Is Facebook a Viable Marketing Tool?

Face­book is grow­ing by leaps and bounds. If you don’t know what Face­book is, it’s a social net­work­ing site much like MySpace, but with a lot more con­trol, flex­i­bil­ity, and ver­stil­ity. (Check out my pro­file.)

But after test­ing it for a while, I’ve con­cluded that it’s not a viable mar­ket­ing tool. At least, not for me. There are two rea­sons why using Web 2.0 social-​​driven sites to make money (or to drive tar­geted traf­fic) is not viable.

First, and more impor­tantly, it’s labor-​​intensive. It’s a full-​​time affair.

I don’t pre­tend to be a social mar­ket­ing expert by any stretch. And I’m sure that, if you are a social site junkie, you can find some pretty cre­ative ways for using them to gen­er­ate mas­sive amounts of traf­fic. Some already have.

But for me, my busi­ness, and my spe­cific tar­get mar­ket, and like many social net­work­ing sites out there, it’s a waste of time. So if you’re not pre­pared on work­ing it exten­sively and reli­giously, then I dis­c­om­mend it.

How­ever, noth­ing stops you from out­sourc­ing the leg­work, if you’re so inclined. But there’s another good rea­son why I don’t rec­om­mend it…

It’s highly untargeted.

Peo­ple who fre­quent them are usu­ally tire-​​kickers look­ing for enter­tain­ment, for free infor­ma­tion, or to social­ize. (And spam­ming on social sites is becom­ing just as preva­lent as its email cousin, unfortunately.)

Per­son­ally, there are ample traf­fic sources and mar­ket­ing strate­gies out there that are far more pro­duc­tive, like arti­cle mar­ket­ing for instance. And even some in the Web 2.0 sphere. (Blog­ging is one of them.)

But I like Face­book purely because it’s… fun!

I use it to post pic­tures, ideas, per­sonal tid­bits, com­ments, activ­i­ties, etc. And it’s a great way to meet new peo­ple and recon­nect with some old friends. I have, for exam­ple, got in con­tact with two of my cousins on Facebook.

That’s the main drive behind social net­work­ing sites, any­way. It’s a social thing!

(That said, how­ever, what makes Face­book dif­fer­ent is its groups, which allow you to cre­ate cen­tral­ized net­work­ing hubs based on com­mon themes or inter­ests. Much like tar­geted blogs, forums, and communities.)

Need­less to say, the point is, I wanted to test it.

For exam­ple, last week I qui­etly launched a new coach­ing pro­gram.

I posted a brief announce­ment on Face­book. And for a while, Face­book was a great source of traf­fic. But the traf­fic didn’t con­vert well.

In my esti­ma­tion (and research shows this to be true), peo­ple on Face­book were either inter­ested in me per­son­ally and look­ing to con­nect with me, or sim­ply look­ing for free con­tent or advice with­out pay­ing for it.

(Every­day, I get at least 2–3 ques­tions and “pokes” from Face­book­ers ask­ing me for help or feed­back. I don’t mind, because I love to help. But I reserve my best and more detailed answers for my pay­ing stu­dents.)

The best source of qual­i­fied traf­fic to the coach­ing pro­gram actu­ally came from Inter­net mar­ket­ing forums, includ­ing my own. Besides, how good will an offer of paid coach­ing be to a group of peo­ple who are look­ing for free coach­ing, anyway?

The bot­tom line, how­ever, is that I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t test it.

That’s the power of via­bil­ity research.

Speak­ing of via­bil­ity, my wife and I are going to Las Vegas this week­end to speak at Jack Humphrey’s Author­ity Sum­mit on this very sub­ject. We are pre-​​launching a brand-​​new sys­tem called Suc­cess Chef.

What is it?

Suc­cess Chef is an in-​​depth multimedia-​​based train­ing sys­tem that teaches mar­keters, both new and expe­ri­enced, how to build a busi­ness online — any busi­ness — fol­low­ing four crit­i­cal yet sim­ple steps.

Sim­ple? Yes. But not nec­es­sar­ily easy. Because each step branches out into a diverse range of activ­i­ties, results, and sit­u­a­tions that, depend­ing on what you choose, will guide you along the way to mak­ing money online.

Much like fol­low­ing a recipe, you must fol­low these four steps, in order, to achieve and max­i­mize your suc­cess on the Internet.

It doesn’t mat­ter what kind of busi­ness you want to run or how you wish to mon­e­tize your online efforts. Whether you sell a prod­uct, build a list, cre­ate con­tent sites, pro­mote affil­i­ate prod­ucts, drop­ship, sell on eBay or what­ever, you need to fol­low these four impor­tant steps.

In fact, we’re offi­cially launch­ing it while speak­ing at the Big Sem­i­nar this Octo­ber in Atlanta, where we’re shar­ing the stage with my friend Jay Abraham.

By the way, Big Sem­i­nar is cel­e­brat­ing it’s 10th edi­tion, “Big Sem­i­nar X”. (Ahem, I won­der who wrote the copy, hmm? Admit­tedly, the bulk of the first draft was co-​​written by one of my coach­ing stu­dents, John Rit­skowitz, who’s an excep­tional copy­writer in his own right.)

Big Sem­i­nar is the mother of all Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars. It’s sem­i­nar sea­son right now, so there are many. But if you had to pick and choose, this would be the one not to miss.

Any­way, com­ing back to Suc­cess Chef, the first and most impor­tant part of the sys­tem is the first step. Miss this step, and your online busi­ness will fail — or at most give you mere table scraps. That first step is…

Via­bil­ity.

And that’s what I was refer­ring to ear­lier regard­ing Facebook.

Via­bil­ity is not just mar­ket research.

Whether you have a prod­uct already, a prod­uct idea, or a mar­ket that wants a solu­tion to a spe­cific prob­lem, you need to ana­lyze and acid-​​test both the mar­ket and the prod­uct to see if both will fly.

What’s prod­uct and mar­ket via­bil­ity research? Essen­tially, it answers some crit­i­cal ques­tions based on one of four key assets:

1. You have a mar­ket but no product,
2. You have a prod­uct but no market,
3. You have both,
4. Or you have neither.

Some of these ques­tions are (and keep in mind, this is just a par­tial list):

• Is there a mar­ket for your product?
• If there is one, who is that market?
• Are they pas­sion­ate or desperate?
• Are they tar­geted and qualified?
• Are they iden­ti­fi­able and accessible?
• Is there a demand for your product?
• What exactly does that mar­ket want?
• How do they want the prod­uct delivered?
• Are they will­ing to pay for the product?
• How much are they will­ing to pay?
• How do they con­sume the product?

And so on.

With­out this first step (whether it’s ignored, skipped over, or done poorly), it can spell fail­ure of your online venture.

Look at it this way: if you don’t fol­low this ini­tial process, then just like miss­ing out on a key ingre­di­ent in your recipe, you will end up with ined­i­ble food no one wants to eat, or left­overs no one wants to take home.

Not only that, but also if you don’t fol­low these four steps in order, you will, like some of our clients who end up com­ing to us, become frus­trated, lose a lot of money, waste a lot of time, or down­right fail.

For exam­ple, you wouldn’t put icing on a cake before it’s baked, right? Well, just like fol­low­ing a recipe, you need to fol­low these steps in order or else your busi­ness will fall flat and end up as com­post material.

Nev­er­the­less, this is just an iceberg’s tip of this first, cru­cial step — and it’s only the first of four in the upcom­ing Suc­cess Chef series, which we will delve into at both the Author­ity Sum­mit and Big Sem­i­nar.

I hope to see you there! And if you’re join­ing us, you’ll likely find us in the hotel’s water­ing hole or, of course, the restau­rant. That’s where you’ll find most of the other speak­ers and mar­keters, too.

(Er, what gave you the impres­sion we like food?)

Jok­ing aside, sem­i­nars (and espe­cially the bars and restau­rants at such events) are the “water cool­ers” for us Inter­net mar­keters who mostly don’t work from some cor­po­rate, soul-​​sucking cubicle.

In fact, that’s where some of the most prof­itable busi­ness ideas and joint ven­tures are cre­ated! (Plus, you never know… some of our best-​​kept secrets can some­times spill out. Espe­cially after a drink or two.)

In the mean­time, if you hap­pen to find me on the Internet’s “water cooler,” then drop me a note on my “wall” and say “Hi!”

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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