I think Facebook is blowing it with their advertisement program. They are squandering this huge opportunity of building something unbreakable for ages, and letting the shortsightedness of “making a quick buck” take over.
If you go on to Facebook.com and run an application, you will see some ads appearing on the right hand side. Here are two of the most frequently appearing ones: “Workout Secret Revealed” and “New Workout Secret”. Call me skeptical, but don’t Hugo and Matt look a lot alike? Put aside the fact that they are obvious scams(I will talk about that tomorrow), how does allowing those ads to appear on your site add any value to your brand?
Now I understand that they want to be like Google and provide a platform where advertisers can setup and run their own ad campaigns. But Facebook isn’t Google. They are so much more. Facebook knows: our gender, age, race, nationality, friends, where we live, which schools we attended, where we work, which celebrities we follow, what kind of food we like, which dialects we speak…you get the picture. They have our entire life in their servers, and they are wasting it.
So what should Facebook do instead? Here are some of my suggestions:
- Create a point system with ALL of their applications where the points can be used to win and/or exchange items from sponsors.
- Work with local restaurants to get exclusive deals for Facebook members in that area.
- Work with local sports teams and offer exclusive Facebook deals for their games.
- Look into existing groups and find the best vendors with the best deals that fit the group descriptions.
- For the groups that were created by businesses, work with the creators to get exclusive deals and offer them to people who have similar profiles as the group members but aren’t members yet.
- Daily, Weekly, or Monthly contests through some of the gaming applications with prizes from sponsors.
- Coupon codes available only through Facebook for EBay, BestBuy.com, etc.
- Be the next Match.com, or team with Match.com.
I am sure there is a lot more, all of which are just so much better than Hugo and Matt’s “miracle diet pills”.
Oh, here is the most important one: Don’t, under any circumstances, ever, allow SCAMS to ruin your brand image…EVER!
Related posts:
