Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from The eTail Blog, a source of exclusive content generated by and for the e-commerce community.
During his presentation at eTail East, Nicholas Franchet, head of global e-commerce for Facebook, noted that global e-commerce sales are expected to surpass $1.2 billion in 2013. In order for individual e-tailers to harness a share of this thriving market, it is imperative that they try to find the consumers who are right for their brand. An easy way to do this is, of course, is through Facebook.
Mr. Franchet suggests keeping the following three ideas in mind when deciding to use Facebook to increase market share:
1. Discovery: Facebook is constantly developing new tools to help brands, and the company's online stores target the audience that best suits the stores' product. The company has tools like the standard audience tool, which uses Facebook's data to position products, as well as the modeled audience tool, which uses a brand's own data to position its products. As opposed to other marketing outlets, such as TV or radio ads, the accuracy of this kind of targeting is remarkably high, he claims.
2. Seasonality (Timing): Use Facebook as a tool to position products during certain times of the year, such as holidays, which further enhances the accuracy of a brand's targeted ad.
3. Compression: With Facebook ads, brands have to be very specific about what content they want presented in the ad. Thus, they must compress the information they want to share into the most relevant combination of words in order to further target their ad.
For Mr. Franchet, a well-targeted message on Facebook, whether it is through sidebar ads or newsfeed ads, is a value-added message. Following the above tips should lead to an increased value in your message, which leads to a higher ROI.