Despite all the hype you may have heard about marketing on Facebook, a new study from Forrester Research reports that having an ecommerce presence on Facebook isn’t very effective at acquiring and retaining customers compared with email and paid search. These findings are in line with a WSJ article in June that reported that early adopters of shopping carts on Facebook had only modest results.
My own experience does back that up. I did some testing using Facebook ads – some to affiliate offers and some to my own products. I racked up a pretty big advertising spend quickly and I was able to capture some emails but not a single buyer. What is interesting, is that the pages I sent people to all had coversion rates of 3-5% conversion rates with SEM and PPC with Google and MSN Adcenter.
Forrester’s study found that Facebook just isn’t a hot spot for shopping. Most people log onto the social network to — as you may have guessed– socialize! Despite Facebook’s enormous user base, Forrester concluded that the social media giant may not be poised to become a major ecommerce player.
If you have a success story advertising on Facebook, I want to hear it! Chat back.
