Facebook History: Facebook was launched in 2004 and is a popular social networking website. It had annual revenue of around $ 300 million in the year 2008. It has international operations and regional headquarters around the world. Due to its wide popularity around the world, it has a large potential for advertising. Prior to Facebook, online advertisement consisted mostly of annoying pop ups and banners. However, Facebook has innovated the online marketing very well by employing some exciting strategies.
Organization of advertisements: Facebook organizes the advertisements depending on various factors, like the groups that the individual might have joined relationship status etc. For example advertisements of sports utilities companies can be shown to those individuals who are added to a group of any popular game. Further, there might be sponsored groups by various companies.
An example of great usage of Facebook Marketing is that of Dell Computers. Dell Computers has its own group where users can place their comments, feedback about Dell products, complaints, suggestions etc. As per official figures from Dell, it reported a steep fall in user complaints after some time of launch of its presence on Facebook. Many other popular brands are present on Facebook and use it as an effective tool for advertising their product by the use of advertisements, creation of groups which are being used for promoting their product and with the help of social games.
Facebook Pay per click program: Recently, Facebook has launched a pay per click program which works in the following way. An advertiser would place its advertisement on Facebook; with every click of its advertisement, it would need to pay Facebook a pre determined amount. Further, owing to its popularity, many online shopping companies have started advertising with it.
Another exciting aspect of Facebook marketing is that of engagement advertisements. A user can place his/her comments on the advertisement that appears on his/her Facebook profile. Further, the advertisement can be liked or disliked by the user. The user’s comments on any particular advertisement can be viewed by his/her friends. In this way, a number of people come to know the merits and demerits of a product and its popularity is built. If they like it, the popularity is certainly going to get translated into sales.
Further, gifting e-gifts is getting popular among the Facebook users. Another interesting feature is that organizations can make friends with the users. This would help in building a rapport with the potential customers.
An online social game known as Farmville which is accessed using Facebook has become quite popular. The game involves setting up of virtual farms, growing virtual trees, adding manure to them and other such stuff. Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that more people access Farmville than the number of users on Twitter. There are certain items which help in advertisement of a company’s products. Thus, it has combined a game very effectively with an advertisement campaign and has become a big hit with the users. Thus, we can say that Facebook has emerged as a major online advertising portal.