What marketers can pick from F8 Announcements?
“We should no longer be talking about ‘digital marketing’ but marketing in a digital world.”- Keith Weed
Few weeks ago, Facebook held its annual developer conference-F8, in San Jose, California. One of the most important conferences of the social media world was though meant primarily for developers, it turned out to be quite an insightful event for the marketing community too. With a glimpse to the future of Facebook and Instagram, this conference came up as an opportunity for digital marketers to learn, plan and get ready for the future algorithm changes that are expected to affect how they have been marketing on the social network.
From Facebook’s complete redesign, Instagram’s new features and even Facebook’s ad business, the conference had a lot of unveiling to do. But the three updates that we will dwell little deeper will be, How groups are now center of conversation, how customers can buy directly from Instagram and the redesign that Messenger has gone through.
I am sure there can be different strategies to tackle it but it’s better to plan the road map for coming years and stay ahead of the curve.
1. Putting Communities at Core with Groups
The new Facebook desktop and mobile experience does not seem to be an aesthetic change only but a functional change too. To put in crux all the observations, Facebook now seems to put communities at the core with a more specific groups section and that too with more visibility than the regular news feed. And why not? There are 1.4 billion people using Facebook groups every month. It is coming back to its roots to be a more friends and family focused platform by introducing a Groups tab, which will help users navigate to their existing Groups.
What is it for Marketers?
As the new feed has become significantly smaller in the new format, I see how brands were not on the list while Facebook was designing its future. But that is what being in digital space calls for. Adapt and change when it is called for or may be sooner. So, it’s time that brands instead of thinking how to reach broad audience in the News Feed, marketers now focus on taking on taking a more targeted and personable approach.
As page reach will now see a decline, brand groups can be new thing. Take notes of the new Groups plugin that can be added to the websites and emails to solicit people to join their Facebook group. So for example if you handle a fashion brand, just add a plugin at your website of joining the Facebook group of your brand so that people can engage in conversation directly with brand an also with other consumers. This will I am sure increase the engagement rate and also in developing more user –generated content.
And as more and more people join groups, Facebook will definitely open this targeting to advertisers. This would have large potential impact as it would become easy to target very specifically and people with niche interests. Taking the same example of a fashion brand, we all can foresee how it will advertise itself in different groups related to fashion.
2. Buy directly from Instagram posts now
There is a new product tagging tool that will allow Creators/bloggers/Influencers to sell products from their Instagram accounts. Just like they tagged brands on their picture, they can now tag products on their posts. The difference lies in where the tap on the tag takes you. The new tag tool will allow users to now order the tagged product from the Instagram itself. For example- If the famous global influencer, Masoom Minawala tags the outfits she is wearing, you will be able to buy it from Instagram itself. Yes, the whole checkout process will be done there only without visiting the actual brand’s website even once. Too quick to spend now.
What is it for Marketers?
How influencers have changed and evolved marketing for the brands is not new. They have time and again proved to be a great medium to spread awareness and generate revenues. And with this new feature, Facebook has hit the right chords. A huge thing for both brands and influencers. This feature is going to be a lot like call for action and help marketers prove ROI and make influencers more valuable than ever before.
It is now going to be easier to track the results in terms of sales coming from Influencers and also will be easy for influencers to justify their price with proven results. It will now be easy for Masoom to prepare a media kit with statistics that will help her collaborate with more brands and also easy for brands to figure out if those are the statistics and returns they are expecting from her through a campaign.
3. A refresh button for Messenger
With about more than 1.3 billion users every month, a revamp of Facebook’s messenger was clearly expected. Augmented Reality, M-translations and lead generation ads are 3 major add-ons for messenger this year. Before we move ahead let’s have a little clarity on what exactly they are going to do.
So AR will enable users to overlay 2D and 3D objects. With Lead generation ads, it will be easy for businesses to connect with potential customers by adding a lead generation template to Ads Manager. It will drive people to a simple Q&A in Messenger itself and thus learn more about their to-be customers. This feature has also extended to booking appointments also. With Appointment experience, it will extremely easy to book basic services like stylists, cleaning services etc.
Talking about M-Translation, is like a translator tool that will ask the user if he wants to translate the message that comes in a language other than the one set as default by the user. For example, if a Colombia based tech brand reaches out to a customer in India in Spanish, then the M-Translator will ask the user if he wants to translate the message from Spanish to his default language.
What is it for Marketers?
The new AR feature will give brands an opportunity to provide brand experiences to their users. This functionality will help brands create better and more interactive experiences. M-Translation on the other will make communication between brands and consumer easier. With reduce language barriers, customer service will become comparatively easy. With almost all the industries and businesses going global, having this kind of feature at hand will be helpful in making a message look customized and thus better services and revenues.
Lastly, lead generation ads update for messenger has proved to be the most helpful announcement for brands to reach even those customers who have disconnected from Facebook but still use Messenger to interact with friends and family.
Wrapping Up
The F8 conference was strategically conducted to put in place the concerns of privacy too. Though there are contemplations of whether people are moving away from the platform or not, I foresee a lifestyle where Facebook will be more ingrained in our lives. What F8 this year has unveiled is not what you see every year. These game –changing new features will change the very framework of how the social network works.
Though the real marketing implications are yet to be seen but I would like to hear what you feel about it. Are we ready for change? Well, as digital marketers we always are.
