There is no question about how hot Facebook really is, with 500 million users to date, it's hot-hot-hot. But what does that means to marketers and business owners alike?
Here are three studies that help marketers understand Facebook a little more and if it's worth the effort to even invest time, money and energy on Facebook. The studies touch on how much time Facebook users are on the platform, whether advertising on Facebook is really a good idea and the trends among online merchants using Facebook.
Study One: One-Third of Time Spent Online is Spent On Facebook
According to recent marketing study by Morpace as reported by eMarketer.com, US Facebook users spent at least 1 min on Facebook out of every 3 mins online. Users between 18 - 34 spent the most time online per week and users 55 years old and above spend an average of 4.5 hours on Facebook a week.
The study also explore the Facebook activities by ethnicity. Asian are among the heaviest users on Facebook (39%), while African American are the second heaviest users at 35.1%.
In one of the interesting findings on Facebook that businesses and marketers should take note of is that Facebook users making at least $100,000 a year spent the most time on Facebook and on the web at a whole.
Study Two: Facebook Ads Is Effective on Users Profile
Do you spend time looking at ads on Facebook? Well, most Facebook users do look at ads but they only do that on their profile page. The study by Mulley Communications found that 71% of Facebook users look at ads on their profile page while only 31% of them look at ads on the news feed page. One of the major reason for that is because 53% of the users pay most of the attention on their news feeds rather than ads.
Study Three: Online Businesses Love 'Like'
As you may have seen over the last year or so, many businesses are creating Facebook pages to brand themselves. Website conversion company SeeWhy found that 35% of online businesses have implemented the 'like' button on their website while 33% of them plan to do so in the near future.
The second most popular plugin was the login plugin. It basically allows users to skip the registration site and login to Facebook directly from the merchant site, making conversion simple and quick. 18% of the merchants have reportedly implemented the login plugin while 15% said that they will do so in the near future.
Facebook social plugins have gained a lot of attention recently because they can drive traffic from Facebook back to the mechant site without having to build an entire ecommerce site on Facebook. Although 26% of them said that they would build ecommerce plugin on Facebook, about 67% suggest that they would rather use Facebook to drive traffic back to their own site.
In addition, about 44% said that they would use Facebook application to replace microsite for launches and other specific promotions.
If you are a small business or a marketer, we want to know how do you use Facebook for your marketing. Please feel free to share with us through the comment box below.
