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Advertising And The Social Network Scene

Facebook...MySpace...Youtube...LinkedIn...We've all heard of them and we've all used them. In these increasingly digital days where it's easier to post a message than to pick up the phone, advertising on these white hot sites can be one of your best bets at effective advertising to millions of online users.

So how do you optimize this social networking advertising then? Great question. There are many different ways, depending on your campaign type, call to action, and target audience. To get you started, here are a few tactics:

1) Use discount or coupon codes – this is one of the most tried and true methods of multi-channel marketing measurement, and social networking campaigns are no exception.

2) Use micro-sites and redirects to identify new prospects – Micro-sites and redirects, how ever brief, offer a great opportunity to identify new prospects and begin your dialogue with them. There are many innovative examples of this marketing tactic, and even the briefest of exchanges can expose significant remarketing opportunities.

3) Leverage integrated analytics and behavorial targeting – Advanced integrations like Google Analytics offer unparalleled opportunities to deliver highly effective marketing campaigns. Look for Social Networking sites that are deploying this type of integrated solution.

At a basic level, measuring the effectiveness of social networking advertising isn’t much different from measuring other forms of online advertising. For example, let’s say you run a banner ad on MySpace that highlights a new movie you are releasing to market. You want to understand how many people click on this banner, visit your site, and ultimately convert to buy the movie. Ad tracking software can easily help you generate reports to find out where your ad was most effective and where it took a dive. Focus on the ads that work, cut or refine the ones that don’t and generally speaking, you’re set.

As a marketer, you have the opportunity to reach millions with a sense of credibility that has seldom presented itself in the history of marketing. But as a marketer, you also have an obligation to measure and optimize this new medium like never before. The potential is there, the tools are available; the question is how effectively can you take advantage of this opportunity? That is your competitive advantage and will define the winners and losers in this arena.

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