Facebook Says SMB Marketers Should Evolve Along With Them

There’s no question that many small-to-medium sized businesses have relied heavily on Facebook for years as a free marketing platform where they can make direct connections with their customers. However, over the past couple of years, the social media giant has repeatedly taken steps that have minimized the organic reach of these companies on its network.

This all came to a head last October when Facebook warned advertisers that “unpaid marketing pitches” would see a “significant decrease in distribution” in its News Feed. Although the social media company said the decline in organic reach was necessary to protect the quality of the News Feed for users, many SMBs considered it to be an unfair move with the sole intent of forcing them to buy ads in order to reach customers. Many businesses considered the change to be a bait-and-switch, where SMBs spent years building their communities on Facebook for free, and once this became highly successful and widespread, the social media giant took advantage of their reliance by removing the majority of organic reach and providing no alternative for small businesses but to start paying for ads.

Street Fight recently conducted an interview with Jonathan Czaja, Facebook’s head of small business in North America, to ask some hard questions about the company’s moves in this regard.

Overall, Czaja said the decline in organic reach reflects a broader evolution of Facebook as an advertising platform. While he understands the frustrations and concerns of small businesses, he said Facebook’s adjustments require marketers to change their thinking.

“The reality is that Facebook as an advertising platform is evolving,” said Czaja. “We started with ads based on social metrics, and what we’ve done is spend a ton of time building advertising products based on business objectives rather than social actions. We’ve seen this platform evolve and now our advertisers are having to evolve with us.”

Unfortunately, while this may be true, SMBs are still left wondering whether or not it’s worthwhile to continue investing time and resources into community building on Facebook.

Street Fight asked, “So what’s driving small businesses to go out and build a community on Facebook even given the declines in organic reach?”

“There’s still a lot of value to the Page apart from distributing content to your fans,” Czaja responded. “We’ll have a lot more to say about Pages going forward, and we do think it’s important that small businesses create a presence on Facebook and demonstrate the value they bring to their customers.”

Although his answer doesn’t provide specifics, it does offer hope to small businesses that Facebook is planning to assist them in retaining value for their Pages in the future. How this will manifest itself, however, is yet to be seen.

Street Fight also asked about the known customer service problems at Facebook, and how the social media company plans to improve these issues.

Czaja acknowledged Facebook has “underinvested in the service it has provided to small businesses,” but said to expect improvement in the future. “These companies are pouring their heart and money into their platform so we need to not only build products for them, but also provide the support to help them use our platform,” he said.

Czaja continued by explaining the company’s plans to invest in building a more substantial customer service offering to provide small businesses with a higher level of support. For example, he said Facebook is testing live chat capabilities so advertisers can receive additional support via screen sharing, and the company will soon be testing voice support as well. Czaja further stated Facebook will be investing heavily in online courses and other self-help tools.

“Facebook has taken a more product-based approach to this marketplace in part because we’re an engineering-first company, and like a lot of tech companies, service is something that trails in our priorities,” explained Czaja. “But we realize that we need investment, and you’re going to see a big push by us to re-establish that connection.”

Although improving its customer service is clearly a major undertaking that will take time to develop, SMBs will be pleased to know that the company is making moves in this direction.

Facebook has certainly grown massively as a paid marketing platform, now having 2 million active advertisers, a large number of which are SMBs. Considering the major decrease in organic reach on the platform, many businesses have turned to paid ads, while others have chosen to redirect their focus to other platforms.

Is Facebook still a primary marketing platform for your small business? Would significant improvements to its customer service increase the likelihood of your business investing in ads on the social media network?

These are questions many SMBs are asking themselves, and it will be interesting to see the ways in which Facebook improves its offerings and service for these businesses in the coming period.