Is Facebook really effective for Internet marketing?

I don't BELIEVE that facebook gives you good conversion rates from marketing directly on Facebook. You get a good opportunity to interact with your readers and develop good relationships but converting them directly to buyers is difficult. However, you do need to develop those relationships too. Facebook seems to convert better for people who are not selling in the IM niche but rather sharing information that lead to CPA offers or information about hobby/crafts, pets, recipes, and those types of niches.

Having conversations with your readers builds a relationship. People will be more apt to purchase and recommend people they know, like and trust. Several marketers have Facebook pages that are private and you have to request to join. If you have the opportunity you should try to find one and watch what they do. I don't have a recommendation for a marketer here.

I have tried marketing through FB many times, but the traffic just does not convert in a manner which benefits my efforts. So no, it does not work for me.

It might work for some CPA offers though..

Facebook marketing is not very good if you try to direct people outside of Facebook.

So apart from Facebook which social media site is better for internet marketing?

Yeah prasanth5, are you trying to get leads? or linking to a sales page?

The idea of using facebook for marketing is to build relationship and trust with your readers and that will eventually convert to buyers. Although twitter is a better choice if you ask me.

Facebook... is social media. Social media is a different animal. I've found Facebook ads are best for Branding more then getting people to respond to the ads..

My experience is mixed with Facebook...

I think the PPC advertising service they have is very low-tech when compared to others and not converting! Despite the rumors and so many myths... at the beginning it used to convert. But not now.

Plus: some even accused Facebook for click fraud!

I still think Facebook is great to spread news about your business, build a community with it. "Likes" and "shares" and the fact that you can feed people potentially even more efficiently than with newsletters (usually newsletter systems cost), gives Facebook a tremendous advantage.

You can't leave Facebook out of today's online makreting! You'd be missing out on a lot of benefits!

But: if you're a small business owner, I advise you to stay away from their PPC service... that might be good for large companies for building brand awareness and so on...

Don't expect good ROI when investing 50-100 $.

Facebook Is Generally Used For Branding Purposes, Its All About Building Relationship With Clients And Showing Your Products To The Public .

I don't think that Facebook is saturated.

However, it is true that the Facebook traffic is not very good quality.

In my experience, my Facebook traffic is is 17% unique visitor which is not very effective for building a email list, because we all need to have unique visitor that register to our list every months.

I believe That Facebook traffic can be good if you want returning visitor to you site for other purpose then building a list or having new buyers coming every month .

I agree with everyone who says branding is great for facebook.

I personally have friends who make money with facebook ads regularly, but it didn't attract me.

If you're a brand, it's worth it to build up your fanpage (and relationships), that's for sure.

I too thought building an email list with Facebook cannot be very fruitful for that matter. On the other hand Facebook helps you to know who are marketing and selling what and thus it assists you in widening your knowledge about Internet marketing products.

Facebook fan page of course does something when it comes to driving potential prospects to your business. There are multiple benefits of building a page with some paraphernalia.

Well Facebook can be good for marketing for certain niche. But then The best way to use facebook is capturing the leads. Means you can promote your facebook page which can capture you targeted audience emails and name. which later you can use with other way of marketing.

IM is always about trying every platform out there, finding what works for your product and then ramping it up.

For every person here that says "FB doesn't work".....there will be another that says "it works so well it is all I do"

Most of my money comes from non facebook. Emails, forums, fiverr, but facebook very low conversion.

It is possible that Facebook can be used for list building to a great extent. This only shows that it plays an indirect role in our Internet marketing success.

I think it depends on your niche

Facebook works better for branding and building relationships. It may be better to direct your ads to a page where you interact with your audience and then send them to your offers from the page.

facebook is one platform that bring to all the other social platforms in one place.it has
micro blogging(twitter) and it has image sharing (pinterest) and it also has video sharing which is what youtube do who would not like to use such a strong medium.For certain businesses its producing traffic more than what Google is producing for them.

I found out that if you want to market on facebook start joining groups with the ninche product your selling. i get massive traffic from facebook but also twitter is a great way too. good luck.

David

Yeah I think FB ads still work, but you have to track your ads and adjust accordingly. It's like any PPC in that you need to be careful when you spend money on campaigns.

I'm seeing higher ROI's on facebook ads than any other platform. My entire ad budget is being spent on facebook. If you're willing to dedicate some time & lose some money finding out what works, you can make a killing. I made a thread about a technique I use on facebook ads in the Ad Networks - CPA, CPM, CPL - Millionaire Makers.. forum. Feel free to check it out if you like.

Hi Prasanth5,

FaceBook is all about sharing content that gets passed around like crazy because it is something that people want to share, like or comment on.

FaceBook rewards those who produce content on their walls that keeps people on FaceBook as long as possible.

So when you post something on your wall from then on that person who shared your content etc will see your next post at the top of their news feed.

I hear people saying they have got 1000's of fans on their pages but are not seeing any traffic from it.

This is because they are not encouraging people to share their content, like or even comment on it etc.

Focus on attracting traffic back to your Fan Page and then give them a reason to share your posts as sharing is by far the greatest way to get massive exposure for your online business.

It does take time using FREE F/B methods but you only to spend around 30 minutes a day on it to get things off the ground and gain that initial momentum.

Hope this helps and all the best!!!

Facebook as a lead capture: yes
Facebook as customer interaction and increasing credibility: yes
Facebook PPC ads: No. Most people ignore them, and I've seen some testimonials that FB inflates clicks. (lawsuit filed in 2009: Has Facebook Been Cooking the Ad Books? [Update] - CBS News)
Facebook promoted posts: maybe...I haven't really tried it.

Don't forget, Facebook changed it's algorithm so that only 17% of your audience sees your posts. If you want them to see more, you have pay to promote the post.

Great article on the subject: Dangerous Minds | FACEBOOK: I WANT MY FRIENDS BACK

Facebook: Eh, I'm not a fan.

i think facebook is very effective!
if you create page get thousands of likes your page will be rank up in google! so
traffic-sales-money!
or if you have company facebook is very effective it s effective as email list!

FACEBOOK IS ALL I USE FOR INTERNET MARKETING!

Over the past 2 years, Ive made $7000 with it.

Currently my website makes $400/month adsense and most of the traffic is from facebook. I dont rely on google with all this penguin rubbish, I also dont have a list, never

Facebook scares me! But not having a list is even scarier lol! Not sure how that's a badge of honor for you arron? lol

FB has been really good for me in conversions to my blog subscribership. (It's where I do comments) I also use Google+ which i like a lot better in some ways. But in both cases I ENGAGE with my fans and get them to subscribe to my blog and get on my list.

the answer is Yes and No.

It depends on the niche you choose.

If you are in a good niche you will definitely get good response from your marketing effort.

If you are n wrong niche its just going to be a waste of time.

Then if you are satisfied with a little amount of money then its OK....

But for more in short period of time there should be alternatives....

Yes, I guess it's effective for international marketing. As the majority of people still use Facebook, it is effective.

Facebook is good for business, but it depends on your strategy that how you are going to interact with your audience. If you're selling IM it means that first of all you need to convey the message to your audience that how IM/your product can help them, don't start talking that "Purchase my Product/IM".

First of all you need to have a community, interact with them, listen to them and engage your audience with your creative content. I would suggest that don't rely/focus just on Facebook also start working on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other social channels.

^^ This one makes sense to me.
You may have to re-evaluate what you are currently doing in your Facebook marketing so you'll know which among your strategies should be changed.

With Facebook and other social media marketing sites, we always have to build the relationship with our 'cyber friends.' Join them. Find what they love to do. What topics do they 'like' the most? Know where they get tickled. Then you will know how to position yourself when it's about time for you to sell your product or service.

it is really hard to say that Facebook is an effective IM strategy, coz half of IMers who use it fail... your success' still depends on what you do, regardless of the IM method you use.

I think Facebook can be a great marketing tool building a brand but i also dont think it is great for the quick call to action.

Ya, obviously Facebook is. Facebook helped me and still helping to generate traffic.

I think Facebook is a great way to get your product known out there. Creating a fan page allows people to know more about your product and by constantly posting up good quality content in your fan page. whether it is email marketing, blogging or social media IM is all about relationship building.

For traffic sources, yes. But for conversions, not good... i think.

Hi prasanth5!

Absolutely yes! Given the amount of traffic in facebook, it just all depends on how you market your products and services. However, unlike in pay per click ads, you cannot directly identify the people who have the propensity to buy your products and services. Marketing in facebook takes time to develop. But there is nothing to lose and so much to gain because you will only spend a few minutes or hours a day.

I guess so. Still Facebook has a huge number of users. So it is very much effective for not only internet marketing but also all kinds of marketing.

I think that FB can be effective.. if one does it right.

I wouldn't call it "saturated". Not yet, at least...

Personally I think the PPC service isn't bringing good ROI and it looks so much less-developed than most other PPC networks... this doesn't seem to work for Facebook and many are complaining of receiving "fake clicks", "robot traffic".
After having spent an important sum, I found that it didn't bring ROI. So I dropped it.

Otherwise, Facebook as a "sharing" tools is fantastic...

The Facebook fan pages are great - probably the best way to create a "social nest" with clients/fans/members, users...
A very good tool that I am using. Sometimes it's going surprisingly well!
But one should use it for communication. Many are making the mistake of introducing Facebook channels into their sales processes.

This is my experience with Facebook. Positives and negatives.

Yes , as it is really famous network so it is effective.

Facebook is really a very nice social media site that can help you generate income. Its a well known social site that lets you interact with people all over the world and its a must have for all businesses...

Facebook is a good way to marketing. It increase a product or business popularity. Its all depends on users interest. But i think its not quite effective. it may give you some visitor but not huge.

Facebook is the best place for the internet marketing. But you should use it wisely.

The people that I have seen that are successful with IM on Facebook have built up fan/friend lists. They also are very interactive with their lists, offer support, etc. They are using Facebook the way it is suppose to be used. They gain trust and loyalty... Once you do that, your fans and friends will follow you into other things you recommend.

If you just go on Facebook and post links, you are most likely wasting your time. I do use automation and post to groups where you are allowed to advertise anything you want and no one minds. But, there are so many people posting to these groups your ad does not stay visible that long. Not to mention most others are automatically posting there as well.

I personally dont think its that effective. People arent going on facebook to pay for anything, its a social networking site. I have seen little success with facebook as well as linkedin.