Facebook Is Not The Answer

Take a look at some of your favourite Blog postings over the past six months. My guess is your could comb through most of them and replace the word "Facebook" with any other hot online channel that rose to fame over the last five years and the content of that posting would still be relevant. Facebook is (and will continue to be) an amazing place to better understand how people connect, what connects them and what they’re looking for. Twitter, MySpace, Second Life, FriendFeed and many others do (or did) the same.

All too often we focus on the shiny objects – what’s cool and happening now. I’m just as guilty of this as the next Marketer, but I never lose focus on the reality that no one channel is the Marketing panacea to any business challenge. This goes back to establishing a strong marketing strategy that leverages all of these digital channels where people are connecting to better bring your brands into their worlds.

Make no mistake about it, advertising on Facebook may (for the time being) deliver better ROI. You’ll probably see better click-through rates on display advertising there, you can use Facebook Ads to really target and hone in on parties of interest, and there is probably a better brand recall on advertising that is happening on their pages.

For now.

But, like all good advertising media, the more it is used, the more those numbers will drop (look at TV, print, radio, outdoor, etc…). As you glide into a weekend of hitting the cottage or catching up on that run you meant to do four times during the week, don’t bother with the iPod. Head out solo, with nothing but your thoughts and wits about you and focus on thinking through what a truly successful Digital Marketing campaign should look like – especially if you could not use the "channel du jour" to blast your advertising through.

While you’re at it, start thinking about all of the content your brand is producing that is not advertising and how it connects. Think about your company brochure and now think about the last corporate brochure you picked up and read. Most people do not read brochures, yet every Marketer thinks that a company needs them. If you decided today to no longer print a corporate brochure, what type of content would you create and direct people to so they can better understand the industry you serve? Would it be in the forms of text? audio? video? images? all of the above?

Above all, focus on this reality: Facebook is not the answer. It’s something that is happening now, but that could all change (as it usually does).