Advertising on Facebook ! Something for your business ?

Another recent study by Nielsen, this time in collaboration with Facebook, concludes that Facebook ads “show a marked increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when home-page ads on the social network mention friends of users who’ve become fans of the brand in the ad.” This in the midst of Facebook’s move from the “Become a Fan” button to the “Like” button for users to join Fan Pages.

This is great, particularly if you’re a start up and would like to create brand awareness and recall.

There are advantages to advertising in Facebook. Because of the richness of its database, you can target your ads to your market or chosen demographic. You can target by location (from country down to city), age, birthday, sex, keywords, education, workplace, relationship, interests, language, and connections. Furthermore, you will also be provided analytics to help you track your ad performance.

Makes sense, right? But is it for you?

If you’re looking to sell right away and sell directly through ads, then maybe Facebook isn’t for you. Social media marketing is about relationship marketing. It’s about creating meaningful connections. People in social media networking sites get turned off when advertisers “connect” with them only because they want to sell something and make money off of them.

Traditional advertising doesn’t work in Facebook. It isn’t about making a quick buck—it’s about being genuinely interested in what your market has to say about you and to you. This admittedly takes a bit of time, so you may need to wait before you make a sale off of Facebook.

Is this a bad thing? If you think it is, then you probably still don’t get how social media works.

The returns from Facebook advertising may take some time to kick in, but the potential for a long-term relationship with your clients outweigh this. This is how social media marketing works—it takes time but it builds relationships. Don’t you think that this is far better than chasing pavements for a one-time quick sale?