Targetting “fans”

It’s not news that social media is big business at the moment, and rightly so, because it’s a game changer. Consider this: if I am interested in raising awareness of my product with the type of person who barracks for Melbourne Football Club I could take the traditional route and become a club sponsor. Big bucks and a low level transparency on the impact.

Alternatively for say 1% of the price I could run a campaign on Facebook, targeting people whos profile includes being a fan of the Melbourne Football Club. And with Facebook I know exactly how many times my advertisement has been viewed.

A quick look on Facebook shows the following fan bases for Australian Rules Football Clubs. These are people I can touch without having to pay a premium to the AFL or the club.

* Note the number of fans changes everyday, plus in some cases there is more than one fan group. In that case I have taken the higher number.

The same type of thing is also happening in other sports such as motor racing, cricket, rugby and soccer.

Social media platforms such as Facebook also allow you to be dynamic, trialling dozen of messages per day to optimise click through rates.

By the way, if I ran a business that made its dollars raising sponsorship funds, or was highly dependent on sponsorship for revenue, I would be very concerned about now.

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Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.