PPC Resellers, Listen: Online Retailers Rate Facebook as Best Advertising Platform

Pay per click advertising reseller agencies should be looking at Facebook ads as a new service for their clients. Why? Just take a look at this freshly published study on how over 800 retailers are using social commerce to improve the shopping experience. According to social discovery platform 8th Bridge, the biggest online retailers prefer Facebook as a choice of traffic from the social sphere. No surprise there, right? Actually there is.

 (Image: 8th Bridge)

Most PPC resellers would think that retailers get that traffic via “organic” Facebook efforts, such as uploading content and encouraging people to naturally Like and share that content. Surprisingly, 8th Bridge found that that social traffic is not from organic Facebook efforts. Rather, the biggest retailers are using Facebook Exchange, the social network’s pay for play advertising platform.

FB Ads: Costly & Counterintuitive or Effective?

Normally, pay per click resellers would think that the biggest advantage of Facebook, as well as other social networking sites, is the cost-effective element. Marketers can simply open a fan page and start getting Likes from there. That’s one reason why we PPC folks would rather leave some retailers alone; it’s because they want to get referral traffic from Facebook. They do not want to spend so they do not opt for paid search. But apparently, that is not the case.

When asked which platform has the most potential to drive sales, most of respondents picked Facebook. In fact, nearly 3 in every 5 retailers asked believe in the potential of the world’s biggest social network. Newcomer Pinterest ranked second with an approval rate of 27%. As expected, Twitter and Instagram tied for third place with 5% each. Another 5% of respondents said they do not expect to generate sales from any of these social networks.

(Image: 8th Bridge)

And the most surprising statistics perhaps for white label PPC resellers in this study is the high adoption rate of Facebook ads. At present, a whopping 78% of these companies buy Facebook ads – showing just how much confidence retailers have on the social network.

Social Networks as Traffic Drivers

OK, so sales are out of the question for some. What about traffic? Using the presence of upstream traffic as metric, researchers found that 2.16% of retailers receive visits from Facebook – although much of it is paid. The closest social network would be YouTube, which posted a much lower percentage of 0.82%. Pinterest (.1%) and Twitter (.02%) were third and fourth respectively.

While the average seems low, some brands are getting a substantial amount of traffic via Facebook. PetFlow.com, for example, gets over 32% of its unique monthly visitors from the social network. “PetFlow is highly effective in engaging its Fans on Facebook. Engaging Fans on Facebook effectively means talking about what they care about, in this case, pets. If you were a children’s clothing company, then you would talk about children,” the study said.

What Do Adoption Rates Say?

(Image: 8th Bridge)

The most effective traffic sources among social networks according to retailers are obviously, the most adopted too. In this case, Facebook leads the race with a 99% adoption rate. YouTube is a very close second at 98%. Twitter and Pinterest, again, complete the top four, with a similar rate of 89% adoption. Instagram posted an adoption rate of 69% while Vine, Twitter’s new video site, placed sixth with 38%.

When it comes to buttons, the Pin it button is most popular. It has an integration rate of 62%, just a bit higher than the Tweet button (61%) and the Facebook Like button (59%). Google+ comes into the picture finally, placing fourth with its button being integrated by 42% of retailers.

YouTube Worth the Spotlight, Too

As the biggest video-sharing site in the world, there’s no doubt on YouTube’s reach. When you look at the average though, the upstream traffic retailers get from it is so low. Less than 1% said they get traffic from YouTube. But those who do get a lot. That’s why white label PPC resellers offering SEO and social media services should consider the inclusion of YouTube optimization in their set list.

Take the case of Lancome. The U.S. arm of the French luxury cosmetics house gets over 21% of upstream traffic from YouTube. Second-placer Vat19.com gets 17% of traffic from the video site. According to 8th Bridge, what makes Vat19.com video ads so effective is the demonstration of actual product use, and done in a way that grabs customers’ attention.

PPC Resellers: Traffic to Main Site Crucial

(Image: 8th Bridge)

While social networks can be a driver of traffic, it should be noted that optimization efforts on the retailer’s website is still more important than ever. When asked to rate which method was better for learning new products, customer respondents said “browsing retailer’s sites” was the most effective. This simply underlines why your clients need SEO, and of course, instant traffic via PPC advertising. Their websites need traffic because that’s where consumers learn about new products. Emails, as usual, are important. Social starts to come into the picture at No. 3: post by friends on Facebook, followed by activity feeds, and then browsing pins.

So while we recommend you study the possibility of offering Facebook optimization and Facebook ad managements due to the high demand, you should not take PPC and SEO for granted.