Why A Facebook Application is Good Marketing

Why A Facebook Application is Good Marketing (0)

Luke Manion | 13/03/2008

While marketing firms hunt for new methodologies to target specific demographics, the members of Facebook almost obsessively self-define. This results in an abundant, well-articulated and international pool of potential customers.

The question is how to reach them.

The answer is by building a Facebook application.

Although the social networking giant offers traditional advertising venues in the form of banner ads and other corporate placements, Facebook users are notoriously unreceptive with low click-through rates. The most effective route to this population is through their voracious appetite for new applications and widgets.  Popular ones have been known to go viral in a matter of hours, hitting thousands if not millions of potential customers.

Successful applications offer a social interaction, game, or practical utility that is new to the platform. They are written in FBML, which makes them available not only to the large Facebook community but also to rival social networking sites such as Bebo. And above all, they are designed resonate directly with their target audience

For example, when a popular artist was about to release a new album, his marketers advertised it with a widget that allowed users to create video greetings from the artist’s catalogue. Fans opted-in by adopting the application and spread the message to a new, receptive audience – their Facebook friends.

tags: Web 2.0 ,  facebook applications ,  facebook