Facebook announces tools for small and medium businesses to find global customers

Facebook has unveiled new tools and resources to help small and medium sized businesses (SMB) to find more customers in foreign countries. There were over 20 lakh SMB pages active in India as of October 2015. More than 59 per cent of the Facebook users in India are connected to at least one SMB page in India. More than 41 per cent of Facebook users in India are connected to at least one SMB page outside India. The top five nations with the SMBs that Indian users connect to are US, UK, Pakistan, Canada and UAE. Over 17.5 crore international users are connected to SMB pages in India. The new tools and resources introduced by Facebook are designed to help the reach grow for these businesses. Instead of expanding to new territories country by country, a business can expand virtually, customer by customer. There are enhanced targeting tools, that allow content to be delivered internationally in targeted regions. Facebook automatically optimises the advertisement delivery to the countries with the maximum returns for the business.  There is now a Lookalike Audiences tool that uses the current pool of customers and finds people of similar demographics and interest in other countries. The tool is meant for boosting the returns from advertising campaigns on Facebook. The Audiences menu in a campaign now allows you to add Lookalike Audiences, sourced from a managed paged, a custom audience pool, or a conversion tracking pixel. Then a country has to be chosen, and Facebook will find similar audiences from that country. Targeting allows to narrow down the audience by gender, location, age or interest. For SMBs that need help with planning and deploying an advertising campaign on Facebook, there are webinars available that explain how to use the new tools. The webinars will help SMBs optimise the campaign for expansion into new territories. There is also a Cross Border Business Handbook available for download. The handbook contains information on the the different markets around the world, and provides insights on purchasing behavior along with geographic and demographic information. Interested SMBs can sign up for the Facebook IQ newsletter, which provides regular updates and insights on Facebook users for use by marketers.