How Will The Facebook Partner Categories Removal Affect Your Business?

Facebook Partner Categories enable advertisers to target people based on offline behaviours, such as owning a home, being in the market for a new truck or being a loyal purchaser of a specific brand or product.

Facebook partnered with Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian Marketing Services, Oracle Data Cloud (formerly Datalogix), and Quantium to activate Partner Categories in specific markets. These third-party partners collect and model data from a variety of sources, like public records, loyalty card programs, surveys and independent data providers.

Back in March 2018, Facebook announced that they would be shutting down Partner Categories.

The shutdown will be winding down over the next six months (since March!) before completely vanishing in October 2018. Facebook reckon this will improve the (chili paper) hot privacy issue they’ve been recently tackling. During these endless hours of testifying before Congress Mark Zuckerberg personally admitted that this practice has been a little creepy. Although Partner Category cost allocation has always been dialled down to 15%, it’s a targeting choice for many business owners and marketers.

How will this affect your business?

Not much, really.

Although Partner Categories have been a common practice, it definitely wouldn’t have been the only one.

Let me explain how the removal of Partner Categories won’t affect your business.

Three Ways Facebook Partner Categories Won’t Affect Your Business

Who Cares! You’ve Got it Covered!

You’re in your business because you want to make a stable income, live a happy life and make an impact. You’ve been creating change and servicing your clients for a number of years. This means you probably have a loyal following hungry for more news and updates from your brand. This way, you don’t rely on Partner Categories much but rather venture into Custom Audiences and Remarketing.

Strategy! Strategy! Strategy!

Secondly, successful social media marketing isn’t led bottom up, from the tools to the strategy; but top down making sure the strategy is enforcing the tools. Your social media strategy would most likely include multiple tools helping you achieve your goal. If a Swiss knife shredded one feature it won’t cease to exist. Moreover, if you are working with an expert, they’ll swiftly adjust (if required) and be able to evaluate the effects of any social media change coming your way.

Up Your Game!

Finally, get creative. Think of unique ways to talk about your values and mission no one is talking. Be different. Be present. This is a great opportunity to create and test a different approach to social media marketing (and maybe even patent it *wink wink*).  Jokes aside, you have a unique solution to someone’s very specific problem – Partner Categories have no influence over your advertising because your work is relevant, timely and helpful.

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here how I can help you leverage social media technology to really power your mission:

I design simple and effective social media and Facebook ads strategies helping gifted not for profits and businesses for purpose leverage their social media technology and loyal community to really power their mission, building more donations and creating impact. My work is custom solution aiming at the specific needs of your work.

There are many ways you can reach out to see if I am a good fit for your goals. Check out the Facebook Messanger bubble on the bottom right, contact page on the top and/or a form and a calendar, if this type of communication suits you better.

I look forward to supporting your vision of the future!