Ad Age and Citibank have been surfacing interesting insights from their recent survey of marketer and agency sentiment about investing in Facebook. According to the study, building awareness is the top Facebook goal for marketers:
Asked to identify their primary goal in Facebook ads, 45.9% of respondents put building awareness and sentiment for their brands at the top. Driving traffic to brand websites was the second most-cited goal, with 17.6% of respondents saying it is their most important objective, followed by building fans or likes, staying in touch with customers, generating sales leads and social commerce.
Given the workflow challenges inherent in more sophisticated Facebook advertising opportunities, it makes sense that simpler awareness goals with conventional Facebook Ads would dominate these early days of social ads. However, as marketers and their agencies become more sophisticated and integrated in their approach, they’ll increasingly pursue more engagement goals and Sponsored Story tactics.
And as ROI tracking systems mature, providing greater visibility into the connection between ad investment and purchase outcome, we’ll inevitably see large brand marketers and their agencies migrate goals not only toward engagement, but also performance and transactions.
If you’d like to read more on this topic, go read my MediaPost column.
(Photo: Csutkaa)