After a few false starts Facebook is once again tackling local — right now on the SMB side. Its earlier “Promoted Posts” unit was a simple way for SMBs to turn their existing posts into ads with little effort.
Now the company has developed a way for SMBs to get more Page Likes with similarly limited effort. Within the Page admin console business owners can effectively now simply set a budget and drive the desired number of new fans to their Pages.
The simplified ad, which gets exposure on both the PC and mobile devices, including in the newsfeed, is available to Page owners with fewer than 10,000 fans and who have a city location in their About details.
Everything about the ad is pre-populated. The budget pull-down enables business owners to spend more money and get more Likes accordingly. The numbers of expected fans at each spend level is a very accurate estimate according to Matt Idema, who works on SMB initiatives at Facebook. He used to be VP of Yahoo Local.
Facebook now has two dead-simple ad units specifically for SMBs. These two units are very complementary: one drives more followers and the other (Promoted Posts) offers substantive messages or promotions to a broader audience.
Between 60% and 70% of US SMBs surveyed claim to have a presence on Facebook. However comparatively few of them are very active. Of the 12.8 million SMBs with Pages on Facebook (globally) roughly 3.5 million post weekly according to the company — or about 28%. Most third party social media management programs offer a monthly post on behalf of a business owner.
Facebook has an almost unique opportunity to realize that highly elusive objective of digital publishers: getting SMB advertisers to self serve. The combination of Facebook’s visibility, brand strength and newly simplified tools may turn into a big success story for them in local in 2013.
If they combine that with better site search it starts to become much more interesting as a local marketing platform.
December 13th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
It’s interesting to imagine the potential marketing power of Facebook if all the above changes were implemented. However, do you feel a better site search will be implemented? Could this compromise the social aspect of the site?
December 13th, 2012 at 10:03 pm
They have to get into search more deeply in some way. If they’re thoughtful better search could really improve the overall experience.
December 14th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I agree. Although, the fact that they haven’t made significant progress towards better search would lead you to believe they’ll struggle to do so.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
This looks very promising and would love a follow up post with success stories if this works! Thanks Greg.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:40 pm
OK
December 19th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 4:15 pm
[...] Facebookhas recently started to offer anextremelyefficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 4:19 pm
[...] While Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 19th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 20th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:07 am
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 27th, 2012 at 11:41 am
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
December 28th, 2012 at 1:52 am
[...] Facebook has recently started to offer an extremely efficient two-step ad product to help business owners get more Likes, and future [...]
January 4th, 2013 at 5:12 pm
Kind of like PPC?
January 4th, 2013 at 5:25 pm
You’re paying a flat fee for a certain number of likes. You’re not paying for each like using a variable budget. You’re not bidding. But I suppose you could translate it into a PPC-like concept.