Facebook marketing is a very effective way for you to interact and engage with your audience. This social networking platform has most of the brands using it feeling that they need to have a presence on the site to stay competitive. While we can say there are multiple advantages to participating in social media marketing, there are also multiple disadvantages to marketing with this very platform.
However, Facebook having more than 2.07 billion monthly active users is quite frankly the biggest social network that the world wide web can offer. That is why for most marketers such as yourself, you can’t excuse the potential that you can grow your brand more with this networking giant. In fact, as we speak more and more marketers have started honing their skills on Facebook and have practiced more Facebook marketing just to build a stronger presence online.
Below are some of the important advantages that Facebook marketing can bring to your business:
#1 With Facebook marketing, you can create a dialogue between your brand and your audience This, when handled properly and with the right marketing skills can lead to loyalty, customer satisfaction and a stronger bond between both parties based on similar built interests.
#2 With Facebook marketing you can share either short messages and links or long lengths of information with your audience. This is a useful tool since everyone is already gathered in a particular place, supporting and spreading messages with your audience is made quick and easy.
#3 You can create greater buzz for events and provide a place and platform where you can invite your audience to various happenings.
#4 You can turn a promotion into something so much more special and entertaining for your audience than the typical hoorah. There are now apps on Facebook that allow you to interact with your Facebook page from other apps and gadgets. This allows you to make interaction so much better.
If those aren’t reason enough, we have a wider scale of advantages that will make you understand why social media marketers are so attracted and indulged with Facebook marketing.
#5 Facebook marketing can provide you with a place to poll your audience and help you to gain closer insights on their behavior. With the right amount of dedicated time and investment on your part, you can build an entire campaign based on your audience and the questions they have asked for the brand and What are the reasons for liking it. You can become your own “director of insights” and have a planned structure for your marketing. Remember the ROI of any community is not taken from interactions but from the insights you gain.
#6 With Facebook you can drive traffic to your actual product store. You can give away product gift cards and share details about not just your Facebook store but your local store as well. You can give out some of those secret passwords to a chosen audience and let them get something special out of it. Why not figure out a way to give those loyal fans of yours, a special loyalty discount.
#7 Facebook marketing can provide a wider target customer reach. Though Facebook is casually known to have started out as a social platform for college students, it’s millions of users now from across the globe range from 24-52 years old. This means, regardless of what audience you are trying or want to tackle, you have an ocean of fans to work your marketing skills on.
#8 Facebook marketing provides you with multiple marketing platforms tools. Namely: Pages, Groups and Ads. If we take a reference from Facebook itself…
“Pages are initially free Facebook profiles for businesses, organizations and public figures. The only difference is there is no restriction on the number of likes you can have. “
“Groups is basically a forum for discussions designed to be user-friendly in a wall format.”
“Ads is the paid marketing tool for businesses to reach their targets based on their desired demographics.”
Take note though, ads can be costly depending on your brand’s goals. There are however budget friendly costs, since Facebook prefers to run its advertising on a per-impression or per-click basis. You’ll be able to set daily limits, and depending on your brand’s niche, show Facebook users relevant ads.
#9 Facebook marketing helps you with specific market targeting. Besides having many active users, Facebook is a platform that gathers huge amounts of information from its users. This is why businesses are so fond of using it, so that they can target their desired audience based on a specific users’ profile.
#10 Facebook marketing is a great developer of business-to-customer relationships. Remember that using Facebook opens up a doorway for you to create a wider community around your brand. It encourages discussions between both the marketers and the audience. This will provide room for constant additional marketing campaigns.
With the Pros mentioned you can easily see that Facebook is great at connecting with people and it does indeed have relevant and ideal marketing tools. However, every great thing has its limitations.
So we’ve gone ahead and listed down some of the Cons that Facebook marketing has.
The fact that so many people use Facebook so often, you might have a hard time breaking through all of that to your audience.
Since its Facebook marketing, alongside marketing there will always be negativity. Negative messages travel quite fast through this platform just like positive ones.
In order for you to gain fans you have to create value for your audience and actually encourage them to re-visit your website.
Facebook marketing can’t create awareness for your company on its own. An audience will only seek it out if they know it by name.
The platform can’t work without a goal, and “I need to compete with that” is not a goal. You as a marketer have to hone your skills and work with the tools.
It can magically get any random person to like or visit your page. Any website needs marketing done by actual people so that you can actually start telling other people about it. Just like with Facebook marketing, if you don’t build it yourself, the audience won’t come. Sure it offers interaction with people, but you need to have at least an initial audience beforehand. It can be a quiet place if people don’t hear about it.
#1 Facebook marketing can’t provide you with a place to just give away products on your wall. Facebook has now redefined their promotions terms and conditions to limit this. As a brand, you can still think of ways to give products away, but you can’t get fans to write, submit media or share to do so.
#2 Facebook has in fact lost a hold on its Facebook marketing. It was designed to be an interactive online platform to encourage people to share information. While each profile owner has control over what they post on their public profile, there has been a loss of control of who posts information or what is on those certain posts. It would be easy for competitors or angry audience to post unappealing and degrading posts on your brand’s wall. As a marketer, you do intend to uphold the image and maintain it for your brand.
#3 The cost of maintenance has skyrocketed as the platform continues to grow more popular. Your content pages need to be continuously updated and filtered with beneficial information for your Facebook marketing to be effective. This requires the development of detailed media marketing strategies and that’s a costly investment for a small advertising budget to hand over to any platform. Remember you do not own the platform there are people behind it every day, running and keeping it under their standards.
The competition also gets higher because competitors are now more fully aware of what your brand is offering due to the Facebook marketing you do. They can easily duplicate and rival against your business using your own strategies. Simply by posing as a subscriber, they can gain access to the marketing that you provide only to your audience.
As mentioned earlier although there are budget-friendly Ads, to get that high-quality look and to seem legit to your audience advertising really does cost. While a lot of things can be free on Facebook advertising properly and to target a rather large market is not one of them. This is a major disadvantage for businesses just starting out.
Wrapping it up
So as you can see, social media platforms like Facebook that provide you with Facebook marketing are yes indeed a big help if you’re a modern-day marketer looking into media marketing. It helps build reputation and professionalism when used right. But when used to casually and like any other platform, it’s normal to know there are some things that will just get us in a pinch. You must care to develop and maintain a Facebook presence that will indeed reflect you as a corporate professional.
Joe verdi says
Hi. I want to start using jarvee but I still have not gotten an email and cannot sign In. Please email me so I can do the free trial and then buy the monthly subscriptions.
Adam says
When you start the trial emails are sent automatically, if you didn’t get one it means you have problems with your email so just try to create another trial with another email.
Mercedes Lisko says
The statistics prove it. The Pioneers of digital marketing prove it, that Facebook indeed is one of the best ways to fill your sales funnel with fresh leads but there are people who are still stuck in denial.
These are the same people that will later cry on how they should’ve pursued this opportunity…
Adam says
Well, many try and fail and will swear that it doesn’t work 🙂
Jerold Amoako says
With the rise of Facebook messenger marketing, brands can now focus on their customer base on an even MORE personal level than they already could!
Chelsey Sonoda says
#5 is very accurately pointed out. One can run many tests on their own audience. I have seen some brands do that and later running re-targeting campaigns on the part of their customer base that showed promising conversions.
Elroy Jubran says
#2 is beneficial from a consumers standpoint but the thing is, competitive niches will result in some brands dealing in dirty business.
Newcomers in the said niche can see a lot of negative marketing on their brands’ page by mass fake accounts. Contacting Facebook about it is a very weak way to counter that hence you’re left with a lot of dirt to wash off of your brand!
Adam says
Yes, unfortunately people do that sometimes… harsh but true.
Natasha Cassarino says
Another disadvantage of Facebook is the negative impression it has left on its platform due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There has been a considerable percentage drop in the number of Facebook users since that event.
Adam says
It will pass, most people don’t really care about that stuff or are unaware of it.
Shayne Tavernier says
Are Facebook ads a good way of marketing your page, or is it best suited for your website?
Adam says
They definitely are, however you need some knowledge before you start as it can end in a lot of cash spent for not much if you’re just doing it randomly.
Sybil Codling says
Facebook also has a weird habit of disapproving highly converting ads. My Facebook pages have been banned twice with no explanation whatsoever.
I didn’t do anything against their TOS yet I still faced a ban. When asked why? they ignore straight away.
The counter to this is to create another Facebook page, but the downfall is that in a way you’re starting a new brand image on Facebook and creating everything from scratch..
Adam says
It is indeed very hard if not impossible to get a reply from them, sad but true.
Yoda Master says
There is no any option to export members from invite module tool.
I have added few friends to my group, and there is no any option to export those friends.
This is really missing feature.
Adam says
Contact support with a feature request and they’ll see what they can do.
Emilio says
Interesting article Jarvee Well, each social network will have each pros and cons. Our job is to take the advantage of everything that can work for us and get most out of it.
Lusie says
Honestly I’m slowly giving up on facebook marketing. I get so much more ROI on other social network than on facebook. But that it’s fine, I guess that my niche is more interested in other social platforms.
Bougart Sale says
Facebook is indeed the biggest and most present social media out there. If we add Instagram to it, like the other side of Facebook corporation coin, then we have two biggest platforms in universe. All we need is good content, a little bit money to invest in ads and here we go.
Sean says
What I like the most about Facebook is under number #2. With Facebook marketing you can share either short messages and links or long lengths of information with your audience. On other social networks your posts are a bit limited since you have to adjust that social platform, but on Facebook, you have more freedom to create the type of content you want.
Geny Geny says
Facebook is King Kong if we manage to ride that beast we don’t have to worry about our future, it’s too powerful.
Sadiou Diaff says
Great tips, thanks for sharing. Basically, we don’t need anyone else than ourselves for creating and running our campaigns. Little bit Youtube tutorials, Jarvee and our knowhow and we can be a shoulder to shoulder to the big ones.