The way you target individuals on a site like Facebook matters tremendously.
Marketing to a general population, whether it’s an age demographic or
a socioeconomic line, is really nothing more than a way to prolong the
inevitable. The inevitable, in this case, being that your campaign will
under-perform.
Why? It’s because of gender targeting. No matter how many people love
to preach the “equal” line, the fact is that the genders are different
in many ways, especially in how they act on Facebook.
This means that an effective marketing campaign should treat men and
women, not as equals, but as different as Mars and Venus – with Venus
pulling preferential treatment.
By 2014, more than $6 billion will be spent annually on Facebook ads. The misconception – and a very persistent one – is that men are easier targets and make up a higher percentage of impressions.
But what this overlooks is the potential for female targeting, since
women make up the majority of overall Facebook users. It overlooks the
fact that women simply spend more.
What Makes Women the More Desirable Target
As a marketer, ask yourself a very serious question. Would you rather
have 1,000 impressions or one customer? The answer is clear; customers
count. While men are sure to click on ads and maybe follow your brand,
could it be that women become real, paying customers at a higher rate?
By and large, marketing on Facebook seems to follow one of two lines.
Men and women are either treated equally, or men are catered to
directly with women being left out of the equation. Whether this is due
to pigheadedness or sexism or just misleading numbers doesn’t really
matter. What matters, is more people are realizing that targeting women
is the more effective approach.
Take a look at the numbers, without the pseudo-intellectual spin (undoubtedly provided by male writers) to skew the information.
Women make up 58 percent of the Facebook population,
and that number is expected to separate even more as Facebook becomes
available in other parts of the world. Despite the number of women on
Facebook, only 47 percent of advertising dollars are used to target
women directly. Men being better targets is almost a self-fulfilling
prophecy, since so much is invested to market directly to them. Men
receive more ads, thus men click on more ads. It isn’t rocket science.
The reason for this is that men are cheaper to advertise to. They’re
not nearly as selective as women are. Men are click-happy in comparison,
costing $0.04 less CPM and almost $0.20 less CPC.
But behind these numbers is the cold, hard facts that any business needs to focus on.
If you only want your ads clicked on, select men. If you want to
invest the capital and specifically design material for women, you stand
to gain more than mere impressions.
Women are more trusting of brands and return more as repeat
customers. Women spend exponentially more money shopping online. Women
use Facebook more frequently and in higher numbers, which means
advertising by proxy increases dramatically when compared to men. Women
review and recommend products and services at a higher rate than men.
For the long-term success and viability of a brand, women are needed desperately. For a short-term infusion, men will do.
The Bottom Line
Not to sound trite, but the bottom line here is your bottom line. It
will cost more to operate a campaign that specifically targets women,
but what you’ll receive in return are more legitimate customers, more
repeat customers, a better brand reputation, a larger market share due
to increased exposure, and more ad efficiency due to eliminating a lot
of useless impressions.
The rub is this: As more women are targeted directly, women will
assume men’s current role, and thus women will click more and drive
rates down.
The only question is why a male-dominated world hasn’t bothered to
perform the simple math yet to reach the logical, irrefutable
conclusion.
Stanna Johnson ,Post from: SiteProNews
