Photo: Africa Guide

Kenyan SMEs active on Facebook

Kenyan SMEs are active making revenue through Facebook advertising, the social media site has said.

Facebook picked out children furniture brand FunKidz and online restaurant guide Eat Out, who have expanded their reach throughout East Africa through Facebook advertising.

“She started advertising in 2013 with great success. Since then, FunKidz expanded into export markets such as Uganda and Rwanda, as a direct result of Facebook,” the social media giant said in a press release Wednesday.

EatOut on the other hand grew from a blog with one employee to a full-fledged company with an amazing team of 13, owing to Facebook advertising.

While using Facebook as the only marketing platform, Eat Out grew its business, winning awards including Kenya Tourism Award for Best Digital Media.

Facebook launched its small business advertising platform last year, prompting businesses to maximise their growth online for free rather than pay to create websites.

Facebook now states that over 1 million advertisers create an ad directly from a mobile device, small businesses are more advantaged because majority rely on mobile to grow revenue.

Also, over 20 million active pages on the site are now using Pages Manager App to manage their adverts on Facebook. Small businesses that have access to Facebook advertising pages are now automatically exposed to the international markets.

The social media giant moved closer to Kenya last year with its South African office, it is very keen to tap into the over 2.2 million people actively using Facebook daily in Kenya. Also, Nigeria provides ripe market for Facebook with 7.1 million users while South Africa has over 7.3 million active daily users.

Daily Nation