Facebook The Revolution in Affiliate Advertisement

Facebook is a new marketing avenue – it’s the next marketing opportunity. Social media provides the way to interact and communicate with customers with ease. Even more, social media provides an opportunity to build long term relationship with potential customers. Marketing as an activity is all about placing the right product in the right place at the right time, and the result of those efforts is a consumer who cannot wait to reach into their wallet to enhance your revenues.. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers with print, press, television, radio and sales forces, the next iteration was Google ad words as internet marketing bloomed, and Facebook is the most recent avenue of approach for marketers from both offline and online niches.

Traditionally, marketing has been disruptive, where an activity is interrupted with advertisement, appearing in between the content of the prospects interests. Traditional media does give a large amount of reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wasted effort is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would not belong to the targeted demographic sought by the marketer.

The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly targeted and provides more content on-demand than any previously available medium. Social sites proliferated rapidly after with the growth of the internet, for several reasons.

First, the power to create and distribute content is available on an equal basis for every user, regardless of status as a customer or marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but never with the end user of the information. Social Media is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and participate in forums based on personal preference. Opinions are based on these preferences. And this is the primary reason why social media is of utmost interest to marketers, because buying decisions are more influenced by a persons personal interest, than by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.

With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms both of page views and subscribers.. What started as a fraternity-like socialization method by Mark Zuckerberg, has grown into the largest marketplace on the internet.

The interface for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are a large part of what make Facebook extremely popular. They also help the marketer target a very specific audience. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications, the games like farmville, frontierville and mafia,that have been made available within the Facebook pages. These applications allow users the opportunity to play games share activities and links in short order.

Older methods yeilded marketing plans that were created to include television channels, print medium, or any other media that can get the attention of a broad demographic and effectively reach a selected demographic. Facebook has enhanced the science of segmentation and targeting and is most accurate with the profile information provided by users, than in any other social media. Facebook opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to engage in meaningful dialogue with customers. One of the most popular methods to communicate with your prospects demographic is through Facebook advertising.: The unique aspect of Facebook advertising is represented by the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group thereby choosing the precise demographic in which you wish your advertisement to appear.

Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for use in branding their own persona or personal business. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook identifying an immediate fan following worldwide. The fan page has the unique ability to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate valuable feedback from your prospective clients.

Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this is best demonstrated by the Zynga games wherein branding coming across subtly through the use of the application. All of these factors allow you to sharply define the market segment you wish to identify with. Finally these attributes allow you to identify precisely what offers you should present to a specific demographic on Facebook.

The options provided by Facebook can be explored and applied scientifically for maximum benefit to any brand. Remember, however, in the process of doing this, he fact that customers have an equal input and immediate feedback mechanism to any of your actions by responding with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So if you are going to grow your brand, your marketing effort must be amenable to a large number of people in your targeted demographic, or your campaign will whither on the vine and die a rapid death borne of disinterest.