Businesses in Serbia should be wary not to oversleep the critical moment of mobile transformation and either ramp up their presence in this channel or – if they haven’t already – finally cross the mobile threshold.
Text by Robert Bednarski, Country Director CEE at Facebook
The shift to mobile is the most transformative shift in media consumption since the invention of letterpress printing in the 15th century.
This is not an overstatement. We are witnessing the fastest adoption of communication technology in history: It took TV over a decade to reach 50 million people. Smartphones reached 1 billion people in five years.
The trend is only accelerating – the mobile internet market is predicted to reach a milestone of 5 billion mobile internet users in 2025. According to the GSMA’s 2018 mobile economy report, it is expected that the mobile ecosystem will contribute $4.6 trillion to the global economy by 2022 (5% of GDP), up from $3.6 trillion in 2017 (4.5% of GDP).
The mobile ship is gaining momentum and will soon depart from the pier, leaving businesses without a mobile strategy in place stranded behind.
Facebook entered the mobile segment just in time – in September 2012 Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would focus on building its mobile platform. Today it comes across as truism but back then it was perceived as a strategic change of direction for the company. At that point, there was still no Facebook app for Android and six months earlier Facebook didn’t run a single mobile ad.
Today, mobile represents approximately 94% of Facebook’s total ad revenue.
In 2012, this was a huge commitment and a bold bet. Over the seven years the world has moved forward. Today, and I cannot stress that enough, mobile is critical to the success of nearly any business.
Mobile strategy easier than ever
“Mobile strategy” might sound like something taken out of a corporate business development plan, but that is exactly what small and medium enterprises in Serbia need today. It’s simply about finding a way to reach the consumers’ smartphone screens. Fortunately, you don’t really need complicated tools nowadays. All you need is a well-run page on Facebook or Instagram.
This is an example of how the development of mobile technologies has democratized marketing. What I mean here is that on our platforms, both the largest global brands as well as small and medium-sized enterprises are offered exactly the same opportunities and tools to reach their customers, proportionally to the scale of their operations. This allows them to find customers at reasonable cost. They also have the ability to fully measure how their actions affect sales.
This translates into real benefits for businesses and helps economies thrive. We’ve actually asked European entrepreneurs who use Facebook about this. 68% of businesses say that Facebook has helped them increase revenue. 83% of them say that Facebook helps them attract new customers. And as many as half of businesses have been able to hire more employees due to the growing demand for their products and services since joining Facebook!
No wonder more and more businesses decide to ramp up their online presence. We estimate that today more than 140 million businesses, mostly small enterprises, use our services each month to grow, create jobs and become social hubs in their communities.
Full steam ahead
Advertising tools of such platforms as Facebook or Instagram allow Serbia companies to reach customers where they already are, and through the devices they use the most often. Using our platforms is a natural response to the mobile revolution. Facebook strives to constantly create new tools and offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to dynamically take advantage of the emerging trends in communication and marketing, such as the currently growing popularity of the Stories format on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
When it comes to video, SalesBrain researchers actually compared the responses to advertising campaigns on TV and mobile platforms. They noticed that some videos evoke much more emotional responses on mobile devices. The reason is simple: people hold smartphones closer to the eyes compared to the distance to TVs or computer screens. Despite the fact that the latter are much larger, the size of the image compared to the environment means that the content displayed on mobile devices is consumed much more carefully. Thus, video formats known from traditional television, such as sports broadcasts, gain a new marketing dimension on Facebook.
Fortunately businesses in do not have to stay up to date with the newest insights and figure out their digital marketing strategies on their own. Facebook cooperates locally with Httpool, that offers support to agencies on how to revamp marketing campaigns, choose best placements, test possible alternatives and all in all, drive excellent results. Httpool can help with in-depth information and experience about best practices in Facebook advertising and facilitate implementation of regular educational events. With 22 offices around the world, Httpool can also supportbusinesses to grow internationally or help reach out to potential customers outside your country.
Facebook has also created the Blueprint e-learning platform, which contains dozens of free courses – from the most basic ones, explaining the fundamentals of creating attractive ads for mobile devices, to more advanced ones, like strategic planning and budgeting of advertising campaigns.