If you have to choose between adding a subscriber to your email list or gaining a new Facebook fan, go for email every time
As a small business, having been officially established a few months shy of a year, our focus has been clear: Build our clientele, network and make our presence known via this website, Twitter and LinkedIn. We’ve purposely stayed away from having a Facebook presence at this moment to focus on building the others. The Facebook platform is good when attempting to start conversations and engage with consumers, but is it a good fit for us at this time when we’re trying to build consumers to begin with? We’re not convinced.
That’s why we’re counting on our solid and growing database of contacts.
In fact Nate Elliot commenting on the recently released Forrester Report on Branding advised Marketers to stop making Facebook the center of their relationship Marketing efforts. What stood out for us was the statistics that show that your emails get delivered more than 90% of the time, while your Facebook posts get delivered 2% of the time. Hence we agree that “if you have to choose between adding a subscriber to your email list or gaining a new Facebook fan, go for email every time” and we have been working on this from day one.
Of course there are many valuable ways Facebook helps small businesses, but when we attend networking events persons never ask us for our Facebook page, they ask how can they keep in contact with us, and that remains the main goal of forging new relationships.
We already had a very wide database that included potential sponsors, media, vendors, public service, chambers/associations, service industries and potential clients that was gathered prior to founding Brownie Communication Concepts, and these contacts continue to grow. Direct Marketing to this list poses a far greater reach than investing time and resources in building an engaging Facebook page right now. Employing the right E-mail strategies and building relevant content is the name of the game.
Brownie Communication Concepts