Debra Murphy — March 2, 2020 Facebook marketing has both grown and morphed into different forms over the years, but it has remained powerful.
Small businesses can take advantage of the same audience that big companies have through Facebook marketing.
As of 2020, there are 1.69 billion users on Facebook, and around 1.3 billion users on Facebook Messenger.
Being able to tap into that market can turn your small business from an obscure donkey to a powerful unicorn.
If you’re looking to up your game this year, here are seven Facebook marketing trends entrepreneurs should be aware of.
Chatbot Marketing
Customers prefer being able to interact with businesses that can respond immediately round the clock.
The rise of chatbots has shown how modern digital marketing has become more about conversations.
Consumers want that interaction with businesses, with 82% of them wanting an immediate response.
Businesses that can provide that are able to retain their interest and convert more of them into paying customers.
It also helps if they can do other things like accurately recall your buying history, recommend products, and so on.
Messenger chatbot builders like MobileMonkey can do all of this and more, being able to tend to customers helpfully and patiently.
Many big brands use chatbot for their customer service, marketing, and even for ordering their products and services.
There is still much creativity and ingenuity that can be tapped into with chatbots for Facebook Messenger marketing.
Personalization
Generic messages annoy at least 63% of customers, who won’t think twice about turning away from brands that do so.
While it takes more effort, personalizing your marketing is the biggest way to make yourself stand out this year.
You should personalize your content, products, message blasts, and other marketing materials to your customers.
It’s becoming the standard in ecommerce, wherein customers get messages that show recommended products tailored to them.
Around 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a business that offers personalized experiences.
Personalized messages triggered by behavior are three times better at conversions than generic blast messages.
Video Marketing
Video marketing has always been powerful, but its greater ease thanks to current technology makes it one of most powerful marketing trends for the next decade.
More than half of consumers swear by product videos as a major part of their online purchasing decisions.
Meanwhile, 72% of businesses have said that video marketing has boosted their conversion rates in some way.
Video is the most popular medium for learning about new products and businesses they’ve just encountered.
This is even more so with the shift towards mobile devices, wherein long-form content is harder to read.
Images may not be enough to convey your full message, and text posts can get too long, so video is perfect.
Most social media platforms now support video posts, so you don’t have to limit yourself to YouTube.
In fact, posting your videos on Facebook is great as you can easily get a lot of views and engagement.
You can also do live video streams, which lets you do a lot of things that were previously impossible.
Facebook Stories
Adding to video marketing on Facebook, you should also get into posting stories to update your audience in real time.
Facebook Stories is becoming more popular in increasing brand awareness, especially among younger audiences.
It’s a cost-effective way to update your audience on new products and whatever else is going on within your business.
You can take a photo or video and post it as a story quickly and easily, not having to plan it out like you would with a regular post.
Give your audience a glimpse of micro-moments that both humanize your business and show it in the best light as well.
This spontaneity is what has made this feature incredibly popular among Facebook users over the past few years.
If your audience is made aware of you posting stories regularly, they’ll want to tune in more often and watch out for updates.
Influencer Marketing
Yes, this is still powerful as it is the refined and elevated version of word-of-mouth marketing that amplifies your brand.
An influencer is a key leader in the community, who represents the people while also serving as your representative.
Having an influencer with a considerable following in your niche who can vouch for your business can be a powerful marketing tool.
People are more willing to trust someone they know who shares their beliefs and interests, which is what an influencer is good for.
Social Commerce
The integration of ecommerce and social media has been growing, and people can even buy products directly through social media posts.
Facebook doesn’t only have the marketplace, but also the checkout feature that lets them pay for products advertised within the platform.
The great thing about this is it reduces the risk of carts being abandoned since it’s in a place where people spend most of their time online.
That makes marketing and selling products much easier and more profitable in the long run.
Community and User-Generated Content
Building a community isn’t something you do in a short period of time, but it’s invaluable to any business.
It’s a long-term investment of time and energy that can pay off big, and one major benefit is user-generated content (UGC).
That UGC may show customers using your products, and that can then be used to market them to the rest of your audience.
You can do things like offer a discount for people who allow you to use their content, turning them into micro-influencers.
This form of micro-influencer marketing is just one of the ways you can leverage your community.
Conclusion
The seven trends mentioned above can be used to leverage these new ways of marketing your business within Facebook throughout 2020.
Facebook marketing is growing more powerful every year, but it also shifts from one form to another.
It used to be about Facebook ads, but that’s now less effective as costs have constantly been going up.
Nowadays, it has moved to other places within the platform like Facebook Messenger marketing.
If you can keep up, your business will benefit greatly by being on Facebook for the foreseeable future.
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