What was once a personal profile site now has businesses flocking to it to connect with their market, writes Karlin Lillington

SO, FACEBOOK surpassed Google in webpage popularity this year (well, excluding Google-owned sites such as YouTube, that is). That revelation made headlines – although the fact that Google generates six times as much revenue per user as Facebook, according to Businessinsider.com, $24 versus $4, made fewer.

Analysts expect that to change, though, not least because businesses are increasingly flocking to Facebook and e-commerce generated within Facebook – where buyers can click and buy, often without even leaving the Facebook site – is in its infancy but growing.

Communications consultant Caroline Stephens, for many years the European press relations manager for consumer business in Dell Ireland, specialises in advising small businesses. She says the first thing she ask clients is whether they have a Facebook page.

“I’m saying to them, you have to be there as part of an integrated marketing strategy,” she says. “Your customers are there, so that’s where you need to be.”

Where marketing once was about talking at consumers, it’s now about talking with consumers, she says. In addition, word-of-mouth recommendations are always especially valued. Facebook enables users to click on a “Like” button to indicate an appreciation for anything from an individual observation to a company or service.

Digital consultant Barry Sweeney, who develops the online strategy for Irish sports retailer Elvery’s, believes the advent of the “Like” button last year was the turning point for the business perception of Facebook.

Until that point, Facebook was seen more as a personal profile site than a business tool. However the button has proved a powerful way for businesses to connect with consumers. Not only does it create a vast web of personal recommendations of the things users like, but it also helps businesses use Facebook to target ads at precise niche markets, using “likes” as the basis for finding a particular demographic.

“Facebook puts the brand out there in a really significant way,” says Sweeney.

Although the Elvery’s Facebook page was only set up in September, the company now has more fans on Facebook than it has on its e-mail list.

The company is among the Irish pioneers in what is being called “f-commerce” – Facebook-based e-commerce. Large multinationals such as Procter Gamble and Delta have already tested the waters, selling items and tickets directly through their Facebook sites.

Elvery’s is using an e-commerce engine developed by Irish company Owjo.

“We tested lots of different engines but Owjo was one of the best. It’s completely in-platform on Facebook, you don’t have to go out to PayPal or credit card processing site to purchase something.”

Although initial sales are small – one or two dozen sales a week – he expects these to increase as consumers become more familiar and trusting of sales done directly through Facebook. The company will be trying out special offers and promotions on their page, he says.

F-commerce is almost certainly going to be essential to generating revenue streams by – and for – Facebook, says Dr Theo Lynn, director of Dublin City University’s leadership, innovation and knowledge research centre. For businesses, Facebook was initially “all about brand awareness and attitudinal change”, Lynn says, “but now, it’s going to be about purchasing.”

Facebook’s business attraction is primarily for business-to-consumer companies, not for business-to-business, he notes.

“It offers a very good business-to-consumer marketing opportunity. You can target consumers directly. In contrast, using Adwords on Google is like putting up a billboard and hoping they’ll come.”

On the other hand, businesses are the primary market for Irish company – and Facebook user – Kidspotter, which provides trackable GPS child safety bracelets for children visiting amusement parks.

“Over the last six months to a year, we realised Facebook was a tool that could actually help us,” says Kidspotter director Liam Darling. “Our customer or client is the theme park, but the user is mum or dad and the child. We never really had a way of connecting with the end-user.”

After the company received a tranche of funding from Enterprise Ireland and angel investors in mid-2010, “we did a redesign of our website and realised we also have to use Facebook”, so it began to develop a strategy.

Its Facebook page was launched just before Christmas and it hopes gradually to develop and interact with a community of users – the families who use the bracelets to make sure that they can find a lost child if needed.

They are also planning targeted advertising campaigns.

“Facebook gives you a great ability to do very focused campaigns,” Darling says. “You can pick a target audience of parents in a given region near a theme park that have ‘liked’ a particular product or TV show that indicates they have small children.”

Caroline Stephens rattles off a list of business advantages to using Facebook: raising brand awareness; developing customer relationships; doing easy customer research; tracking what rivals are doing.

She points to companies such as Ben Jerry’s ice cream or Timberland as adept users of Facebook, helping to create a personality for their companies and hold direct conversations with consumers.

That directness can be frightening for a company. Kidspotter director Darling says some people initially warned him that people might post negative things about the company to its page, “but that also gives us an opportunity to respond and, if there is an issue, to show that we can manage and resolve it. That’s a positive selling point.”

However, DCU’s Lynn cautions that while businesses might be ready for Facebook, Facebook may not quite be ready for businesses.

“Facebook is at an early stage of its conception of what its relationship is with businesses, and whether it should prioritise their audience or their customers. It needs to make sure it maintains its trust with its audience.”

Facebook has already faced criticism over its approach to the privacy of its users’ data – the very information that can help shape those targeted ad campaigns highly valued by businesses.

A common misperception is that Facebook’s end-users are the individuals who set up profiles, when they are actually the companies that would like to target and market to those individuals, Lynn says.

Using Facebook also can be a more confusing prospect for businesses used to managing controlled advertising campaigns on sites like Google or Bing, where the content of the advertisement is predetermined and the viewers can’t answer back.

“In that sense, as a business, there’s an ambiguity about my relationship with Facebook,” Lynn says.

However nearly half the internet’s entire global population visited the site in 2009, and users now number more than 500 million. That’s an irresistible marketing demographic for businesses, which are likely to work out ways to use Facebook sooner rather than later.