Facebook has been getting a heck of a lot of buzz lately as the social networking site continues to add value for brands and small business owners. Late last week they improved local ad opportunities for SMBs and just yesterday they announced a partnership with Eventbrite to help business owners monetize events advertised on the site. The combination helps to make Facebook an even more attractive marketing channel for SMBs to utilize.
If you didn’t catch yesterday’s announcement, Facebook has partnered with Eventbrite (instead of competing with it) to allow small business owners to sell tickets and/or register to events directly through their Facebook Event page. Previously, attendees were directed offsite in order to do so. Allowing the registration process to happen on Facebook itself should be a welcome improvement to both businesses and users.
Yesterday a page went up on facebook.eventbrite.com to announce the new feature. [The page has since been removed.]
Collect money for your event with Eventbrite
Eventbrite is partnering with Facebook to enable you to collect money for your event. Your attendees pay with credit card and Eventbrite collects the money on your behalf and sends you a check when your event is over. We charge a small service fee for every ticket sold. 5.5% + $.99c, which attendees pay, costing you nothing.
Eventbrite has helped event organizers around the world sell over 10 million tickets. We’re excited to help you sell your and put some delightful cash in your pocket.
The announcement offers SMB owners a great way to market new events and create visibility. To date, many small business owners have been utilizing the Facebook Events feature to spread word of mouth regarding physical events they were holding, product release dates, giveaways/contest, new promotions, etc. But there wasn’t a way to capture that attention directly on the site or to provide a compelling call to action to get people to register and hook them. Now that they can register directly from the site, even when money is exchanging hands, there is.
I really like the news of the integration because I think it helps to strengthen the Facebook marketing platform for SMBs by allowing them to tie in everything else they’re doing on the site. For example, with the new roll out SMBs can easily:
- Create a Facebook Event to market something upcoming
- Use Facebook’s highly targeted advertising platform to promote the Event to the right people.
- Use the new Eventbrite partnership to close the conversion immediately
Facebook’s allowing SMBs owners to create a perfect storm of marketing where everything is done more powerfully and in one centralized location. Facebook advertising converts exceptionally well because of how targeted and personal the ads can be. Taking that power and combining it with increased functionality is a win for everyone.
If you’re interested in getting more acquainted with Facebook as a marketing channel, I was at SMX West last week and covered a great session about Free Ways To Market On Facebook. The speakers presented some pretty great information on how to use Facebook Groups/Fan pages, what makes stories pop in your News Feed and some of the best ways to market on the site. It may be worth a read.
Facebook advertising is great and integrating with Eventbrite for ticket sales is a good move. However, does anyone else out there think that 5.5% + $0.99 for every transaction is pretty steep? Sure it pushes the cost to the buyer, but I hate it when my $29 event ends up costing me $31.59.
Wow! Thats great news! It seems like social bookmarking websites are going to be the focus of the future with small business owners growing their businesses.
facebook is a must to be a part of in my opinion, there are just som many opportunities on there.