Global Partner Summit 2017 - Day 2

Global Partner Summit 2017 kicked off yesterday at the Palace of Fine Arts and Exhibition Center in San Francisco.

Here’s what happened on day two.

Building holistic solutions

“Facebook is about building solutions, not just products,” said Vatsal Mehta, Facebook’s Director of Solutions Engineering, who kicked off day two. “As we think about technology, building a holistic solution is more important than building one piece of the puzzle.”

Mehta shared 3 areas where Partners can help build those solutions:

• Creative Measurement – With more creative platforms and content than ever, it’s increasingly difficult to know what makes something “good creative.” Partners can build measurement solutions to help businesses use data to inspire the best creative work.
• Verticals – Some solutions serve one vertical better than another. Partners can deliver more value by building verticalized solutions.
• Segments – Similarly, some solutions serve one segment better than another. Think about solutions that serve specific segments.

An approach that Amobee has taken is to build modularly on our platform. “Rather than compete with Facebook’s native platform, create tools that compliment the platform,” said Johnny Horgan, VP of Global Partnerships at Amobee. “This ensures that partners are always adding value to customers.”

Opportunities with Messenger

With every new communications platform — from traditional mail and telephones to email and SMS – businesses discover new ways to connect with customers. Messenger is the latest platform that businesses can use to help them drive personal connections with people, according to David Marcus, Facebook’s VP of Messaging Products.

Here’s an example of how ads on Messenger can help. If a person is looking at an ad for shoes on their phone, and then gets distracted, a campaign that leverages ads within Messenger can send that person a follow up message, creating another touchpoint to reengage with the ad. Even after purchase, ads in Messenger can continue to engage the customer with follow up communications, like offering customer service about the purchase and letting the customer know about upcoming promotions.

So, how can businesses and Partners get started with Messenger? First, Marcus said, a lot businesses need to simply get on Messenger. Next, Partners can help businesses learn about and implement Messenger ads and Click to Messenger ads. Marcus also announced that the new Messages Objective would be rolling out to Ads Manager . This new objective creates a way to optimize for people most likely to engage on Messenger.

4 big opportunities with medium to small businesses Medium to small businesses represent one of the key areas of growth across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Ruth Kricheli, Facebook’s Director of SMB Operations and Analytics, identified four key trends in this community and the opportunities they create for Partners:

• Measurement solutions — Medium to small businesses often create direct and intimate relationships with consumers. But they don’t usually have the resources to gather data from these interactions. This creates an opportunity for Partners to build lightweight measurement solutions that can help these businesses gather the insights they need to scale.

• Simple solutions – With many of them running sophisticated campaigns using just their mobile phones, medium to small business owners are like hackers. They move fast, but Partners can help them move even smarter. That means creating simple, mobile-first solutions that give businesses ad creation, delivery and creative tools that can make running campaigns even easier and more impactful.

• Optimal solutions – Medium to small businesses are often new to advertising on Facebook, and some are new to advertising in general. Partners can help these businesses by creating optimal solutions that fit the specific needs of these businesses.

• Bold solutions – Increasingly, medium to small businesses are industry disruptors. They start behind, take risks and act boldly. Partners need to be equally bold, and adopt a disruptor mentality that encourages innovative, bold solutions that can help these businesses, and their own, thrive.

Until next year… Thanks to all of our Partners for being part of this community. Check out the Facebook Marketing Partners page to watch videos from this year’s Global Partner Summit. We look forward to seeing you next year!