As of January 2016, Facebook has climbed to 1.59 billion users. That means that vast majority of potential and current customers are on Facebook, scrolling through News Feeds. This finding coupled with the fact that Facebook collects an immense amount of personal data about its users, makes it the ideal platform for marketers to learn more about their audience and reach customers.

Here are some ways Facebook is making it indispensable in your overall marketing strategy:

Target Emails Using Facebook Ads

Rather than sending an email to a list of customers, leads, and blog subscribers hoping to reach the right customer, why not create a Facebook ad that targets those same people on your email list? Facebook allows you to target the same email addresses that are used for Facebook logins. If they use the email address that they used to submit into Facebook, they will see your ad. This feature is ideal for brand promotion, driving traffic to your website and up selling on goods and services.

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/custom-audiences

Native Videos

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well as COO Sheryl Sandberg has mentioned that video marketing will only see a upwards trend from here on out. That’s why Facebook has heavily invested in video promotion for businesses and encouraging direct video uploads to the social site. The advantage of directly uploading to Facebook is substantial: They look extra professional, can be featured in an extra large format with a comment feed, and auto play when a user scrolls through the news feed. Even YouTube and Vimeo can’t compete with how much engagement Facebook generates with these videos.

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/custom-audiences

Customer Service Opportunities

One of the biggest reason businesses should have a social media presence is to encourage direct communication with their prospects and customers. Facebook has made it very simple for users to get the answers they need and for businesses to answer questions in a time effective manner. You may have noticed recently that Facebook will display your Page’s reaction time for answering messages as well as offer you an option to privately message a user if they leave a comment on a post. Page administrators also have the option to saves responses to directly and quickly respond to customers right away.

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/pages-messaging-updates

Learn More About Your Target Audience

Facebook Audience Insights can be a very handy tool for businesses to learn more about their customer’s lifestyles and behaviors. This is a free tool that can accessed through Facebook Ads Manager. Some metrics include customer gender, age, and lifestyles such as urban tenants, high online spenders, savvy singles, apple pie families, etc. What’s more, Audience Insights will offer you quick insight into your target audience’s relationship status, education levels and job titles.

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/audience-insights

Target Look A Like Audiences

Having a large following on Facebook can be beneficial for businesses and organizations; you have an audience that is already interested in your products and services. Another advantage to this is creating a lookalike audience on Facebook to find people who look like your established customers. Similar to targeted email lists, lookalike audiences are part of Facebook’s custom audiences. Facebook builds a lookalike audience based on a “seed”. This seed can be based on an existing custom audience, advertising campaign/set conversions, conversion data based on conversion pixels, and Page fans.

Learn more: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/lookalike-audience-targeting/v2.5

Website Conversions

Retargeting – simply known as targeting with the same platform is a feature that Facebook offers for businesses who want to reach website visitors who haven’t converted yet. Cross channel retargeting or remarketing takes it one step further by offering a way for users to connect two non compatible advertising platforms. For example, Google Adwords and Facebook. If paid search ads have worked for you on Google and Bing, but you haven’t seem great results on Facebook, Facebook retargeting can be great option. Using Facebook’s pixel technology, Facebook will track the people who visit your website and display a Facebook ad the next time they login to Facebook. This way, you’re able to target the same people start off searching for you on Google, visit your website, and visit your Facebook. By targeting potential customers in different settings, you stay top of mind and  are more likely to eventually convert the customer.

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-create-ad-website-conversions