Three Facebook Trends CMOs Should Lean Into Now

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No one can deny the critical role Facebook has played in revolutionizing media for consumers. As a CMO of a large consumer-tech company, I also see firsthand how it’s changing how brands and people connect. As mobile takes on a bigger role in our lives and concurrently, ad blockers rise and disrupt traditional display advertising, Facebook is emerging as the main space for brands to engage with people.

Facebook is a different beast than traditional advertising avenues. Print, TV and even display ads undergo dramatic change only every decade or so; Facebook introduces a significant shift every six months. As marketers, we must evolve our Facebook strategies to continue to be successful. After this year’s F8 conference, that means leaning into three new strategies to maximize ROI:

Don’t shoot the Messenger, use it (it’s got 900 million monthly users)

Facebook’s big bet on Messenger is key for marketers. Chat has already overtaken SMS: Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp’s combined 60 billion messages a day vastly exceed the world’s 20 billion daily SMS messages.

Mobile chat is not some far-off future, it’s right now and here to stay. Your marketing investment should reflect that. At Shutterfly, Messenger gives us the opportunity to connect one-to-one with customers on a channel they use every day. Plus, taking customer service conversations off of our public page helps us protect the brand.

The next evolution of Messenger is chatbots, which will allow brands to offer excellent customer service that’s convenient to your customers and more efficient for your CS teams. The key to strong chatbots is making sure that they are high quality and accurate. We’ve already seen the dangers of bots not being finely tuned. Quality bots equal quality customer service equals happy customers more likely to engage with your brand.

Meet your new focus group: Facebook

Brands have long used Facebook as an effective way to get feedback and input from fans, but many advertisers have been hesitant to test ads on Facebook. Now, with Facebook’s ever-improving targeting abilities, savvy brands can leverage Facebook as a way to test all types of content, whether its end destination is Facebook or not.

For example, our Shutterfly team recently trialed a new type of creative on Facebook – all lifestyle images and no product, a very new approach for our brand. The response to these emotive images was so significant that they are now the centerpiece of a new campaign that will live on several channels outside of Facebook.

I encourage marketers to see Facebook as a modern focus group. Social users tell us who they are, what they like and what other brands they like. Facebook makes it easy to assemble a panel by distilling those attributes into easily targetable profiles. Granular targeting and easy A/B testing capabilities make it an ideal platform to test new copy, try out a new voice, play with new imagery or reach a whole new audience.

Don’t be stingy with budget for video creation – it will pay off if you do it right

Facebook is encouraging brands to trial video and recently released a slew of new video features and capabilities for brands to explore; Rights Manager, Live Video and 360 Video offer new ways for you to reach customers through video and feel confident that your content is protected from repurposing.

Video is high risk, high reward. To make the most of Facebook’s new features, marketers will need to increase their investment in content creation and ensure that all video produced is awesome. Sure, lots of companies are doing video, but very few are doing it well. 62% of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor quality video.

Our team continues to invest in video because of its proven user engagement, not to mention that capturing life’s moments is what our company was founded on. That means going beyond repurposing TV ads: We optimize video specifically for Facebook mobile. Mobile video needs to be a “thumb stopper” and stop a user from continuing through the rest of his feed. Our video strategy and execution isn’t perfect – yet – but we evolve, test and learn every day.

There are myriad parts to a successful omnichannel campaign in today’s marketing landscape – no one program can do it alone. But in the horse race of new channels, platforms and outlets, Facebook continues to find new avenues for marketers to target and engage people cost-effectively. Smart marketers will lean into the platform, with eyes wide open for who might take the lead next.