Whether you are an active social media user or social media dead weight, you have probably heard of Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social networking sites with the monthly active user of about 2.60 billion and daily active user about 1.73 billion. Facebook reaches 60 per cent of internet users. Facebook was founded by Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Even after seventeen years of foundation, Facebook still is the most popular social networking site.

 

Concept of Facebook was not new. Friendster and MySpace were popular at that time. What they lack was a revelation of the true identity of user and connection with family and friends. There were times when Facebook id was treated as important as an email address. This popularity and tightly formed communities on Facebook have attracted digital marketers in hoards. Facebook allows marketers to form business pages, run ads, forms communities and an active customer base. Facebook also provides data regarding age, gender, interests etc to marketers for better demographic target strategy. Facebook employs data mining services by tracking likes, Facebook searches, pages followed etc to track user behaviour for better marketing and targeting of products.

 

There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook.6 million of these pay to be active advertisers. Facebook has all the demography of people from millennial to boomer. Facebook ad strategy is based on providing specific audience data that are likely to be interested in your products and services. When you provide Facebook with your target audience Facebook will display your ads to those target audience only. Facebook use the auction system to determine what is shown to whom. Mostly ads on Facebook are highly visual and made keeping mobile scrolling in mind as Facebook users prefer to use Facebook on mobile than desktop.

 

The second most popular page on Facebook is of Samsung with 159 million followers. The Facebook average cost per click for ads is 1.72 dollars. The Facebook average cost per action is 18.68 dollars. Facebook generates 98.5 per cent of its revenue from advertising. The tagline of Facebook changed from “free and always will be” to “quick and easy”. 86 per cent of marketers prefer Facebook over any other social networking site. 78 per cent of people admit getting to know the retail product through Facebook. The average conversion rate of Facebook ads across all industries is 9.21 per cent. Facebook is cost-effective than other social networks.

 

 

Contemplating Facebook downfall seems like a joke from looking at statistics. The reduction is new Facebook users can be blamed upon saturation. No other social network is close to Facebook in terms of market penetration. But when your lead generation and web clicks have a major chunk of Facebook targeting then the joke is on you. The average time a person spends on Facebook for nearly 58 minutes. If the trend is to believe this average tine time is slowly declining. The Instagram, Snapchat, Wechat, Tumblr etc are right now in chic. Teenagers are more active on YouTube and Instagram. In ten years these teenagers will be a young adult and earning. If you want to tap this consumer base then Facebook holds losing cards. Facebook anticipates this if the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp is to believe.

 

If these sounds like an alarm bell for your digital marketing then you have to think the absolute unthinkable that is, “What will be the face of your marketing when Facebook face down?” This question can only be answered when you develop new bases for your marketing structure. Let’s see how that can be done.

 

Old school way

 

 

What can be more old school than email marketing? Email marketing lacks the glamour of Facebook but it is the dark horse that is making stride since its origin. It is underrated in the sense that people often not notice this but stats say otherwise. Email still beats Facebook in terms of several users with 3.8 billion users. Email catches the attention and time of user directly via notification but for Facebook ads to work you have to actively login.

 

ROI of email is better than Facebook. Emails are cheap and effective. With time emails have changed and for better. Not only email can be used for promotion but when visuals are included in them, they keep customers interested.  Survey email, curation email and promotional email make direct engagement with the customer.

 

If your email marketing is in shambles then start with customer subscribing to your email content. With data appending services particularly email appending services you can create a verified customer list of the customer thus increasing your target audience. Data verification and data scrubbing can make your list through. The email service provider can give you insights about the reception of your email marketing campaign.

 

Also Read: Why Email Should Be At the Heart of Your Marketing

 

Move-in other circles

 

 

Where you can find the prospective customer for your business as Facebook is offering? The answer is on other social media. If your presence is only on Facebook then it’s high time you develop a marketing plan for other social media such as Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube etc. Each social media deals with ads and marketing differently. What was working for one may not work for others? Like in Instagram, stories are the talk of the town. Facebook too has come up with Facebook stories but are not as popular as Instagram’s. Instagram highly relies on visual content and influencers. If you choose YouTube for advertising then you can either play ads during the videos or create your own YouTube channel with storytelling videos of your product and with the help of YouTube recommendation appear in people feeds. You can offer a discount only for social media accounts that will increase your followers.

 

Join our FAM

 

Social media gives you a platform for selling. It is SEZ of the internet. It increases your brand awareness, clicks on-site and lead generation. What if you create your community forum on your site? And encourage already client base to join the community forum. Like Amazon has with Amazon forum. Offering exclusive deals and discounts to them. You can also start basic and premium membership programmes.  Create a discussion forum and reviews forum for your clients. Your already joined customer will do the advertising for you. You could hold online contests, webinars and rush hours to keep people engaged. This can increase your database for customers and help your target better for sales.

You can Google it

 

When you reach out to customer then you use social media but when the customer reaches out to you then they use the search engine and what is better search engine than Google. Under the umbrella of Google marketing, it offers your many options. Some lets you improve your SEO by providing with customer search insights such as Google Search Console based on data scraping. Google AdWord is an online advertising platform where you can pay to display advertisement and video ads. Google Adsense is basically for content creator where they can collaborate with Google to display ads on their site. You can choose sites where there is potential client base and display your ads. Google advertising can reduce your dependence on Facebook. There are other search engines too but Google has 92.42 % share in search engine marketing.

 

Also Read: The Ultimate B2B SEO Guide

 

It is not what you say, how you say it

 

 

People have become immune to hard sales tactics. Now the focus is on educative and informative ads rather than in your face ads. Subtly is not lost on today’s audience. If you’re marketing campaign was based only in paying the amount and getting your ads displayed then this old lion has to learn new tricks. Most people access sites through their mobile. If your ads don’t gel with the people then you will be scrolled in a second.

 

You have to develop high-quality visual content for your marketing. This includes informative videos about your products or services. Storytelling videos are a great way for the customer to relate and empathise with your brand. We have all seen Sabyasachi video ads for bridal clothes and jewellery collection. The ads pull your heartstring and keep you invested in feeling and struggle faced by brides during the marriage.

 

You can also create a collection of images for storytelling for your brand. This can save you the money spent on video making and hit home with your message. This collection of videos or audio contents can be used on social media, your websites and for video ads. You are hitting many birds with one stone.

 

Now on Playstore

 

Customers now have switched from desktop to mobiles.  Every day mobile technology is improving and its processing power. People even for purchasing prefer mobile over desktop. You can create your app for this purpose and encouraging the current customer base to download it. This app can integrate all your discussion forums, customer community, product viewing, product sale and your ad content under one umbrella.

 

Mouth of word

 

 

You can collaborate with popular bloggers, content creators and influencer to advertise your product and brand. It will keep people talking about your product. People are more likely to rely on the option and reviews provides by one of them then what a brand tells about itself.

 

Also Read:  Influencer Marketing for B2B: Everything You Must Know

 

Facebook is a social media giant. It is the large tree with deep roots and difficult to fall with changing digital winds but when it does you have to keep safe distance enough that you are not crushed by it.