According to Cnet.com, Stephen Haines, commercial director of Facebook’s U.K. operation, says companies using Facebook interact with their customers so much more than their own websites that eventually people will not need websites.
Speaking at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising conference in London, “Haines showed statistics comparing how many times Facebook users have clicked a company’s “like” button with how many times per month people visited that company’s Web site.”
“For Starbucks, a top Facebook advertiser, the ratio was 21.1 million likes to 1.8 million site visitors. For Coca-Cola, it’s 20.5 million compared with 270,000; for Oreo, 10.1 million compared with 290,000; and for Dr. Pepper, it’s 4.1 million compared with 325,000.
Cnet says:
“His idea isn’t totally outrageous.”
“After all, plenty of individuals and companies rely on existing online services rather than building everything from scratch. At the individual level, tools such as Google’s Blogger or Yahoo’s Flickr are easier to set up than a custom-built blog or photo-sharing site. Facebook interactions let companies tap into a wealth of customer information and a communication channel, and there’s no need to coax a user to set up yet another username and password.”
“Facebook has a variety of tools available to marketers:”
“Ways to offer free samples to customers, something ketchup maker Heinz has used.”
“The ability to attract the attention of smartphone users making local check-ins.”
“Clothing retailer The Gap gave away 10,000 pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 customers to use the Facebook local check-in service, and Mazda sold 100 cars–exceeding expectations–with a 20-percent-off offer at five U.K. auto dealerships, Haines said.”
“The ability to build e-commerce sites into Facebook pages. Max Factor didn’t want to lose visitors to its Facebook page to another site when customers were ready to buy something, so a partnership with Amazon lets the customers buy products without leaving.”
“Reach block” ads that change as many as five times in a 24-hour period to send a sequence of ad messages to Facebook users.
“Surveys that let companies try to engage customers in company decisions. Vitamin water used voting, among other mechanisms, to generate 1.3 million connections”.
“Applications built atop Facebook’s interface that let companies create custom-made interactive programs.”
Of course an executive of Facebook saying that at the end of the day Facebook will win and sites will lose is not unexpected, but there is a sentiment that this will actually happen and while you can argue with the conclusions in the story, you certainly can’t argue with the fact that a lot of companies are now putting faceboook.com/brand in their advertising instead of their websites’ URL.
Dan says
Hi,
For those that did not know…this was a pretty significant move:
“J.C. Penney has became the first major retailer to move its entire online inventory to Facebook, allowing shoppers to not only view its products but also purchase them from within the social media site.
JC Penney, with some 250,000 products for sale on Facebook now, is the most ambitious social sales endeavor to date.”
___
December article continues at:
http://www.marketingvox.com/jc-penney-advances-social-sales-model-3-tips-for-companies-that-want-to-follow-suit-048309/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mv&utm_medium=textlink
____
Best,
Dan
Me says
AOL tried that long time ago, remember the AOL keywords? The problem is that cocacola.com is owned by Coca Cola, Facebook.com/cocacola isn’t.
Landon White says
FOR NOW!
Come on, your talking about a Global Fascist Village!
(sure the major Brands are, corporate whores are
tapping in to the Traffic and, as soon as someone
else has more they are GONE)
Required Facebook pages on your (DL data base) license
IRS access to that page as your taxes are done
auto on a flat rate, and all your Banking Info
and other needs will be right there, parking tickets
zapped out of your account, employers will rate
pages, law enforcement will monitor your movement via
Facebook/Phone mobile, Crimes.Judgments, Social,
Medical Records all there, and much more
I guess Fascist tools need to be destroyed then, NO?
LS Morgan says
Internet Circa 2021 will look a good bit different from the internet of 2011, just as the internet of 2001 looked a good bit different from the internet of today. Things can, do and will change. There will always be a need for domains but the domaining model people have employed for a long time may get seriously disrupted and it won’t take much to do it.
Two guys are trying to sell their own unique brand of furniture polish.
One spends his $50,000 marketing budget on a shrewd SMO blitz and gets 15,000 targeted facebook followers commingled with his website built on a $8 domain, GreatFurniturePolish.com. An ancillary benefit of this is that they’re all chatting about his furniture polish, which is where SMO morphs into SEO.
The other guy spends that $50,000 to buy FurniturePolish.com. It gets 25 type-ins per day. It’s all uphill from here.
Between them, who has a better capacity to command of his internet destiny, in terms of cultivating and marketing to his customer base? Who spent his money more wisely?
Joe Cool says
This story makes me laugh… all i can say is to all the people that use face book is http://www.EATyourFACE.com
Landon White says
@ LS Morgan
Who spent his money more wisely?
———————————————
The Guy who bought FurniturePolish.com..(da)
HE ALWAYS WILL COMMAND “TOP” DOLLAR
FOR HIS DOMAIN … (Top aftermarket value if he don’t fall for BS
Broker talk like yours)
————————————
Besides being way ofF the Facebook Topic ….
Wheres all this BULLSHIT about STICKING things like …
-Yo Mamas- ApplePie.com … AND “Fresh” AND “Tasty”
in front of a …….GreatDomain.com
THIS SOUNDS LIKE BROKER BULLSHIT “LS MORGAN”
JUST ANOTHER “HEAD GAME STORY” TO DEVALUE
PREMIUM .Com Domains
[[[[[[ Brokers should stick there ANTI-DOMAINER stories up there A** ]]]]
Michael Marcovici says
1) easy to outnumber visitors with likes, I have liked about 300 sites, honestly never ever returned to any of them.
2) I am running lots of websites since years, I dont feel any impact of Facebook, maybe a littel more traffic then before, given the fact that 500 mio people are on FB by now, I should feel an impact.
3) I have a FB community (for one of my sites) with 34K fans, honestly, very little marketing value… definitely much less then sending 34K email newsletters. I guess FB works in many niches, but in many not.
PS: I know what it means to make it big on another companies plattform, in my case eBay, I became biggest seller worldwide while it was still fun to sell on ebay, then I learned the hard way what it means if someone else sets the rules for your business…
friend says
Nobody clicks “like” and converts into a sale. which really means, websites aren’t going anywhere.
Joe says
I have already had enough of Facebook! It got well beyond its original purpose.
LS Morgan says
Uh, hello?
A “like” isn’t a “sale” no more than an emailed newsletter is a “sale”, however, it does get your message/pitch on their wall which they will see… There is no “delete without opening” in that medium, either. To argue against the value of this sort of communication would be to argue against the value of commercial digital communication in general.
Websites aren’t going anywhere, but the ability of the socials to drive targeted traffic to them is a totally real thing, not to mention whatever FB evolves into once the store apps (better than Softprice) get ramped up. Some old-school domainers had better get their heads out of their ass on this, accept it isn’t 1999 anymore and the internet didn’t turn into quite what they had hoped.
where I can find the links of the most important neon lights' manufacturers of the world? says
many Likes on a FB don’t mean have many visits nor many sales
LS Morgan says
softprice > sortprice
reehasmith@ louis vuitton replica handbags says
yes i agree facebook really got enough tools for marketers ..i also using many from that
Josh says
Ironic really… with this website address we will build a business model out to eliminate the need for people to vist web addresses.
Apart from that before changing the mind set of the world and changing the course of the internet its good to prove to be more than a fad.
page howe says
so a facebook employee self reports the number of likes, and induces company’s to join its controlled netspace, with uncertain future rules, costs, sharing of customer data (and the liability for data breaches), and control………….sounds like Time Warner MAINSTREET, compuserve and especially AOL keywords…
to fulfill the AOL demise, facebook will now degrade its user experience in the midst of a money gourging period of success and wake up one day and wonder where its market power disappeared to…
but were up against the same old nobody will get fired for doing a deal with facebook (used to be IBM)….
page howe
dmpartners says
The Like BS is already old. Never going to happen when the 3D Internet hits,
Sorry Facebook, I no like you
Tim Davids says
agree Page…the whole game changes the day facebook goes public and shareholders expect the company to somehow grow “profits” by double digits per year…wonder how they’ll do that 🙂
Tim Davids says
also the yelp/google fight for yelps data is a great example of being held hostage.
BFitz says
@LS Morgan
You are dead on. It is the difference between understanding business and relying on GAKT for some sort of perceived value. Understanding real ROI and how to actually generate a cash producing business online is 25% domain name.
However, once the business is established, the guy comes back and buys FurniturePolish.com for $75K. (ala Rick Schwartz)
The stats come from businesses who don’t have a horse in the game. Coke has Coke.com. This is a weather report, accept it and prepare accordingly for your journey.
where I can find the links of the most important neon lights' manufacturers of the world? says
consider that 99% of Facebook users put lots of Likes on hundreds FB pages but often never visit again that pages, or just do it rarely
John says
Besides the obvious downfalls of building most/entire business on Facebook, here’s two big pitfalls :
1. If a company is using FB as their main advertising vehicle, branding of the product/service loses it’s efficacy, and therefore it’s branding efforts, therefore it’s counterintuitive to brand management.
2. If, let’s say, 70% of companies were to use FB instead of websites, then it would make a perfect terrorist, or just hacker target, to take down 70% of the Internet economy. Talk about a HUGE vulnerability. If companies did not have a contingency plan to deal with this, such as a developed website, then they’d be screwed. Just like when the terrorists hit the World Trade towers, many of those financial institutions had separate buildings elsewhere where they housed data and other important elements that allowed the to get back up and running. It may have seemed mundane and useless to spend so much money on these other buildings and servers for years and years…..that is until 911 hit. Then they looked like the smartest mo-fos around. 🙂
Lastly, I can personally take solace in the fact that if websites become useless than so does SEO and all SEO folks will disappear. I come to dislike most of them as much as I do lawyers. Glad to see them die off. 🙂
.
where I can find the links of the most important neon lights' manufacturers of the world? says
“… the obvious downfalls …”
and RISKS
if (e.g.) Facebook decides to DELETE your page!
Michael Marcovici says
@John
Even if all but one Website – Facebook will die – SEO will remain as it happens on Facebook too.
Jeff Schneider says
Hello Mike,
The War Starts!
Yes, The key to online Branding is your .com Business Address. Madison Avenue continually gets it wrong when dealing with Online Branding.The very fact that they are pushing clients to use Facebook and others, is a telling sign of future obsolescence of Social Networks as Advertising Mediums. To be truly successful, companies need to consider their own Internally grown Marketing Strategy Teams, for real success into the future.
Madison Avenue, has lost total control over Online Branding. Most savvy Business Owners are slowly waking up to the fact that their .com , Business Addresses and the Branding Power they have worked hard to nurture, are sytematically being destroyed by Social sites.
Wnen you hook up with Twitter, Facebook and fully dilute your Branding power by falling pray to Madison Avenues Siren Like calls to Wisely migrate your powerful Brand with theirs, it is tantamount to Advertising suicide.
Obsolescence of Social Sites as Advertising Medium, GURANTEED !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Gazzip says
“2. If, let’s say, 70% of companies were to use FB instead of websites, then it would make a perfect terrorist, or just hacker target, to take down 70% of the Internet economy”
All good points John, it would be the hight of stupidity to put that control/faith in someone elses hands.
“…..that eventually people will not need websites.”
Yeah, Good luck with that one if you’re daft enough to beleive that, Grandma says never keep all your eggs in one basket 😉
FREE > Popular > Fad > Facebook > Goldmand Sachs > 70 Billion Valuation > Pump&Dump > Wallstreet > Greed > Crash = POP!
…NEXT !
SDM says
600 million+ friends. There is no precedent. There is no benchmark. It’s all part of a great online social experiment. At one time, nightclubs represented one of the most popular ways people interacted on a social basis. However, few clubs remained at the peak of popularity for an extended period of time. Sooner or later, a cooler, hipper social gathering hot spot would open its doors, and the club hopping crowd would hop.
What have we learned over the past eleven or twelve years about social hot spots on the Internet? Where is AOL today? Where is Yahoo? Where is MySpace? Clearly, it will be years before the true, long term impact and staying power of Facebook is known.
In the meantime, domainers continue to sit on top of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of parked and undeveloped domain properties.
In the fight for digital dominance, parked, undeveloped, underdeveloped and unpublished domain names are like shovels. You can dig a foundation and begin development of virtual real estate that will offer site visitors relevant, interactive engaging content – or you can maintain the status quo and dig a domain grave site.
Make no mistake, beyond the great social experiment being played out for control of the Internet surfing masses, domainers have the ability to influence the final outcome. But when the strategy for digital dominance is framed as Facebook vs. digital graveyards, Facebook wins.
Landon White says
ALERT: New Experts Aboard!
–
ALL the (self proclaimed above posts) Ex .Co Experts…
(supporting each others naive postings (ramblings)
have now Switched over to being “Facebook Experts” … lol
–
ALL the FAKERS (Mental Masterbator’s)
who ………”Don’t Own Any Valuable Domains” … ….
and never HAVE had any success online will NOW…
PREDICT THE FUTURE AS THEY DID WITH .Co ……lol (He,Ha) lol
–
Any [REAL] …….. “Experienced Domainer” will tell you …
DON’T BUILD SOMEONE ELSE’S WEBSITE TRAFFIC”
DON’T BUILD SOMEONE ELSE’S WEBSITE’S NAME”
And
_
DON’T ” LISTEN TO KIDDIE NEWBIE POSTERS”
yeah you, Mamas Boy! LOL
—
FOOTNOTE: Stepchild Fakers ramble on, and on and on
no one of note listens to your naive dumbness,
except maybe your mother!
Landon White says
@ Gazzip
I thought you were at the Door Checking ID on all these Wet Nurse,
Newbies who are no longer .Co Experts … but NOW!!
Facebook Marketing Experts 🙂
–
(lol,lol, My sides are hurting!)
Doc says
Are you kidding me.
There is NOT ONE corporate giant who would give up control if say Facebook wanted to utilize its traffic in a different way, or even if many of the people on their site were compromised, and thats just one issue.Small business will NEVER utilize facebook because thats a joke to them and their medium size business, people are NOT going to go through facebook to find a manufacturer of products or maybe a lawnmower shop they need. Get serious. Websites will be here forever because all businesses are NOT giant corporate people.
DC
Domain Report says
So if a company closes their website and moves it all onto Facebook, how do they reach the people that aren’t on Facebook, or don’t want to use FB?
If a company can make more sales using FB then go for it, but it is just another tool, not the end-all be-all.
dan eos says
Really? If one was reading recent WSJ and NYT Advertising columns – one might see that recently some very savvy marketers have decided that they were not comfy with Apple (ipad) and Facebook interspersing themselves between them and their customers – saw online story today that said FB ‘like’ click by viewer on a companies’ website gave permission (without viewer being fully informed!) that FB now was going to provide that viewers FB info to the company – thereby opening up a viewer to unlimited – fully targeted marketing from that company.
Just wait till consumers find out that they shared their most personal info with Fortune 1000 marketer par excellence; who will now target them with advertising based on their most intimate info…..cant wait till one’s child or spouse views an ad for an item, that perhaps the viewer did not care to have child or spouse know about (think sex aids, certain supplements, certain insurance policies, etc)
Facebook’s shameless exploitation of their user’s private info – will, in time cause many to switch to alternative sites that respect a user more. Time will tell.
John says
@ Domain Report….LOL…..so true. That is so freakin’ obvious, but I did not think of it. That little notion slipped my mind.
I’ve never had a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, Geocities, Tripod, page, other than to just familiarize myself with the new technologies or ventures, then I never visit again.
I’d never have any of these. Why even have to explain the obvious for not having them…..sigh. Too many followers and not enough independent thinkers in this world. 🙁
LS Morgan says
There is NOT ONE corporate giant who would give up control if say Facebook wanted to utilize its traffic in a different way, or even if many of the people on their site were compromised, and thats just one issue.Small business will NEVER utilize facebook because thats a joke to them and their medium size business, people are NOT going to go through facebook to find a manufacturer of products or maybe a lawnmower shop they need. Get serious. Websites will be here forever because all businesses are NOT giant corporate people.
———
I agree that it’s pretty damn unlikely that dedicated, stand-alone websites will ever ‘go away’, but a lot of what you suggest is just flat out wrong.
SMEs won’t utilize social networking? Newsflash:
The smart ones already are and in full force. It gives a lot of them significantly more bang for their buck than the same amount of money spent on an adsense campaign. It isn’t even a question of will they or won’t they. It’s simply a matter of “are they already” and if not, when, and once they do, how much. In this regard, it’s like internet in 1998. You may not understand this now, but eventually, you will.
As far as people going to facebook to find products, I distinctly recall certain people saying the very same thing once Amazon started to aggressively generalize their product line. Matter of fact, I distinctly recall a particular conversation on an old forum- when Amazon shares were in the shitter- where Bezos was derided by stone-age ‘domainers’ (including one who regularly blogs today) for “not getting it” by using Amazon.com when he really should’ve been using Books.com. Now that Amazon sells every product under the sun and we reflect on that discussion with the benefit of hindsight, just who was it that ‘didn’t get it’? Bezos and his multi-billion dollar company or the domainers with their undeveloped domain names and domainer-logic?
And for crying out loud, could they have possibly “not gotten it” any worse?
And we fast-forward a decade to now and these very same people are talking the very same book that is even less accurate today than it was when they were wrong about it over ten years ago!
Social networking is a disruptive force in marketing and eCommerce. Embrace it, ignore it, hate it, love it, it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.
Landon White says
@ Morgan
it’s like internet in 1998. You may not understand this now, but eventually, you will.
—–
In 1998 you were still on Mamas knee!
WHAT A FAKER! lol
LS Morgan says
God… Your name just HAD to be Landon.
Jeff Schneider says
Hello Mike,
If you want to be a Marginal Player we highly suggest you take Madison Avenues failed attempt to be relevant by using facebook. Sooner or later each companies identities and Branding Power will be so Homogenized that they and their products and services will become totally irrelevant.
Your Online Presence should be your Marketing Epiceter of Total Marketing Strategy Control. NOT a signal to the whole world that you actually have no Marketing Strategy other than piggy backing into mediocrity.
Remember that when you Piggy Back your brand with another companies your fortunes are tied to theirs. Facebook and others have already violated TRUST issues and once this happens the dominoes that follow will crush consumers faith in your company.
So do you want to be a Major Player or a Homogenized Slurpy ? ready to be consumed by your real competitor Facebook.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Mike says
Well then I guess I wont be interacting with anyone because I flat out refuse to register for and waste my time on Facebook…………. or myspace or twitter or whatever the lastest fad social (it really isnt) networking TIME SINK is.
Jeff Schneider says
Hello Mike B. ,
@Mike Lets just say that Facebook and others are perfectly suited for Marketing Obsolescence, and are great wastes of time.
If you are a business owner you cannot afford to waste your time with a self defeating business strategy, where you enter their friendly, cozy, little Web of control. Just be aware when it is lunch time you the Business Owner, will be their next meal.
Just a friendly thought of warning. Otherwise knock yourself out of the Business Game, it is up to you.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)