With over one billion active daily users, Facebook is a megastar in the social media world. Since its inception in 2004, fears of it plateauing have remained unsubstantiated. In fact, the number of active monthly Facebook users continues to grow. Incorporating Facebook into a thorough marketing strategy is the prerogative of any progressive business owner. Facebook has on offer to its users a wealth of data, insights, and advertising metrics to give any business a positive ROI on their marketing efforts. The social media giant’s large scale, growth, innovation, and data goldmine are just some of the reasons why Facebook is good for marketing.
- Scale
Facebook’s sheer scale cannot be ignored. Over one billion users are logging into Facebook every day; that is roughly the entire population of India, one of the most populous nations on Earth.
Compare these numbers to competitor social media platforms:
Youtube: 30 million
Instagram: 500 million
Twitter: 157 million
- Data
Not only is Facebook the most popular social media platform, it also utilizes complex and sophisticated data logging software on its users. While users are logged onto the network, Facebook can see what other websites users have visited. Facebook is also alerted anytime users ‘like’ a page or load posts with a share button.
Some of the types of information Facebook logs are as follows:
Users who are married
Users who are recently engaged
Parents
Whether a user is conservative or liberal
If a user is likely to engage in political posts
Users who have an anniversary
Users who have new job
Relationship status of the user
Facebook also logs demographic data, like where a user lives, what kind of job they have, their education level, and how old they are.
The ‘liking’ of a business or product page is also logged with Facebook for targeted advertising purposes.
Rendering user profiles even more comprehensive, Facebook lets marketers target ads based on data that has been collected by firms Experian, Acxion, and Epsilon. These companies gather data mostly from offline sources, like mailing lists, government and public records, consumer contests, warranties, surveys, and magazine subscription lists over a period of many years.
Data collected from these firms, along with Facebook’s private data collection efforts, gives marketers the most comprehensive consumer profile ever compiled. User’s online activity is not only tracked and analyzed, but so is their offline consumer activity. This specific information is then used to draw further conclusions, like if a user is on a special diet, or if their kids play soccer. Ads can then be targeted accordingly.
Such highly targeted, specific information is most useful when compiling ads. Accurate and detailed data only offered on Facebook’s platform takes most of the guesswork out of ad compilation, saving businesses time and therefore, money. The more accurate information a business has in its marketing arsenal, the more likely they are to see a positive ROI on their efforts.
- Innovation
Facebook is on the cutting edge of technological advancement.
Since the 1990s, email has been king for marketing efforts. But that is slowly changing.
Email open and click rates have been declining steadily year-over-year. Consumers are starting to weary of email. Reasons for this are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say, Facebook is leading the charge on an email marketing alternative.
In April of 2016, Facebook unveiled their new messenger platform, or chatbots. These are largely automated, and they act almost like an answering machine for a business. The software piggy-backs onto Facebook messenger, and can be set to automated triggers.
When a user comments on a business’s post, the chatbot can message them with a call-to-action to subscribe, perhaps offer a coupon or some sort of deal for the user. Then, the user can be put into an automated funnel, very similar to kind set up on an email marketing platform.
While average open rates for email campaigns across industries are about 30%, messenger bot engagement is at nearly 98%.
Messenger bots save businesses time engaging with customers and answering queries, and compiling one is relatively inexpensive. The potential for a positive ROI with Facebook messenger bots is huge.
Also, now that users are more likely to engage with social media via mobile device, the chatbot messenger is optimized for mobile device searching and browsing. Email marketing is a bit more cumbersome and takes some tweaking to get it optimized for mobile. Facebook messenger bots, by their very nature, eliminate this hassle.
In 2004, Facebook changed the way the world interacted forever. Facebook continues to be an innovative leader in technological advancement. Utilizing Facebook’s size, ground-breaking and economical advertising technology and wealth of data can take any business or brand to the next level in positive marketing ROI.
Here at Australian Internet Advertising, our dedicated staff knows how to get the most out of Facebook for your business. Contact us today and explode your online business growth and triple your leads with Facebook advertising.
