According to a news update by Facebook, there are more than 1.2 billion people who are connected via Facebook to a small business in another country. In an age where digital products and online services are easier to create and sell, it naturally makes sense to open up target markets across borders. Last year Facebook introduced cross-border solutions in order to help business connect to the ever increasing mobile market through the social media platform. Facebook just recently updated the marketing options available for businesses who use the platform to market to customers online. There are four new market targeting options, within the Facebook Business module that allow you to connect with new customers who live in areas that would previously have been more difficult to identify.
The first addition to Facebook marketing is the introduction of dynamic language optimization. This means that you can include multiple languages in one campaign and Facebook will automatically match the appropriate language to the right person and it does this while accounting for time differences so the potential client will see it at the right time. Optimizations for these potential clients are determined by your total budget and the campaign objective.
Secondly, Facebook has upgraded the options for creating international lookalike audiences, which allow you to locate customers in a new country. Now businesses can create multi-country lookalike audiences to better find more customers in any combination of countries or regions.
The third expansion of the marketing platform called multi-city targeting, where business can target all cities above a certain population size without having to spend time researching cities or adding the individual cities one by one. This will allow both large and small businesses to save money over time by using this tool to weed out cities where ads would be less effective.
The fourth update to Facebook marketing is their Facebook IQ Cross-Border Insights Finder, which helps any advertiser discover previously untapped markets for their business. The data used to enable these discoveries comes by providing comparative country data that is based on the performance of previous campaigns across the entire Facebook and Instagram network. Facebook also has developed an eLearning course called Expand Across Borders with Facebook, which is designed to help businesses of any size learn how to better advance their brand by using the marketing tools available both on Facebook and Instagram.
The potential behind some of these marketing tools is really incredible. Of course, marketing through social media doesn't work for everyone, but if you are one who utilizes these digital services for expanding your business then these upgrades were designed just for you. If you aren't a fan of using social media for marketing, we would love to hear why, so comment below and tell us what you prefer to do to further your brand. If you have already begun to put some of these tools to work, make sure to comment and let us know how it is going. Either way, we'd love to hear your perspective.
Lead image from Pexels, used under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
[via Facebook Business]
While all of this is great, the process is driven by 'buying in' or spending a crap load of $$$ on their platform. They throttle your traffic the moment you spend the first $ and as such you are forced to always buy in in order to even have a sustainable page.
I have resisted this as I have watched my fellow mates see their traffic die after 1 or 2 campaigns.
My business page currently has over 7K on it, my profile about 4.5K, I can do a photo gallery and run between 7-20K post reach with some galleries having having Ks of views, then I may post a banner and immediately get a BOOST request from FB.
I ignore that request (I always do) and will watch as that post is then 'killed' off a slow death as it will struggle to gain 200 views.
My fix to that is to post the same unto my profile, tag my page allowing the same post to affect both sides but having the pull from my page direct traffic and then have it work better (thou the reverse works it somehow not the same).
I derive more these days from my IG feeds than I ever do from my FB page. For now the FB chokers have not take a hold of that yet.
FB lets you reach 1% of your friends and follows unless you pay. I really resent having this gatekeeper that is Facebook hold so much power. Good article though and interesting.
I am totally on your side with this one. I too have felt plenty of frustration with the numbers that I see on my posts. I have heard plenty of success stories about businesses who market through Facebook, so that gives me some hope, but at the same time it feels pretty daunting.
Bugs keep increasing on Facebook as they ignore everything for a mad dash for money grabs. Reach is just gone. Paying to allow people that already follow you to be able to see your post is just a backstab. Want to help? Everyone stop paying them anything! If they drop maybe they will wise up and save Facebook and Instagram before both are ruined. Don't count on a new competitor cause anyone that starts to grow, they either buy or steal from (snapchat). If they won't let me engage with people then what is the point of using the site at all?
I created several campaigns targeted at a specific audience in specific cities. At the end of each, those that had engaged with my page were neither in the locations I specified nor, apparently, in the fields I designated. I asked Facebook for an explanation, which was ignored. That was the end of my advertising efforts with FB.