WebProNews

Social media marketing can be a very effective thing, and at SES San Jose, more than a few people drove this point home during a session called "Turning the Social Web Into Real ROI."  The session focused on Facebook, in particular.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Tim Kendall, Facebook's director of monetization, began the session by saying that, while a lot of people fixate on the clickthrough rate, this shouldn't be an issue with customers paying based on the cost per click.  Facebook delivers so many millions of impressions, he argued, that a low clickthrough rate is natural.

Sean Heywood, Managing Partner at the MR Barber Shop & Urban Lounge, then picked up the "go Facebook" thread by sharing a success story.  Facebook ads allow his small business to experiment for as little as $5 per day.  He said that he's seen a quick, impressive ROI from this, and indeed, that Facebook works better than search for his company.

Performics, a much larger firm, is also fond of Facebook.  Claudia Virgilio, one of its vice presidents, even reported a victory on the clickthrough front.  Apparently the budget for one client's ad campaign was split equally between Facebook and search, and Facebook delivered 58 percent of impressions and 52 percent of clicks.  What's more, the ROI ended up being 42 percent higher for Facebook ads versus search ads.

Finally, Rogelio (Ro) Choy, RockYou's chief revenue officer, shared some thoughts.  He's a huge proponent of fan pages versus website marketing, and he stated that the value of fan pages is the multiplier effect.  Things will often spread between friends with similar tastes, increasing clickthrough rates.  To not make the investment in marketing your Facebook fan page is ludicrous, according to Choy.

As for how to promote things, he suggested pointing people to an activity.  Don't just drive brand exposure in social media; drive brand engagement.