On January 11th Facebook announced that they would be restructuring their News Feed algorithm. This has caused a lot of buzz and concern regarding what kind of an impact that this will have on marketers.
DirectMail2.0 would like to share its opinion on the matter.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that Facebook’s algorithm is being tweaked to “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people”. Immediately many marketers are jumping to the conclusion that this means less opportunity for them to market effectively on the Facebook network. Here are a few things that DirectMail2.0 would like its partners to consider:
–What did Facebook say and more importantly NOT say. Facebook has been very careful not to use the words “ads”, “advertisers” and “ad algorithm” in their communication regarding the new algorithm. Why? Because Facebook is a business and businesses need revenue. Facebook is not going to cut off their own nose to spite their face. Marketers are the very reason why Facebook is a thriving multi-billion dollar enterprise.
–One to one personalized marketing is the future. All marketing is headed down the path of hyper-personalization, including print. Look at the massive uptick in digital printing. Every marketer wants to promote to the individual with the same budget as promoting to the masses. Platforms like Facebook and Google recognize that in order to create the largest impact for their clients (the marketers) they must abide by and offer a way to market to the individual affordably and create the personalized one to one connection with the people on their network.
–DirectMail2.0 is already ahead of the curve with Social Media Follow-Up. Social Media Follow-Up, a service within the DirectMail2.0 suite, is designed and implemented with hyper-personalization in mind. There are many different ways to advertise on Facebook and the most popular way is running sponsored ads. This is when you select a custom audience based on specific parameters that you decide, to pin-point target market to people who you THINK would most likely be interested in your product or service. You set a daily budget and Facebook uses that budget to show your sponsored ad to as many people within that custom audience as your budget will allow. You can boost your exposure by increasing your budget and/or by broadening your audience whether by geography or eliminating filters. Google has the same type of advertising available on their platform, which is Google Display Ads through Google AdWords. This is NOT the form of advertising on these networks that DirectMail2.0 applies in its product suite. DirectMail2.0 is designed to retarget only the people who go to your website. When a person visits a website they are making it known that they are interested in that product or service and therefore are more amenable to seeing ads from that business. This becomes a personal connection to the individual; they can say to themselves and others – yes, I was looking into that. By targeting only the people who visited your website on Facebook and Google you are creating that unique one to one relevant marketing experience that people are craving.
So what is the verdict here? Well, we cannot be 100% sure, we are not Facebook. However, we do not believe that this is anything to worry about. On the contrary, we think that this provides you with an exclusive angle that will drive DirectMail2.0 sales! We strongly believe that the integrated forms of marketing that DirectMail2.0 provides create the hyper personalization that people are looking for. In one opinion this new algorithm can be cleaning up the feeds to allow for more relevant ad inventory.
Here’s to continuing to create the very unique one to one marketer to consumer experience that people are looking for!
