It is indeed tough to imagine that little over a decade ago, Facebook was little more than a Harvard student experiment. While Mr. Zuckerberg did not complete his studies that year. He doesn’t mind because his “small project” has grown into a multi-billion-dollar corporation with 1.86 billion monthly active users.
What Will the Future Be?
In reality, it has gone through some pretty significant changes in recent years, including becoming public in May of 2012 and splitting the Facebook Messenger app in 2014. (a move some people still argue about). What are their plans? It’s a difficult question to answer.
So, in order to get a clear picture of the company’s future, we enlisted the help of a group of industry experts.
Logan Young, (Facebook Advertising Expert and co-founder of BlitzMetrics)
Multi-channel strategy and analytics are undoubtedly the future of Facebook marketing. In other words, because people communicate and utilize numerous touchpoints, if your social media efforts are successful, they will flow over into search, email, retail, and other touchpoints.
Marketers will continue to believe that if they communicate with customers on Facebook, they will either receive a sale straight away or nothing at all. This “zero funnel” model is giving way to a strategy of creating long-term connections with clients through several channels.
As a result, look for Facebook’s “advanced measurement” to be released sometime in 2018 to definitively answer the social ROI question.
Expect increased campaign management automation, where we simply have to enter our goals, content, and targeting.
Anybody still attempting to pass themselves off as a Facebook marketing specialist or anyone who just runs Facebook advertising is in for an unpleasant shock. To organize and measure campaigns, you’ll need to be familiar with searching, emails, sites, television, and other media.
Mike Koehler, (Smirk New Media’s President and Chief Strategy Officer)
In terms of companies, I believe Facebook will invest more in offering front-line customer care through messenger and bots. For other firms, Facebook might eventually replace standalone websites and serve as a one-stop shop for news, customer support, and sales. As advertising dollars shift away from TV, billboards, and conventional media and toward Facebook and Instagram, advertising marketing and creative will become more sophisticated — tailored videos and brand messages to particular audiences. A fee increase is almost certainly on the way for advertising. The more detailed Facebook’s stats can and will supply, the more granular marketers may become with their audiences, including sending consumer messaging based on the block where someone resides.
Glen Gilmore, (Forbes Top 20 Social Networking Personality)
Successful Marketing strategy will increasingly rely on a marketer’s ability to:
- Encourage original user-generated material and dialogue;
- Identify and engage relevant influencer (and micro-influencer) partnerships, building trust and community ties that extend beyond one-time paid advertising occasions;
- Utilize augmented and virtual reality to provide more immersive experiences;
- Be versatile in your content distribution, achieving a balance between long- and short-form material; live-streaming and recorded video
Julia Munder, Maxwell Scott Bags’ International Marketing Manager
As a network customer, Facebook has already launched a marketplace and store function, and they’ll most likely develop it and make it better so that more people are aware of it and utilize it. Facebook appears to be becoming into a social/political entity; for example, you may flag yourself as safe after terror events, and they’ve just released a new warning to battle fake news.