Social networking platform Facebook recently announced that it now has 65 million businesses pages on Facebook, 8 million have profiles on Instagram. In a blog post released this week Facebook said with more than 5 million active advertisers on Facebook, it needs to provide solutions for businesses so customers can learn more about their products, visit websites, download an app, or even send messages. In an interview, Esme Dean , lead for SME India spoke about the small and medium business market for Facebook in India and how they are leveraging the platform:

Q: Please provide some details on the small and medium businesses segment in India? How has it evolved over the past one year?

A: Small businesses are the backbone of Indian economy, as they are the primary drivers of new jobs in the country. Business strategies, particularly for mobile, can help them grow tremendously, which in turn can have a significant impact on the global economy. Creating a mobile presence, however, can be difficult to do and expensive. The biggest reason businesses succeed or fail is their ability (or inability) to attract customers.

In a mobile powered economy, people engage with the things that matter. Facebook is an important part of everyday life for people in India with over 184 monthly active users and 99 million daily active users and more than 178 million people access Facebook monthly on mobile and over 95 million people daily. Also, over one billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business in another country. And that is also true in India, as 41% of people on Facebook are connected to at least one business in a foreign country and 59% of people on Facebook in India are connected to at least one SMB.

These SMBs are turning to Facebook for their business because they know how to use it personally: setting up a Page is just as easy as setting up a profile. As of October 2015, there are around 2 million SMB Pages on Facebook in India with over 2.4 billion interactions being generated between businesses and people in the country.

We have also seen that SMBs are also actively advertising on Facebook because it is helping the drive impressive business results and Facebook is where their customers already are. While other forms of advertising — print, TV, radio — can be expensive and hard to measure, Facebook ads reach the exact customers small businesses want to reach for less money and great returns.

That’s why, today we have 5 million SMBs actively globally investing their hard-earned dollars with Facebook, a number that’s grown significantly over the past few years.

Q: Which are the new features and product upgrades for small businesses on the platform?

A: Facebook has always been committed to helping small business grow and local businesses to become global. We are continuously working on creating simple solutions to help small businesses grow in today’s mobile economy. With Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, small businesses can:

Save time and see what’s working: With the Ads Manager App, businesses can manage your ads and get insights in just a few taps. We’ve even updated the app to optimize their time. At a glance, they can see how ads for their Pages are performing, or see a snapshot of how the ad account performed this week compared to the previous week. And the improved navigation allows businesses to easily switch between their accounts and Pages. The app now recommends also actions that can be taken to increase ad performance and makes it easy for businesses to do so in one click.

Get creative: Creativity has never been more important for businesses, and now, even the biggest ideas can fit in the palm of your hand. Mobile has leveled the creative playing field, giving all businesses the ability to deliver world class creative to people around the world. But small businesses want faster, easier and more cost-efficient ways to create new content for Facebook and Instagram. That’s why we created Mobile Studio, a new way to show businesses how easy it is to create great ads using only a mobile device. All businesses can improve their creative, and ultimately, the efficacy of their ads with mobile apps and tools—and with Mobile Studio, they’ll learn to do them things in minutes.

Learn new skills: Blueprint eLearning courses give businesses the power to learn best practices for advertising on Facebook’s family of apps and services at your own pace.

The online education platform is available in ten languages and today more than 1 million unique users, half being small businesses, use Blueprint.

Some top courses include, Facebook Terminology to A/B Testing, to Successful Campaigns Best Practices, and we’re adding new courses each month. In fact, almost 2.5 million eLearning courses have been taken by people across more than 150 countries, and 50% of our total course enrollments are taken by small or medium business owners and employees.

Communicate with customers: Responding to the customers quickly is key to delivering good customer service but it can be hard to keep up with the volume of communications coming in. In November 2016, we announced a single inbox to manage communications across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram within the Pages Manager App. Today, we’re expanding these capabilities to desktop.

Find new customers, near and far : We’ve made it easier for businesses to run global campaigns from anywhere and have new solutions that help businesses connect with new customers:

1. International Lookalikes can help businesses find new people that look like their best customers in other countries

2. Worldwide/Global Region targeting can help businesses set up a global campaign and find efficient conversions

3. Country Snapshots and Insights Playbook can help businesses create customized campaigns in each country

Learn from like-minded business owners: We rely on small businesses to help us learn better ways to help businesses grow, which is why we created the Facebook Small Business Council. This new site features stories of dedication, passion, and resilience from more than 40 businesses across a variety of industries and geographies, but who share a common belief in the importance of serving their customers, their communities and each other.

We’ve created Small Business Councils in the US, India, Brazil and Germany—and plan to announce councils in more countries this year.

Q: Any particular ad formats/ad categories that are particularly popular with small and medium businesses?

A: Every day as more people are turning to their phones to discover new things, it has become crucial for small businesses to have a strong mobile strategy.

Facebook is the easiest and fastest way to build a global business on mobile. In fact globally, it is the mobile solution for 65 million businesses with Pages and 8 million businesses with Profiles on Instagram with 5 million businesses actively advertising on the platform. 50% of these 5 million advertisers are creating ads on mobile devices. What has really helped converting these small businesses to active advertisers are our simplified products including boost posts tool on FB Pages.

Video is exploding not just for big brands but for SMBs too. Where earlier advertisers would need expensive TV equipment to shoot video ads that would take time and more money to produce, now with Facebook’s multiple video ad formats, all they need is a phone. Up till September 2016, over 3M small businesses had posted videos on Facebook, including paid as well as organic videos and slideshows.

Q: Any examples of companies in the category that saw a notable jump in their performance through ads on the platform?

A: The Wedding Brigade, an Indian online wedding planning platform wanted to grow their customer base, increase revenue and reduce conversion costs so that they could secure more venture capital funding.

The start-up ran a series of ads on Facebook that showcased the range of products they provided. Based on consumer behaviour, the images chosen had to tell a story, or showed how to use or wear featured items. Short and punchy video ads that focused on a single message such as “Head Jewellery to Make Heads Turn” were created to encourage purchases.

As a result, they reached millions of potential customers while lowering its cost per conversion.

The campaign achieved the following between October 2015 – January 2016:
o 2X increase in monthly revenue
o 2X increase in conversions
o One million people reached per week (compared to 300,000 per week before the campaign)

Q: How does India fare compared to such companies in other Asian markets?

A: India is one of fastest growing countries in the segment within the regions. Indian is among the top 5 countries that is using Blueprint (e-learning).

Source: The Economic Times