One of the major questions being debated at boardroom meetings worldwide at the moment is whether Facebook is still relevant. Considering their disastrous IPO, slowing user growth and GM pulling their advertising and marketing campaigns it’s actually a question well worth pondering.
Ultimately this “still relevant” question is sparked by the unpredictable and widely differentiating returns that businesses are seeing from social media. But if you delve into the question deeper you’ll find there’s a reason why these results are occurring.
You see, when TV advertising was first introduced it was expensive, time consuming and technically challenging to execute. What companies did was hire advertising agencies and experts to help them execute their campaigns. As a result they had experts working with them and the results they generated were measurable and consistent.
One of the reasons that TV advertising grew so fast was because of these “Experts” building the campaigns and getting results. The problem with social media is that due to the barrier to entry being so low companies aren’t investing in social media experts to help them with their campaigns. This is creating a crowded market place where many companies are competing for the user but very few actually doing it well.
What’s happening at the moment, with the challenges Facebook is confronting is the market place is starting to become less crowded. Those businesses that are doing Facebook marketing poorly are leaving Facebook making room for businesses who do it well to capitalize.
As you can see, the major reason the results from Facebook have been so varied to date is nothing to do with the ability to produce results, but the way businesses have gone about getting results. The current Global Financial Crisis has confounded this even more where businesses are becoming more desperate and undertaking even more radical campaigns to get results.
We suggest you don’t “buy in” to the media craze at the moment, Facebook is here to stay, it is still relevant and when done right it will generate results. Businesses who understand this and take a professional marketing approach to Facebook, just like they would to a TV advertisement will see great results.
Unfortunately to date this hasn’t been done and it’s created market confusion, hopefully this latest Facebook shake up will clear up the market and create room for real marketers to get results.
Let us know your thoughts below in the comments on the current status of facebook, do you agree with our thoughts?
