If you’re interested in using Facebook to market your business in 2018, you’re going to need this information.
I spend many hours each week working on Facebook, I talk to many others who work on Facebook, and I read updates from Facebook and other sources to stay in the loop with what’s happening.
This article is based on what I’ve seen and heard and my experience with Facebook over the past several years.
These are just my predictions, so remember what I write here may or may not happen.
Organic Reach:
Organic reach on Facebook business pages will continue to stay low. While it is possible to get organic reach, it wouldn’t be the main focus of my Facebook work.
However, when you boost a post or create an ad in the Ads Manager and then publish the ad on your Facebook page (as well as letting it run as an ad) you will see its organic reach grow. We’ve been using this strategy for the past several months and it has been improving our results.
Pixels:
While remaining important to your Facebook marketing, pixels are going to be less of a factor in your success.
The information you can track with these is valuable to you as a marketer, but as ad blockers get more popular and as browsers start to build in ad blockers, fewer people will be added to your pixeled audience.
Paid Ads:
Paid ads will remain a key part of your Facebook efforts.
To be seen on Facebook by new people and by many of the people who have liked your page, you’re going to have to pay Facebook for exposure.
Yes, it’s frustrating, but if you want to use the tools Facebook provides you’re going to have to pay. If you refuse to pay, someone else who is willing to pay will get the business.
Part of the problem is that there are so many businesses advertising or wanting to advertise that Facebook is running out of places to show the ads. The Facebook users’ Newsfeeds are filling up, and soon Facebook won’t be able to show any more ads in the Newsfeed.
Placements:
What I mean by placements is the location where Facebook will show your ads.
In the beginning, Facebook showed ads on the right side of the Newsfeed. Then they moved into the Newsfeed both on desktop and mobile.
Now they’ve added Audience Network, Messenger ads, Homepage of Messenger, Sponsored Messages, Instant Articles, In-Stream Videos, as well as Instagram placements in the Feed and Stories.
All of these placements are working depending on the goal of your ad.
When some of them started they didn’t work well, but all of the placements have been improving over the past few months.
As you can see, Facebook is looking for ways to put more ads in front of their users while maintaining the user experience.
My prediction is you’re going to see more placements to choose from and that while they may not work right away, Facebook will continue improving the placements to help advertisers get results.
Transparency:
What I’m referring to here is Facebook’s transparency.
If you’ve ever had an account banned or any other message from Facebook, you know that Facebook doesn’t give you a clear reason why, or any warning.
One day you’re working away and everything is wonderful and the next day you log into Facebook and it says your account is banned, along with a cryptic message saying that you disobeyed the rules.
Now you have to try and figure out what rule you broke and appeal the decision. This is a tough thing to do as you can’t call Facebook, and you have no way of knowing if your emails are going to the right place.
As more businesses begin using Facebook and as it becomes even more of a mainstream advertiser; Facebook and its ad platform will continue to mature.
They are starting to be more open as to why ads are disallowed and why accounts are banned.
What will happen next is, we’ll start getting a score about our accounts so we can tell if an account is in danger of being banned and we can adjust what we’re doing before there are problems.
Facebook Messenger:
This is the next big thing.
Currently, with add-on applications like ManyChat, you can create messenger lists and send people messages via Facebook Messenger.
These messages currently get crazy open rates (60% to 80%) and click-through rates of 40+ percent. These are numbers that haven’t been seen since the early days of email.
As email and other media decline, you’re going to see Facebook Messenger usage rise.
Facebook has rules on what you can and cannot do, but it’s still working well for companies that implement a Messenger strategy.
Right now it’s free to send messages via Facebook Messenger; in the future, this may not be true.
Get started building your Messenger list so you have one, and you’ll be one of the early adopters profiting from this.
One of the advantages of Facebook Messenger is that it’s not an unknown platform. Currently, over 1.3 billion messages are sent every month.
Ease of Use:
Facebook is trying to make Ads Manager easier to use.
However, if you’re just getting started it’s incredibly confusing.
As Facebook puts more and more options into Ads Manager and your Business Page, things are getting a bit more confusing.
The other challenge Facebook has is that many of their features change so fast that their documentation can’t keep up.
It’s not uncommon to find Facebook help posts (which are supposed to answer your questions) being two or more updates behind.
How to Get the Best Results:
The key to profiting from Facebook is to have a great strategy in place and set it up properly.
I highly recommend getting started on your own, but once you have at least a small system up and working, look into working with a professional.
If you want results faster, it’s best to work with a professional.
While it takes time and money to get the proper system up and running you’re going to see profits sooner with help.
Email:
I had to include this on my list.
Email and Facebook are a powerful duo. They support each other.
However, with more and more emails being sent, open rates falling, and many people not using email like they did in the past due to apps like Slack and other messaging apps, I can see a time when email is not important.
That time isn’t here yet.
I would definitely include email in any marketing system I planned on using, but I would be keeping an eye out for a replacement.
Will that replacement be Facebook Messenger? It’s too early yet to tell.
Wrap Up:
There you have it, my thoughts about Facebook and where it’s heading in 2018.
Stay tuned for updates as the year rolls on, and in 12 short months, we’ll see how close my predictions are to what actually happened.
Again, these are my predictions based on what I see happening.
My crystal ball has no inside knowledge from Facebook, so take everything I say here as a prediction only.
Thank you for being here and going on this journey with me. If you have any questions or comments, you can email me at support@gosocialexperts.com.
Have a great day!
Brian