Facebook advertising opened tremendous opportunities not only for big brands but also to small and medium businesses around the world. Now, it’s not only the ones with deep pockets who can get their ads seen by everyone on TV or billboards — smaller budgets can still have an impact when they’re properly targeted.
With Facebook Ads Manager, it’s easy to launch social media ads as well as create retargeting campaigns to achieve your business goals. Facebook ads are very flexible & affordable and business owners are often charged based on cost per impression & engagement, which means that your money isn’t wasted on an ad that no one sees.
However, Facebook advertising will undergo some big changes with the new privacy policy that the big tech giant, Apple, is releasing with its iOS 14 update.
With iOS 14, users can control how they want to share their location. Rather than precisely sharing their precise location with Facebook — which they use to determine which ads or posts to show you — with the new iOS update, users have the option to only share their approximate location.
Not only that, this update will enable users to see what privacy information an app will request access to before they even download it. Users can also control how much or how little data they allow apps to collect.
Although this sounds like a really good feature for Apple users, it can be detrimental on the part of advertisers. These types of privacy changes will handicap marketers’ & advertisers’ ability to target ads to people because they’d have no (or limited) information to use to show their ads to relevant users.
By extension, these changes will affect users’ experiences on social media platforms because, without knowing anything about them, the platforms will be forced to deliver generic, unrelated ads to users instead of ads they’d be interested in or would be relevant to them. Don’t forget that this doesn’t just apply to paid ads but would affect the algorithms these platforms use to deliver relevant organic posts that users would be interested in, too.
According to 9to5mac.com, Apple reported a whopping 1.5 billion active iOS devices. That is more than half of the total smartphone users around the world. That’s an awful lot of people (users, businesses, and platforms) that will be affected by this change.
If you’re a business page admin who is relying greatly on Facebook or other digital advertising platforms to hit your business goals, here are the things that you need to do to prepare for the changes in iOS 14.
Collect data
Since gathering of data will be greatly affected by the update, as early as now, you need to collect all the data that you have in your CRM, website, promotional programs, mobile apps, social media, etc.
Launch targeted campaigns
If you are not yet running targeted campaigns on Facebook, now is the time to get started. Once you have successfully launched your targeted campaigns, make sure to collect and save the data they reveal about your audiences.
Advertise as much as possible
Big and popular brands did not become successful overnight; they invested a lot of time and money to get to where they are. We’ve had a good run at getting the most for our money using targeted Facebook ads but now is the time to learn from the previous generation of advertisers and put your brand anywhere it makes sense.
Learn to diversify
In order to be visible everywhere and achieve brand awareness & recall, you need to diversify your digital marketing strategy. Don’t just be limited to Facebook advertising — expand and scale using different forms of digital marketing; content, email, SMS, influencers, etc.
Focus on growing your page organically
Double down on creating organic posts and engaging with your followers. Continue to produce relevant content on your page to drive engagement and reach, then continue to engage with people who engage with your posts. Don’t forget,
The iOS 14 update can greatly impact small and medium businesses who are still in the process of creating their name and brand in their respective industries. If you are one of them and think that this update will greatly affect your brand, Facebook created this page so you can add your voice to conversation and potentially find a solution to this problem that millions of small businesses now face.
Facebook has already launched some technical updates in response to iOS 14. For business owners, marketers, and app & website developers, here are the resources you need to know to be prepared for Apple’s iOS 14 requirements:
- Actions for App Advertisers and Developers
- Changes to Marketing API and Ads Insights API
- Actions for Partners and Mobile Web Advertisers
Change is inevitable and this update is just one of the many changes that are coming as data & privacy become more important conversations to users. As business owners, we can only do our best to adapt to these changes whether they are good or bad.
The main thing is for you to be aware and be prepared.