Are Your Facebook adverts Getting It Totally Wrong?

Sky would like to sell me broadband. I know that because I clicked on this ad on my Facebook timeline and arrived at a Sky Broadband landing page.

Here’s the thing, though. Were it not for the fact that I wanted to discuss it, I would never have clicked on that ad… even if I did need broadband. Why? Well, there’s two reasons:

1) Why the unbranded anonymity? Sky are a highly reputable provider, but disguising who’s doing the advertising makes me think I’m being sold broadband by Acme Internet Inc.

2) There’s no such thing as free. I know that. You know that. And Sky know that. And yet marketeers keep insisting on using this ‘free’ message – a message that’s so tiresomely familiar, it can only ever devalue the product they’re trying to sell.

Wouldn’t it have been music more intriguing if Sky had run something like this?

This is basic human psychology. If someone is giving something away, you can’t help but question its value. But, if someone asks you to earn the same reward – and the harder you work, the better that reward gets? Well, that sounds infinitely more enticing. Plus, Sky would be offering me the chance to join forces with my friends to achieve this? That actually sounds like fun!

In this day and age, if you’re plastering social media with old-fashioned advertising messages then you are definitely DOING IT WRONG. We’ve been told time and time again that Facebook isn’t for shopping, it’s for socialising – so you need to make your marketing messages social, too. You need to make selling social. You can’t do that by shouting “free! free! free!” but you can do it by shouting “participate! participate! participate!”

Or, to paraphrase the late, great Frank Carson: it’s the way you sell ‘em.