Facebook remains the dominant social media marketing channel even while marketers stray away from the platform. Almost all marketers surveyed have a presence on the platform, and half plan to increase their Facebook organic activities, according to the 2020 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner.
With that in mind, many marketers will be keenly interested in Facebook’s recommendations for marketing during the Covid-19 epidemic and its new and updated marketing tools.
New and Enhanced Video Chat and Live Streaming Features
Perhaps most importantly, Facebook has introduced new and enhanced video chat and live video features. Businesses and others can use the tools to host group video calls and live stream events.
The Live With function lets individuals and business Pages invite another person into a live broadcast. Businesses can use live streaming to interview influencers or experts, demonstrate and explain products or services, educate audiences, and showcase their inventories.
The platform has introduced Messenger Rooms, a video conferencing tool. The Rooms app is able to support up to 50 people, with no time limit. Organizers can control who joins the sessions and remove people from calls if they wish. The company likely hopes to develop Facebook as an alternative to Zoom and other video conferencing services.
Facebook has also released images that businesses can use as templates to communicate with customers. Businesses can include the images in posts when they ask customers to place orders or shop online, express gratitude to their community, and conduct other marketing activities.
Facebook Measurement Tips for Turbulent Times
Facebook issued these recommended best practices for measurement on its platform during Covid-19.
Simplify your strategy. Evaluating your measurement strategy to adapt to today’s conditions doesn’t mean you need to abandon your existing measurement approaches. Rather than changing course completely, consider simplifying your strategy to focus on using your organization’s current key data sources. This allows you to understand shifts and make media optimizations more quickly.
Use testing to optimize quickly. To gain a better understanding of today’s behaviors, consider running quick A/B and multi-cell tests. Through measurement and learning, you can assess the impact of making adjustments in areas like audience targeting and creative presentation. This allows you to adapt ads, undertake changes with greater confidence and optimize your strategy for the current environment.
Re-evaluate tests designed to inform future decisions. With profound changes happening in people’s day-to-day lives, media performance is often unusual. When examining insights from tests conducted during this time, consider how much current conditions are impacting results. Some findings and best practices may still be generalized and used to inform future business decisions while others may only be applicable now.
Consider impact by industry and marketing conditions. Different verticals and products face starkly different realities. Some see increased demand; others see dramatic drops. Moreover, advertising conditions vary widely by geography and customer base. There’s no one-size-fits-all measurement approach for these fast-changing times. The right strategy depends on your goals, your customers, and the marketing conditions for your industry.
Bottom Line: Brands may benefit from Facebook’s latest enhanced services and recommended marketing and measurement practices. The network remains the most important social media marketing channel, and business often reach customers through the network. Its video chat and streaming video services are on the frontier of online communications.
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Michael Kling is manager of public relations, marketing and social media at Glean.info, a media monitoring and measurement service that provides customized media monitoring and PR analytics solutions.
