I won’t get into too many details as everybody else is writing it and they’re much better than I am at it (they even get paid for it!). Quick summary, Facebook has unveiled a series of new tools and opportunities to tie websites into Facebook on a much deeper level – Check it out at TechCrunch or over here at Mashable.There are some great opportunities in here for marketers.
Top of the list, more seamless integration between websites and Facebook. Whatever makes our content easier to share is a huge win. Not only do companies and marketing departments need to capitalize on the primary impressions generated by campaigns but need to capitalize on these social graphs.
First, word of mouth is still the most trusted form of advertising, period. Creating beautiful and pretty content is great but the goal needs to be to evangelize the core audience and let them spread the tools and the content to their friends. This is how one impacts brand image and drives efficacy.
Secondly, impressions become cheaper. You already paid for the advertising campaign. You’re already paying for the eyeballs and the traffic back to your website. By integrating tools that exploit visitor’s social graphs and measure the results, one can very clearly see how a visitor saw an ad, headed to a website and shared that content with friends. By incorporating these new impressions into one’s cost analysis, one can easily see effective CPMs drop. Better, more engaging content equals lower and lower CPMs.
I don’t know who the hell you guys work with but my clients love it when I throw around lower costs for more quality impressions.