Facebook: A Powerful Marketing Tool

B2B marketers know that Facebook isn’t just a social media platform for posting family photos, updating social statuses and tagging friends, but a valuable and an indispensable marketing tool. Marketers recognize that Facebook is a powerful player in social media. According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2016, which surveyed more than 5,500 marketers, marketers chose Facebook as their most important social media platform.

The main reason being is that Facebook creates an advertising intelligence space unsurpassed by all other platforms. It allows marketers to create specific, customized messages to targeted audiences and measure each campaign’s effectiveness through powerful analytics. Facebook allows marketing campaigns the ability to use storytelling to make each message unique and powerful.

Facebook Trends to Watch

Facebook Live. According to Cisco, video is booming and global traffic, from online videos, will constitute over 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020. Facebook is counting on this fact with the recent introduction of Facebook Live. Facebook Live offers live-streaming video capabilities to users, who can live stream and broadcast live from any mobile device. In addition, users can write brief video descriptions, block viewers and accumulate huge followings. Facebook Live is similar to Periscope, but with Facebook Live video posts can be retrieved at any time and directly linked to Facebook pages.

Facebook Video Posts. Video has become essential. Facebook video posts are on the rise. The Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2016 points out that a significant 60% of marketers use video in their marketing and 73% plan on increasing their use of video. Video posts can be entertaining, engaging, informative and tell the story of a brand. In addition, they can be used to create a “call-to-action” to draw attention to videos on a brand’s website.

B2B Bullets

• The Gartner 2015-16 CMO Spend Survey found that 52% of marketers rank customer experience as one of the top 5 marketing technology investments, and Genesys research shows that companies recognize that positive customer experience improves retention (42%), satisfaction (33%), and increases cross and upselling opportunities (32%). business2community.com
• Today, the same creative types have marketing automation tools and analytics platforms that can measure the influence marketing efforts have on revenue – and the return on investment…Despite more than 60 % of marketers creating content every day, only 27% say they’re effectively tracking content metrics. What’s worse is that only 30% of content marketers see their content marketing as effective. forbes.com
• Based on April 2016 data from digital marketing organization Regalix, which surveyed more than 500 B2B marketers worldwide, more than 60% said they’ve witnessed a sales increase of between 11% and 50% due to marketing analytics. emarketer.com
• A study, which surveyed more than 500 B2B marketers worldwide, found that 29% attributed a 10% or less sales increase to analytics, while 8% attributed an over 50% increase in sales. marketingdive.com
• A May 2016 survey by Regalix found B2B marketers are also increasingly turning to social media channels as key tools for distributing content. More than a quarter (27 percent) identify social media as an “indispensable” channel for content distribution in 2016. The data shows social media is now on par with traditional content distribution methods: websites (26 percent) and email (28 percent). komarketingassociates.com