on how to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and more to market your business. Tom has recently authored a chapter on social media marketing in Dan Kennedy’s upcoming book ‘Marketing Miracles‘ due this fall. For more information on Tom Bukacek and Black Box Social Media, please visit http://blackboxsocialmedia.com/
