Letters: Beware Facebook’s delight
[Re: Facebook delivers good Q3 but expects Q4 to be below estimates, October 26]
One fascinating stat from this week’s Facebook earnings was the 22 per cent jump in the average price paid per ad on the platform.
This will undoubtedly delight the social giant’s shareholders but should worry the thousands of brand advertisers reliant on Facebook since they need to either swallow higher costs or serve fewer ads. Neither is likely to go down well at a time when many brands are still fighting to recover from the pandemic.
Another option is to refocus their Facebook spend. Ironically, this means leveraging the platform in the way it was originally intended – using Facebook’s vast scale to acquire new customers, rather than to retain existing ones.
Many brands currently spend millions on Facebook to communicate with their customers. This is because many don’t have effective customer engagement strategies in place, and so miss opportunities to talk to their customers on their own channels.
Customer engagement could start with something as simple as a welcome email campaign, or involve a tailored onboarding journey that utilises user data to deliver a unique, personalised experience.
With ad costs on the rise, not to mention impending privacy regulations, it’s never been more important for brands to wrestle back control of their customer relationships and take control of first-party data.
James Manderson