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@gerrit @TheJen @elmine Could be, but being on Fakebook is an anti-advertisement for me. I avoid such establishments, because what else do they get wrong? Lack of judgement is a general-purpose thing.

@martinvermeer @TheJen @elmine I do not judge the behavior of my customers or their customers. I evaluate the effectiveness of online marketing measures. And working without Meta, Google - or even TikTok - is regularly a mistake. What works is right. In my (data based) experience, the vast majority of businesses - whether small or large! - are not prepared to really engage with their target group and their needs.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine Yes. And if they can afford losing me as a customer, I can live with that.

@Stevenheywood @TheJen @elmine In my experience with all my clients, it is regularly smarter to play one channel really well than many moderately. Or to put it another way: how often have you requested products or services via a lousy old website? My last time was in the mid 1990s, when lousy was normal.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine
The channel you play really well should be your website and there's no excuse for some of the really shitty web sites there are out there. Content from your website is infinitely sharable across social media. The shareability or not of your social media content is at the whim of the platform holder.

@Stevenheywood @TheJen @elmine For the vast majority of customers, websites are completely irrelevant. They buy on platforms ranging from Amazon and Instagram to Temu and AliExpress. And it simply doesn't matter whether you like it or not. And no, shareability no longer solves the problem. Longer click paths are the sure way to lose prospective customers.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine
We'll just have to agree to disagree. For the life of me I can't see the advantage of losing serendipitous discovery, excluding part of your prospective market and requiring your customer base to log into a third party site to see your product.

@Stevenheywood @TheJen @elmine It simply doesn't matter what you or I think or do. The data is abundantly clear. The vast majority buy on the big platforms. They read the news on the big platforms. For them, the platforms are the Internet. And the platforms are working hard to push platform content and suppress links. The game is decided for the time being. Either you play by their (the customer’s!) rules - or you fish in very small waters.

@ravi @TheJen @elmine Focus is so incredibly important. And it simply doesn't matter what you think of meta or whatever. The only thing that matters is where the vast majority of customers feel at home. Pareto and then step on the gas.

@ojrask @TheJen @elmine That is a noble goal. And for some companies, it may even make perfect sense to turn the market upside down with ideology, vision and blatant strategic decisions (see Patagonia, for example). Unfortunately, for the vast majority of companies, this is not a viable option. Especially not for small companies that are not yet highly profitable. As a rule, business is not politics.

@HauntedOwlbear @TheJen @elmine Definitely. You have to take a very close look at where your target group really is - and where they really shop.

And it is precisely this target group focus where most companies make terrible mistakes.

Facebook/Insta are incredibly effective for local businesses, because posts and ads can be placed extremely locally.

And for sure, Facebook is the network for renters. Insta is broader. TikTok is young, but only with just under a quarter of young people.

@ainmosni @TheJen @elmine Concentrating on your customers, where they prefer to be picked up, costs resources. Using these politically and not data-based can easily lead to failure. You will never reach "all" potential customers. Finding the Pareto and focusing on the vast majority works regularly.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine

But you can use a website everywhere. It doesn't exclude the FB crowd at all. So they will still be picked up.

@ainmosni @TheJen @elmine For sure. You can have a lousy website, a lousy Facebook page, a lousy Mastodon account and many other things. Or you can establish a functioning online presence where your target group wants to be reached. This requires research and focus. No more, no less.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine Or you can have a good website and just... link people.

@ainmosni @TheJen @elmine Go for it. I’m absolutely pro effective websites. Just don't be sad if your customers prefer to buy elsewhere where they are not forced to make "another" click.

@gerrit @TheJen @elmine

Either you have an exceptionally low opinion of humans, or the dystopia has progressed further than I thought, either way, it's sad.

@ainmosni @TheJen @elmine As I said before: I don't judge my customers nor their customers. I evaluate what works and what doesn't. Data speaks the truth. Everything else may be correct, but not necessarily effective.