Commentary
Facebook Really IS Committed To Making Marketers Successful
- by Max Kalehoff , November 5, 2013
Contrary to the Forrester report, the fact is that marketers are placing more faith and investment in the world’s largest social networking platform. This was evidenced most recently by Facebook’s strong quarterly earnings report. I also see continued growth in Facebook advertising spend among my company’s clients. These are not one-off blips. They are undeniable indicators of positive momentum happening right now.
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I’d like to go further and offer some additional reasons why marketers should continue to invest and place confidence in Facebook. It is important to disclose that I work at a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer (sPMD). While I have a vested interest in the success of the Facebook platform, my role has also provided me a deep understanding of Facebook’s actions and commitment to marketer success.
Here are four key areas that exemplify Facebook’s ongoing commitment to, and progress toward, making marketers successful:
Priority on marketing outcome. Facebook is clear: Social metrics like Fan growth, Likes and Shares are important, but they are a means to an outcome. Ultimately, marketing outcomes matter -- like, for example, moving products off of shelves. What’s important is effecting real marketing objectives and delivering performance measurements.
Targeting innovation. Facebook is steadily advancing what has become the world’s most sophisticated audience targeting system. In addition to its standard targeting capabilities, it continues to invest in third-party data partnerships and experiments with companies like Datalogix, Axciom and Epsilon. It also continues to develop and collaborate with marketers on more sophisticated solutions for integrating CRM databases, as well as retargeting audiences across websites and mobile apps.
Simplification. Facebook admitted it made advertising too complicated. It’s solving that problem by simplifying workflow and investing in solutions that address specific marketing objectives like brand awareness, in-store sales, online sales and mobile connections. Moreover, it continues to invest in its measurement and attribution solutions directly against those objectives.
Marketing partners. Facebook will not, and cannot, build everything. As demonstrated by its sPMD program, it will build a global platform with core differentiators, and then work with partners to extend the platform to solve marketers’ real challenges -- whether they be very advanced, or specialized in niche verticals. Driving investment in specialized, advanced partners means driving investment in marketers’ success.
To conclude, Facebook has scale where most everyone spends their day, on every device. In doing so, it provides marketers with the ability to reach micro segments at scale, within a deeply engaged environment that can influence people’s perceptions and behaviors. Marketers are experiencing successes with Facebook, and the hard proof lies in their increasing investment in the platform.
Sure, Facebook is imperfect. Social marketing is hard, and we’re still figuring it out. Facebook, its partners and marketer clients must continue working together to raise the bar. As a vested participant in this journey, I can assure you: We are all committed to marketer success.
Facebook represent a truly perverted market scenario, whereby the biggest is also the cheapest. Any reasonable person would conclude that Facebook isn't making the market nearly as much as it's destroying it, your shamelessly self-serving defense of them notwithstanding.
@Mike Einstein: Disruption and change is hard. But I'm optimistic and excited about innovation and the future -- and playing a role in it.
You're overselling.
I was a Facebook contrarian for a very long time, and was convinced that failure in mobile would be their undoing. Much to my surprise, Facebook has executed unbelievably well -- so much so that it is quietly becoming a genuine threat to even mighty Google. They're not perfect, but if they continue to execute as they have over the past 18 months they will be far more powerful than they are even today. (@Mike: I was once where you are about digital but have passed through the "trough of disillusionment" and now find myself far more excited about the coming changes to marketing. A very different world is taking shape -- not necessarily better in all respects -- but different for sure. Your mileage may vary.)
@Tom: I can see you now on your smart phone checking your Facebook page between tweets during the commercials you're not watching on TV. Who are you kidding? Execute on behalf of whom, the Farmville crowd? BTW, I truly have no digital axe to grind. I just find it insulting and embarrassing to read things like: "Facebook is steadily advancing what has become the world’s most sophisticated audience targeting system." If it's so sophisticated and cutting edge, why is it so cheap? I'll tell you why: It's cheap because even the Facebook folks know it's worthless. That's why they only charge a dime for a thousand impressions. I would further suggest that anyone who thinks Facebook is a good marketing tool has not passed through a "trough of disillusionment", but rather is firmly ensconced in it.
@Mike, you're right that consumer attention is wildly fractured: a recent study showed that consumers in their 20s switch media 27 times an hour. There is also rampant media oversupply. This imbalance -- and not the idea that "even the Facebook folks know it's worthless" --is what puts sharp downward pressure on media pricing power. Now is a very challenging time to be a marketer, but on the plus side it is equally challenging for everybody. The people who embrace reality *as it is* and work to find or create better answers will thrive. The people who wait for things to go back to "normal" will have a very long and painful wait. Philosophically, I like what Ben Zander says: "There are three possible responses to any problem: resignation, anger or possibility." I am choosing possibility.