Placing 'missed calls' is common in India. It's a practice among the young people who usually request for a call back from their friends or parents. The call request is made to save on money and mobile minutes.
Facebook is taking advantage of this trend in the country by launching a new ad strategy. It's one unique way to reach those who have feature phones.
This mobile service ad is still in its beta stage. How does it work? A Facebook user sees a call button ad by a brand advertiser, clicks on it to place a call, and then he waits for a callback. An automated call will be returned containing information about a certain brand. The call may include different things: message from a brand or a celebrity, sports scores, or music.
One of the first brands to try this out is Garnier Men, owned by L' Oreal. Facebook says the haircare product brand's ads helped increase online sales by an impressive 250% year-on-year.
This new marketing strategy has started in India but it is expected to roll out in other emerging markets in Asia and South America as well. This effort by Facebook is also considered as their first to use ad formats custom-fit to a specific country. Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia will soon get this kind of Facebook ads very soon.
Facebook advertising on feature phones has been around for less than two years. The social network has responded to the demands of advertisers who wanted to reach the emerging markets in new ways. Marketing and sales efforts are in full force in these regions that Facebook is even opening sales offices in Colombia and Indonesia according reports.
"There's an opportunity for us to get much more localized with what we're building and developing. That's an area we're really going to invest in," shared Facebook business lead for emerging markets Kelly Maclean.
The new goal of Facebook is to have ads in high-growth countries. The company noted that Facebook growth is expanding in the emerging markets and not so much in the United States. Some big companies like General Motors even pulled out their advertising from Facebook because of the little impact.
With the 'missed call' advertising strategy, Facebook and the advertisers are expected to see an increase in their ROIs.
