Adzooma co-founders Rob Wass and Dave Sharpe were recently invited to an exclusive at Facebook’s HQ in Dublin.

George Morris, Facebook’s UK Partner Manager, invited us to feature on the C-Suite series. This is designed to explore the personalities driving global independent agency growth through Facebook.

It was an honour to be invited as a member of this series.

We’ve been working closely with Facebook since early 2019. This partnership has been an instrumental part of our own growth, allowing us to integrate Facebook Advertising into our own platform.

As well as helping oversee the entire partnership, George has worked closely with our Paid Social Manager Matt Hogan on our own Facebook campaigns, helping generate new ideas, creatives and areas to target, and help us gain a deeper understanding of the platform.

Almost a year since integration, our co-founders in the video below look at how this partnership has allowed us to create a one-stop advertising solution for every channel, and also delve into some exciting developments that are coming for both Facebook and Adzooma.

If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s a pretty snazzy-looking interview too. We’re almost half scared that Rob and Dave might head straight to Hollywood after this.

If you’ve got a spare half an hour, I’d recommend that you give it a watch. It’s a really insightful look into what advertisers and agencies can expect from the future of both Facebook and Adzooma – as well as the true power of data, automation, and testing.

Because this interview is pretty lengthy, I’ve selected the top 3 points that you can learn.

1. Agencies aren’t adapting to AI fast enough

One of the key points Rob brought up in the interview is that agencies aren’t adapting to AI fast enough, still clinging onto manual processes that are becoming increasingly outdated.

Automation technology and AI are designed to save businesses time and effort by cutting out manual tasks. They’re a necessity, not an option.

If they don’t start to adapt to AI, they’ll fall behind. As Rob puts it, there’s no way to outcompete the pure amount of data that AI is able to process.

But AI doesn’t mean that agencies have to fear for their jobs. Automation doesn’t take away their value but instead offers a bigger chance to expand the creative side. With more time, they can focus on greater strategies and create more campaigns to increase growth and performance overall.

AI and humans need to work hand in hand.

It’s one of the core values behind Adzooma. The platform was built to save time managing your online advertising. Our technology crunches the data in seconds, suggesting opportunities that you can apply in a single click.

But it’s your decision whether to apply them or not. Human choices, strategies and creatives, powered by AI. That’s the winning combination.

2. Community is the future of Facebook

One of the benefits of Facebook, explains Rob, is the mass reach and community element of the platform.

People spend a lot of personal time on Facebook. They use it to talk to friends and remain social. It’s more than just a social media platform, it’s an entire community. It’s only a matter of time before it’s essential for businesses to become a part of this community.

Facebook users are already using the platform for post-sale support. Advertising directly to users through their chat system has just been implemented. The obvious journey is that users will expect an easy way to access and talk to businesses through Facebook.

The businesses that do this successfully will thrive on Facebook.

3. New Agency features to be implemented in Adzooma

Our mission is to help businesses of all sizes realise that advertising doesn’t have to be complicated. The Adzooma platform was built to help anyone save time and simplify their advertising, from the smallest business to the biggest agency.

Adzooma isn’t here to compete with agencies. It’s here to help them by providing them with AI and automation features that will save them hours every week and allow them to scale their business.

To strengthen Adzooma’s relationship with agencies, we’ve got some exciting new features in the pipeline.

The first of these is more insightful data to agencies. By knowing what common opportunities are coming up for people who don’t use an agency, we can identify the areas they struggle with most – and the best value that agencies can offer their clients.

Secondly, as Dave tells us, Adzooma will recommend local agencies to clients that might benefit. For example, if an opportunity fires for slow page load speed, they might be shown agencies in their area who will be able to help them with this issue.

It’s a win-win for small businesses and agencies.

Almost every type of business can benefit from Facebook

Before finishing the interview, Rob and Dave shared some parting advice on why they believe almost every single type of business can benefit from Facebook: because your audience will be there.

But before rushing in, they gave these 3 important tips:

• Make sure you spend time setting up a Facebook page. Users will visit it, so make sure that you’re active and optimising this side before you advertise.
• Don’t try to do everything yourself. There are hundreds of tools and pieces of advice you can use to help make your campaigns run smoothly.
• Make sure you’re using the different formats available, including video and images. Facebook has a wide variety of ad creatives that you can use to your advantage.

Overall, we’d like to say a big thank you for George for having us.

Want to hear more?

Catch George Morris at the next B2B Expo on the 26th of March 2020. Speaking on behalf of Adzooma, George will be using his experience of supporting business growth to deliver a detailed talk about B2B Scaled Intelligence.

We can’t wait to see him up there.