Is Facebook Dying out for Business Marketing?

Facebook has been around for so many years, its main purpose was to connect us digitally with our friends, family and new people. Since being founded in 2004, FB has grown enormously, and businesses took to using it to promote their products and services on the platform.

In this blog post, we will be discussing whether or not Facebook has become more difficult for businesses to market and how they can harness the platform in this day and age.

How has Facebook changed over the years?

When it first started, nobody knew how big it was going to be and over a decade on, it is still used by millions of users. Facebook originally started as a place for friends and family to connect and keep updated on their lives. Eventually, they introduced Facebook Ads and pages which were the first marketing tools to be added to the social media platform. The platform soon became available on mobile with the invention and rise of the like button. Later down the line, marketplace and more features were introduced to allow people and businesses to sell things and market their products.

But just how useful were these features for different-sized businesses throughout the years up until 2021?

People primary use Facebook today to connect with their friends, family and we have seen the rise of small, start-up businesses on the platform recently. These businesses tend to be shared and known amongst connected users, which make them easier to grow. More so now than before, we don’t see as much engagement and interaction with larger businesses. Maybe this is because the social media channel has become more and more condensed to just people who know people locally? When the pages were introduced, any company and especially the bigger, wider known ones were willing to put their marketing money on the table to invest in Facebook ads to go alongside their new page. Nowadays, we don’t see this as much.

Why?

We don’t see this as much because the larger companies seem to have moved on from Facebook digital marketing. It is plausible that they began to recognise that there was more potential elsewhere such as Google Ads or other social media platforms. TikTok is a great example of a rising social platform where business are moving their marketing to. Check out our blog on how to market on TikTok, here. With primary users of Facebook in 2021 less willing to purchase through an advertisement that leads to a large business, bigger brands tend to still post on their Facebook pages, but we believe invest significantly less in their marketing. Posts on the platform will likely contain company updates, events, new launches of products and services.

How can you use Facebook for business in 2023?

There is still hope! Facebook can still be utilised for marketing a business even in 2023 and even with the other marketing platforms growing. The good news is Facebook ads aren’t expensive and creating a page as well as posting is free. If you are a smaller sized business or even a start-up that caters locally, you will benefit from hearing that FB will help you grow. This social platform is all about contacts and who you know, being able to have your friends share your page with their friends and further on will gain your immediate recognition. Selling a service or product locally is also really useful for businesses to promote on Facebook. Many digital users tend to use the platform to search for items in their area as opposed to Google.

This social media channel requires a lot of personal-level connection to achieve engagements and interest. If you are a business that has a lot of time to communicate with others and post frequently then this is the marketing technique for you. Posting often and creating posts that instigate interactions and conversation amongst users is how you will leverage the power of digital marketing on this social media channel. Facebook has grown to form a family type of environment where users need to feel a connection to a brand on it, otherwise, they feel detached and lose interest quickly.

Summary

Let’s be honest… Facebook will never die out. It will always be there and be a popular platform used by many to connect with people and businesses. However, in terms of marketing a growing, larger business on the channel, that can be trickier than marketing a smaller, local start-up business. Digital marketing is flexible, which means it depends on your goals and how your company works to figure out what strategies to use to get the best results. Some will always use Facebook; others will avoid and take to different socials.

If you are struggling to get your Facebook ads running or setting up your business profile, contact us today and see what we can do to help. If you are currently running advertisements, click here to get a free PPC audit of your campaigns. Check out our successful Facebook marketing client here.