Sunday, March 3, 2013

Why does facebook increase the cost of ads right before your very eyes?

Q. I advertise on facebook and when you setup an ad they will give you an initial pricing and scheduling rate. If you revisit the ad immediately after posting, they will raise the suggested rate by a somewhat skewed number. Why?

A. Because they can. As long as *you* pay, it stays free for the rest of us, your target audience.

What do you think about advertising in social networks?
Q. For a small business , do you think advertising in social network like orkut help to reap profits?
How does advertising in social networks work ?

A. Hey,

(Bare with me on this one, I'll answer your questions and share some damn good techniques)

I own my own marketing company and have been involved in the internet industry for a long time now so am quite clued up/experienced in pretty much all forms of web promotion and marketing.

The answer to the question is your profit depends on what you're selling, how well your selling it and who to. Social network advertising can see you reap profits or sew losses due to high advertising costs and low conversions, but they are fantastic sources for traffic!!

The reason social network advertising is so effective is that they are places where countless amounts of millions of people go on a daily basis, like everyone watching MTV at the same time, itâs maximum exposure for your brand services. The other major benefit of advertising on social networking sites is that you can highly target the ads you place there.

Rather than traditional advertising, which will be viewed by a random audience, advertisers can use these networks to target their ads at a very specific audience; you can target it in many ways such as geographic location, sex, age range, gender, single, married etc.

This way the adds are most successful and if it is an online business/service you're promoting then it's a good idea if you use these services, although be warned, it can be very expensive (Depending on the size and popularity of the network).

They generally run off what's called a CPM system (Cost per thousand impressions). This means that for every time your advert pops up on a web page it's classed as one impression, for every time it reaches 1000 impressions the site will charge you the CPM premium (Again the cost will depend on the size and popularity of the network).

This can be a very costly approach if you are a small business as most of the major web 2.0 sites have so many members thus having many millions of pages for your advert to pop up on, they also generally have a minimum spend which can be quite high (Facebook currently has a $50,000 monthly minimum investment for add banners).

I'd look at starting a page/fake profile on the social networks and drive the traffic to your site, it's called SMO (Social media optimization) and it works a f*****g treat, believe you me!!

I am a keen user of social networks and have utilized their power for my own SEO and revenue generating benefit. Create a fake profile and invite as many of your target audience as you can, you'll be surprised how many people will accept the request!

You can do this very well on sites like Facebook using their 'Groups' feature. If you're selling games consoles, for example, do a search within the social network for 'PS3/Xbox 360/Play Station' etc and then click on the 'Groups' tab to seclude the results to groups only. Have a look at the groups that you're left with.

The members of these groups, often hundreds of thousands, are the people who you know know that are interested in your product/niche. Go through the members and request a ton of them to be your friends, this is called building a list and is where most online services make over half of their sales (Using backend sales).

All you need to do then is create a group of your own about your service/product (The name of the group needs to be eye catching and inventive), in your fake profile, then invite all of your 'Friends list' (Prospective buyers) to the group (When I say friends list, by the way, I'm talking about 2,000+ friends in your list, send as many friends requests as you possibly can).

This will then trigger a viral reaction in the form of 'the butterfly effect' and spread your brand/service/website through the network where the members view your site through a third party referral (The group invitation).

Referrals from a third party (the friend who invited them to your group) or an expert in the field is always trusted by prospectives as they have no reason to lie.

There are three main objectives here:
1- To drive targeted traffic to your site
2- Create brand awareness for your website, free of charge
And the most important part
3- To get high PR/authority links back to your site (Bookmark the pages where youâve left these backlinks, it will only increase the authority of the page that is pointing back to your site)

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You don't need to advertise in social networks, if you're willing to put some effort in you'll reap the rewards, trust me. Utilize web 2.0 to work for you; use sites such as Squidoo, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress to name just a few and cover the internet with your content rather than spending on one add in one social network.

A little heads up if you do decide to use social networking advertising- Add banners are pretty much the worst form of web promotion, the CTR (Click through rate) is very low and not very cost effective at all, look for another form of advertising withing the network. HOT TIP: Text link ads are far more effective than premium banner ads!

If you are looking for a unique social network to advertise on Iâd advise you to keep an eye out for the âGlobal Covenantâ, a massive new UK project that has totally redesigned the social networking concept, a welcomed evolution of social networking; even the BBC and Sky are involved inside the project. Pretty exciting stuff!!

Iâve been helping a global client base increase their profits, traffic, conversions, performance etc for a long time now, if you want to talk to me through Skype and have a brainstorm or need help with marketing strategies feel free to add me (Skype username- Internet.Marketer, Marcus Hill, UK) and weâll have a chat (free of charge by the way).

Hope this info gave you a little insight to web 2.0 advertising and has answered your questions.

All the best!!!

How much does it cost to advertise on websites?
Q. I'm doing a research project and need to include a marketing campaign. Does anyone know how much it costs to advertise on sites like Facebook, Twitter, or You Tube. Or any other big website in Canada. I don't know much about marketing, so the simpler definition the better. Thanks!

A. ad rates will depend on how many page views the website gets - find the contact info AT those websites and email them and ask




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