Facebook started as a pure social media networking platform to help people connect with friends and family, it was a matter of time before it emerged as an effective medium for promoting brands and marketing businesses.
It is because marketers are always looking to identify means to engage with potential customers. With the way Facebook started to connect people with people, and people with ideas; they were quick to identify its marketing potential.
Facebook is now an important part of every business's marketing strategy, to generate leads and convert them into loyal customers. While Facebook is still experimenting with ways to grow its paid marketing revenues, there is no doubt that it rules the Social Media Marketing scene for both organic and paid marketing campaigns.
So, how businesses benefit from using Facebook as one of their key marketing channels?
Worldwide, there are over 2.38 billion monthly active users (MAU) as of March 31, 2019. This is an 8% increase in Facebook MAUs year over year. This is compared to 2.32 billion MAUs for Q4 2018. (Source: Facebook 4/24/19). Facebook is simply too big to ignore as an on-going part of your digital marketing communications program.
1.56 billion people on average log onto Facebook daily and are considered daily active users for March 2019. This represents an 8% increase year over year (Source: Facebook as 4/24/19).
Mobile advertising revenue is reported according to Facebook to represent approximately 93 percent of advertising revenue for Q1 2019. This was the same percentage for Q4 2018 which was up from 89 percent in Q4 2017.
There are Facebook ads which enable you to target your potential customers. Since Facebook collects a number of demographic attributes for all its users, these can be utilized while creating target audience for your ad.
Facebook ads are quite budget friendly too, at least so far. Ads can be charged depending upon what suits the user. CPM and CPC are the two popular charging methods. CPM (Cost Per Million) is charged per thousand impressions whereas CPC (Cost Per Click) is chargeable per click.
Two lesser-used methods are OCPM (Optimized CPM), wherein Facebook shows ads to those people who are likely to favorably respond to it, and CPA (Cost Per Action) which expects users to take a specific action (e.g. page like) when they come across your ad.
Facebook's algorithm is designed to encourage interaction among business owner and the audience. Apart from posting any message or picture or video for your audience, at your chosen time and frequency, you can create and launch online marketing campaigns too on Facebook.
Followers and fans have displayed a huge liking to interact and participate in contests. So, if your campaign has a built-in contest or asks for an interesting feedback from your followers, it's level of engagement would go up.
Facebook allows easy and quick interaction between customers and businesses. It is also easy to respond to customers, which promotes Brand Loyalty. Quick customer interaction means you can provide effective customer support by posting a message for the customer, which instantly shows up on his/her FB page.
Facebook also builds engagement like no other. Engagement in the form of likes, comments, and interactions on your post, leads to a strong connection with your prospects. The stronger the connection, the more likely it would be for your leads to convert. Of course, word of mouth and referral also expand the reach of your brand.
Using sponsored Facebook Ads, users can be re-routed to your website. These users are likely to be more receptive because they choose to go to your website voluntarily by clicking on the link. Once on your landing page, the visitor can be exposed to more direct marketing pitch in the form of a call to action or asking them to view the product or service that you are offering.
Presence of your business on Facebook is essential in the present times, on account of several benefits that it offers. For individuals, being part of the social media may still be a fashionable thing to do; but for businesses it makes a lot of marketing sense. Can you imagine your brand enjoying a worldwide reach, that too absolutely free; or having a platform to interact with your loyal and potential customers as often as you like? This is what Facebook provides, and a lot more.