The only permanent thing in life is change. This could very well be the motto of the Facebook™ team. If we look at the last half year, the social media network has made huge and profound changes to the way it works and the facilities it offers both private users and businesses.
These changes are the result of the need to keep up with other social media platforms and to regain the users’ trust (badly shaken after the Cambridge Analytica debacle). Thus, there are new algorithms that decide which posts appear first in news feeds, new tools for fighting fake news and low value content (the so-called clickbait).
Good Tidings for Business Pages after the Demise of Organic Reach
For business owners and marketers, the changes made by Facebook™ meant, first and foremost, a de facto death of organic reach. Posts by friends and close family members are favoured to the detriment of posts by pages. The ranking algorithm for posts relies heavily on engagement (comments, shares to other user pages and to Messengers, reactions). And anything that is deemed a clickbait is severely demoted.
However, the Facebook™ team knows that its business users are just as important as private accounts. To counterbalance the negative effect of these changes, the platform received updates in the form of new functions and facilities designed especially for business pages.
How Will Facebook™ Look in 2019 for Businesses and Marketers?
Let us take a look at some of the most important and useful changes made by Facebook™ to help businesses in their marketing efforts.
1. Facebook™ Stories Ads
While the Stories on Facebook™ are not (yet) as popular as those on Instagram, they represent a new and engaging way of reaching followers and leads. The advantage of Stories is that they are full screen, both on the mobile and computer screen. Thus, there are no distractions to compete with your content.
Facebook™ Stories Ads offer you unique possibilities to showcase your products, tell your brand story, start conversations and keep your followers engaged. With the recent addition of music to Stories, you can create videos that look and feel like professional films or skilfully crafted TV ads.
3. Value-Based Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences help brands find new potential customers on Facebook™, starting from the demographic and behavioural characteristics of their existing customer base and/or list of subscribers.
Now, you can create a lookalike audience that is specifically tailored to resemble the traits and characteristics of your best customers – the top spenders. This is a huge opportunity for marketers and businesses, because we all know that customers have different lifetime values. To stay profitable, you should always strive to find and retain high lifetime value clients – and with this new type of lookalike audience your chances to do so increase.
4. Redesigned Pages for Improved Mobile Browsing
Facebook™ pages got a well deserved facelift that helps users access the functions they need when interacting with a business page. Thus, it is easier to contact the business, book an appointment and purchase an Offer, because these functions appear prominently at the top of the page.
At the same time the new Page Recommendations button (which replaces Reviews) helps users understand what the page is about and what other followers say about it.
5. Facebook™ Watch
Video is the new king of content and Facebook™ decided to help its business users get more exposure for their videos. The new Watch button added to the interface (both the mobile app and the browser version) shows users recommended videos posted by the pages they liked.
At the same time, the new Watch Party option allows users to tag their friends to watch their new videos at the same time (just like getting together to watch a film on the VCR in the old days) and share their reactions and opinions about it. This option has recently been made available for pages, as well, and we believe that it will be one of the ruling trends for 2019 Facebook™ marketing.