I am becoming more and more skeptical over the use of Facebook fan pages for contractors. Not only will most people never return to your fan page after maybe liking it the first time, but they forget you even existed the second they hit the like button. Watch the video for more proof Facebook is over-rated as a marketing tool for contractors! Can’t see video, click here.
I know I have been on a couple of rants lately; Angie’s List, Service Magic’s high-jacking free listings and selling you your own leads, and Facebook.
Ah Facebook….
While most of my rants were aimed at companies that I think are doing it wrong for construction marketing, my problem with Facebook hasn’t been Facebook, it’s been the way contractors are using Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg is worth a couple billion dollars because we drive traffic to his site instead of our own (yeah, I have a fan page too).
But I didn’t know how bad it was…
Until I read a stat a week or so ago that claimed that the single most popular advertising method for local businesses online was creating a free profile on a social network. And 65.7% (to be exact) used FB to create a free page for their businesses.
Now, understand the difference, creating a FB page isn’t necessarily advertising, but when companies then pay for offline marketing that promotes a FB fan page instead of their own construction website or specific landing page, I lose my mind.
I don’t want you to believe the hype
Here is what I am asking…in fact begging you to do. Don’t promote a FB fan page in your offline marketing. Instead, send people to your own site. And if your own site isn’t converting, then let’s fix it. But stop giving someone else your traffic, who then serves your competitor’s ads against your page. It’s like having people show up at your shop or store, walk through the showroom, out the back door and into Home Depot…to learn about your business.
Does that make sense to you? Yet you are paying for exactly that when you promote your Facebook fan page offline!
Just wondering why anyone would promote their Facebook fan page in print advertising. If you can give me a good reason to send people to a site that you don’t own or control versus a targeted landing page on your own site, I will buy you your next coffee! And I will let the other readers decide in the comments below.