If your company wants to have a nicely-designed custom landing tab for non-fans on Facebook, you’ll now need at least 10,000 fans or be working with an advertising account manager (you’ve got a large ad budget).
Facebook used to offer businesses the option to custom-design a tab especially for non-fans. As the page administrator, you had the option to show non-fans the Wall or the custom tab. Many businesses used a custom tab for promotions or to invite people to become fans.
To see an example of a custom Facebook tab, click over to REI’s Facebook page. If you’re not already a fan, you’ll notice that rather than going to the Wall, you go directly to a custom-designed tab.
Rather than leveling the playing field by letting small or local businesses have the same options as large companies, Facebook has made the decision to force small businesses to spend lots of money on ads to have the option of a custom-designed landing tab.
Read more at the AllFacebook.com blog.
Will this affect your company’s Facebook marketing strategy? Leave a comment and tell us how.
May 19th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Busse says:
Aside from this not making it a level playing feel for smaller businesses and organizations, it seem self-defeating to me:
Building up a Fan Page can be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Unless you have a critical mass of Fans, there may not be much discussion on the Wall other than the posts from Page admins. Having a nice custom landing page will help convert visitors to Fans, and thus create a greater likelihood of true engagement on the Wall.
It’s also very hard to actually get a callback from an account representative for anyone who does want to work directly with Facebook. I have a feeling this is just going to lead to more frustration.
With the newer Connect and Graph API functions, it may make sense for smaller organizations to lead with their own website or blog, connected via the Social API with a Like Box, Like buttons, etc to work to build their Fan Page rather than trying to drive people directly to the Fan Page as a general practice.
May 19th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Rick Whittington says:
Chris, you make a great point that this change may in fact stop small companies to stop driving traffic directly to their Facebook Fan pages.
Thanks for the comment!
May 20th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Andrew says:
Good points, Rick and Chris. It does remove some incentive for smaller organizations to try to build the critical mass of fans.
Keep reading in the official announcement and you’ll see this:
At least advertisers still have a way to decide where to drop their traffic but it a) does not distinguish between existing fans and non-fans and b) still requires investing in ads.
Let’s hope this doesn’t mean FB is gearing up to favor big brand advertisers while de-prioritizing the legitimate smaller businesses.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Tweets that mention Facebook deals big blow to small businesses | Rick Whittington Consulting -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rick Whittington and Tonja Deegan, Andrew Miller. Andrew Miller said: Facebook deals big blow to small businesses http://bit.ly/ctdgc1 (via @rickwhittington) [...]
May 20th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Shannon says:
It seems that Facebook went back on its new policy already? We work with many small businesses, and as of this morning, they’re able to make a custom tab the default landing page again. Temporary fix? Or is Facebook responding to complaints that it is alienating small business?
May 20th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Rick Whittington says:
Shannon,
As of the writing of the blog post, I was only able to set the landing page for non-fans as the wall or the info page. As of right now, however, the capability to set a custom landing page is back. I wonder if this is temporary?