In 2010 Facebook surpassed kingpin Google in total number of hits. Wow! But that wasn’t the biggest thing that happened this past year. The ginormous news? Facebook is abruptly shifting the tectonic plates of digital marketing.
Take Adidas’s decision to use their entire multimillion World Cup marketing budget to drive people to their Faceboook page. Not their brand website. Already, we are seeing many brand TV commercials ending with an invitation to visit the brand’s Facebook page rather than the company url. Which brings us to a question for the New Year: “Are brand websites still relevant?”
The answer: You betcha. But rather than thinking in terms of the brand site as a solitary island in the interactive sea, we need to begin seeing it for what it really is: a total ecosystem. Pete Lerma of Click Here describes it this way: “Today’s ecosystem includes the branded website, along with other platforms such as microsites, display ads, search, email, mobile and social media efforts. Each part of the ecosystem serves a specific purpose and provides its own set of unique advantages and disadvantages. Even though branded Facebook pages are growing at a rapid pace, they remain secondary for most consumers.”
A recent study reveals that people are still more than twice as likely to visit a brand’s website than its Facebook page. Face it. Not everybody is on Facebook. Of the 240 Internet users and cruisers in this country, only about half of them have a Facebook page. That’s why the corporate site is still getting more traffic than the corporate Facebook page.
But, as always, the digital landscape is dynamic. Sea changes are constantly happening and a good marketer has to constantly watch the trends and re-evaluate his digital strategy. After all, not all fears are irrational.
