Start-ups and small businesses are always looking for more customers, and more and more of them are choosing to reach their potential customers through the Internet. One of the most popular choices is obviously advertising on Facebook, the largest social media platform. However, is Facebook advertising a good value proposition for marketers? Facebook’s strategy is based on the premise that “social” is the future of the online advertising business. It’s the idea that recommendations from friends and companies alike are going to be more effective than traditional display advertising at driving consumer behavior.

Yes, Facebook Ads can work. But there are different types of ads, and certain types work better for some marketers than others do. Facebook ad click-through varies dramatically across sector:

Although advertisements in some of the sectors, such as Finance and News, have lower click-through rate, overall the ads are growing more effective over time. The first annual Social Media Intelligence report released Monday by Adobe found that Facebook’s ad clicks, ad impressions and advertisers’ return on investment were all higher in 2013 than in 2012. According to the study, which took into account more than 131 billion Facebook ad impressions and 4.3 billion social engagements, Facebook ads were clicked 29% more often in 2013, and the return to investors was 58% higher than last year.

Facebook marketing is the “must” of the social media marketing world. B2B and B2C alike can benefit from the increased branding, customer loyalty, organic SEO and general digital footprint. Ignoring Facebook means ignoring over 1 billion users that are potential customers and no business is too successful to ignore that many untapped prospects.

Procter & Gamble found that it is much easier to sell more to people who are already using its brand than it is to convert them from a competitor. However, customers are more demanding than ever and loyalty seems to be dead to them. From a customer perspective, it is also difficult for me to find a business that provides such a good product or service that I would never price-shop and declare my brand loyalty across my social network when facing so many choices. Such perspective generated Customer Loyalty Program.

Customer Loyalty Program is a serious business for airlines, hotel chains, and credit-card companies. But the one we are encountering in our day-to-day life is provided by markets, such as Shoppers Drug Mart and Save On Foods. The most common loyalty program methodology used by these markets is Simple Point System. Kendal Peiguss defined this system in one of his studies: Frequent customers earn points, which translate into some type of reward. Whether it’s a discount, a freebie, or special customer treatment, customers work toward a certain amount of points to redeem their reward. Where many companies falter in this method, however, is making the relationship between points and tangible rewards complex and confusing. Fifteen points equals one dollar, and twenty dollars earns 50% off your next purchase and so on. These are not rewards, they are headache. Barely anyone has time to calculate these points and be loyal to the business just because of these “loyalty rewards”, while businesses are still complaining that Customer Loyalty is dead.

Customer Loyalty is not dead. It is just that the businesses have not done enough to “wake it up”.