Facebook blasts through the 30 million user mark in the UK and Ireland

In the next couple of months, in the UK at least, the terms ‘Facebook’ and ‘30 million’ are going to start cropping up in news articles, blog posts and tweets.  30 million is a special figure - it means nearly one in every two people in the UK and Ireland has a Facebook account.  As a medium to reach an audience, in terms of pure numbers this pretty much blows TV out of the water. Whilst 30.1 million people tuned in to see Den divorcing Angie in Eastenders (if you’re under 30, trust me - this was big back in 1986), current viewing figures rarely hit more than 10 million for any particular show in the UK.

How do I get my company on Facebook?

The problem, of course, for a company wanting to reach their audience across Facebook is that people don’t login to Facebook to be advertised to.  Whilst the same is true of TV, the passive “goggle-box” allows all of the messages within the adverts to seep into the viewer’s consciousness – alternatively, it’s a useful break in which to make a cup of tea.  The clickthrough rates (CTR) on Facebook (the number of times someone clicks on an ad compared with the number of ad impressions) are low - the industry average is 0.02%, or to put it another way, one click for every 5,000 impressions.  Compared with PPC, where a successful campaign is likely to achieve a CTR of more than 5% (over 250 clicks for the same impressions), it becomes clear that companies wishing to advertise and engage with their consumers across social networks need a new approach.

Is low CTR on Facebook a bad thing?

Just because the CTR is lower than in other areas of the internet, this doesn’t necessarily mean that advertising across Facebook is a bad thing.  Impressions are high, and whilst few impressions lead to engagement, each one leads to a little greater awareness; the adverts at the corner of your eye do sink in, just like the background noise from TV ads.  Facebook also has great filtering - ads can be targeted to age, location, interests, gender, allowing a level of focus that is not always available through other ad networks.

So how do you promote on Facebook?

Facebook is a social network, so effective promotions make the most of this. Successful Facebook campaigns use ads to garner the initial seed audience, then use that audience to push the message out socially to their friends and family.  

How best to push that message is dependent on the campaign, but common approaches are:

• Make certain content and actions exclusive to people who ‘Like’ the campaign

• Make the campaign viral by introducing games which can be played with friends and family, so the seeded audience gets them involved - for example the advanced forms of ‘Poke’ that are brand-sponsored

• Make the campaign competitive across larger numbers based on interaction and how far the audience spreads the message (eg the Marmite ‘love or hate’ initiative)

For all three approaches, the idea is to involve the audience and make them want to be part of the campaign.

 

This blog post was written by Richard Conyard

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