Facebook dangles $50 ad carrot for small businesses

Facebook has offered small business owners a $50 advertising credit in its latest attempt to woo entrepreneurs to the social networking site.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told USA Today that the company will offer free $50 ad credits for up to 200,000 small businesses, to help boost sales and engagement with the site.

“Credits like that can go a long way,” she says.

“For $50, most small businesses can target every single person they need to target at least once, and then they can grow their business from there.”

“So my dream is really simple. I think every small business should be using technology, they should be using all of the web technologies, and they should be using Facebook. So we’re not going to stop until all of them are using it to grow their business.”

Sandberg says only “hundreds of thousands” of small businesses advertise through Facebook.

A major roadblock to increasing this number in Australia could be the relatively small number of SMEs that have websites. Research from earlier this year showed that two-thirds of Australian businesses still don’t have an online presence.

Facebook, under increased competition from the new Google+ service, has recently turned its attention to small businesses as a way of consolidating its dominant position in the social media market.

In August, the company launched an “education program” called Facebook for Business, which explained how entrepreneurs can use the site to promote products or their brand.