Poll Reveals Facebook is Still the Most Popular, But Facebook Marketing Trends Spiral Downward
Social Media Examiner recently released the results of their 2019 marketing poll. As expected, the poll shows that Facebook continues to be the most popular social media channel among marketers. But what many people didn’t anticipate was the waning interest in Facebook, with plenty of marketers planning to allot more money on Instagram.
Most Popular Platform for Marketers
The poll reveals that 94% of marketers use Facebook, which means it hasn’t been dethroned yet as the most popular social media platform for marketing purposes. But it appears that Instagram is slowly catching up, with 73% of marketers using it in 2019. Twitter is used by only 59% of marketers, down from 62% last year.
One reason why Facebook and Instagram are so popular is that they’re considered the default advertising platforms by newer social media marketers. According to the study, 89% and 63% of new marketers focus on Facebook and Instagram, respectively. On the flip side, experienced marketers have much more diverse preferences when it comes to their platforms of choice.
Best B2C Advertising Platform
Facebook remains the favorite of marketers for reaching their B2C consumers. Almost 100% of marketers rely on Facebook to generate B2C sales leads. Marketers are also leveraging Instagram extensively in this regard, ranking a close second at 78%.
Social ads on these channels continue to perform well in terms of generating more sales. Many marketers use these social ads to get potential customers to call their business. This explains the rise in popularity of call center outsourcing that includes tracking, attributing, and reporting on calls to maximize conversions.
Top B2B Marketing Platform
Facebook also takes the top spot for the most preferred B2B marketing platform. 91% of marketers use the platform to reach B2B partners, followed closely by LinkedIn at an impressive rate of 80%.
Facebook Marketing Trends Go Downhill
While the figures above seem to show that Facebook remains the king of all social media platforms, at least from a marketing standpoint, the recent marketing trends tell a different story. The poll shows that 10% of marketers plan to decrease their use of Facebook moving forward. This is the largest drop-off compared to other platforms included in the survey.
To make things worse, fewer marketers plan on spending more money on organic activities on Facebook. Perhaps this has to do with the recent algorithmic changes by the platform, which decreased the reach of viral pages while favoring posts with more engagement.
Many marketers appear set on increasing their budgets for their Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn marketing strategies. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are the biggest losers in this aspect, although Facebook is expected to remain a strong competitor in the next few years due to its large user base.
Social media marketers were also asked about which platform they wanted to learn more about, and Facebook ranked second in the list for the first time ever. Facebook marketing only interested 69% of marketers.
The poll highlights the growth of Instagram while showing the gradual decline of Facebook. It’s interesting to see how the balance will change in the coming months as digital marketers spread their resources across different social media platforms.