A client of ours recently expressed skepticism about Facebook as a marketing platform. Before you gasp, let me just say—his questions are perfectly legitimate. Remember, just because Facebook reaches over a billion people worldwide does not automatically guarantee it’s the best solution in every case.
I would argue that Facebook is a very good marketing option for this client. Before I say why, I’ll give a quick overview of his situation.
This service-oriented business is focused on a local audience. It is traditionally very reliant on word-of-mouth recommendations and does well with search rooted in location-based and need-based keywords. The problem is that there is a lot of competition for these same services.
His argument against Facebook is that his clients do not, up to this point, come from there. Also, he personally does not like seeing businesses pop up on his Facebook feed, so he expects others don’t like seeing these type of posts, either.
Facebook Marketing: Local Search
One argument in Facebook’s favor is that it is becoming increasingly popular as a tool for local search. In fact, according to comScore data, Facebook is now the world’s number-two local search app behind Google Maps. Facebook has achieved this by drawing data from its huge user base to create location and subject-based search results for just about everything.
What does this mean for our skeptical client? Any business you search for on Facebook will bring a result, whether you create a page or not. A business that creates their own page and populates it with useful content will have a leg up over those who do not.
Facebook Marketing: Friendly Algorithms
While no social media platform can give you what you want all the time, worries about Facebook posts being intrusive are probably overblown. Unless you pay to boost posts, Facebook is not going to throw your content up on people’s feeds without a reason—a query by the user, or some kind of interaction (click-throughs, likes, shares, etc).
Even if you do boost, this form of paid marketing is highly targeted. You can make sure your boosted post is only seen by people with specific interests or in a specific area. There’s no “throw spaghetti at the wall” marketing on Facebook.
Facebook Marketing: Driving Traffic and SEO
Facebook is a proven way to drive traffic to your website. People who come to your site through Facebook might contact you through the site, but unless you have them fill out a questionnaire, you might not know it was Facebook that led them to you.
Another advantage of posting frequently on Facebook is that you are generating link-backs—links that point to your site—which are an important sign to Google that your website is important and contains quality content. Traffic from external sources is very important to SEO.
