I spent two FULL days out of office this week at Marketing Week Toronto. I am now playing catch up so there is a very good chance that I may have skipped FBF all together this had I not attended a session at Marketing Week Toronto lead by Louise Clements, Head of Sales, Facebook in Canada.
In the session, entitled Leveraging the Social Graph: Business and the Social Web, Louise mostly discussed the fact that businesses in every size and industry are increasingly able to take advantage of Facebook as an avenue to garner interest, promote brand awareness, and find and create the coveted “brand evangelists”. Facebook feels that it has been very cooperative and responsive to business / advertising needs. As an example of this, their geo targeting and demographic pinpointing options are becoming more sophisticated and available across more channels. If you have not already, check out Facebook Connect to see exactly what options are available to advertisers. Additionally, Facebook fan pages now enjoy most of the functionality of regular profile pages which, in Louise’s opinion, have made fan pages a much more lucrative option than Facebook groups.
Facebook has over 350 million users worldwide. Of those users there are 19 million in Canada who spend ½ hour per day or more on the social networking site. That offers a lot of opportunity to engage customers. As Louise says, it offers marketers to connect with real people in an authentic manner, which is what permission based marketing is all about.
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