Seems like just yesterday that Facebook was dominated by adolescents, high schoolers and college students.
Facebook now has 500 million members, with more than 141 million in the U.S., making it the fourth-highest-ranked Web property behind Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Within those numbers are some surprising growth trends and astute marketers are taking note.
- The growth in high school and college students has slowed.
- Adults between 35-54 increased to more than 20 million.
- The largest percentage growth increase is in the 55-plus age group, which now numbers more than 6 million.
In general, the audience is becoming more reflective of the overall population. The split between men and women, skews female 55% to 45% male. But in the older segments, from age 35 and up, it skews closer to 65% female to 35% male.
As a result, many businesses are launching a Facebook page and experimenting with ads that appear on the right of the screen when a user logs in. These ads include a logo and a short message that links to your site or a specially designed landing page. You can choose to pay for clicks, or impressions and real-time monitoring gives immediate feedback to gauge results and make changes.
Although health-related businesses seem slower to try social media marketing, the opportunities are compelling when they are compared to the relative efficiency of reaching precisely targeted people in your own zip codes. In addition to locale, messages can be targeted by age, gender, interests and even birthdays.
Medical practices, hospitals and other businesses could promote screenings for breast, prostate, colorectal cancers, bone density, heart attacks and strokes. For the new wave of laser and cosmetic procedures, it is equally promising.
In the past six months, AVOW Communications has launched three business campaigns using social media, including Facebook, Linked In and Twitter, while continuing paid search programs using Google.
A good way to get started is to set up your own account on Facebook and begin to explore. If you've already done this and would like more ideas,
email me.