12 com­pa­nies have just been award­ed exclu­sive mem­ber­ship in a club with almost 1 Bil­lion constituents.

On Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 20^th, Face­book award­ed the 12 best social mar­ket­ing tool and ser­vice providers with a new title of “Strate­gic Pre­ferred Mar­ket­ing Devel­op­er,” like a mem­ber­ship to an exclu­sive online mar­ket­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. The 12 con­tent man­ag­er com­pa­nies in this club will be the first mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies brands go to when sort­ing through the Pre­ferred Mar­ket­ing Devel­op­er (also known as the PMD) direc­to­ry of 300 B2Bs to find trust­ed Face­book Page and Ads opti­miza­tion providers. Along with the exclu­sive sPMD title, mem­ber com­pa­nies will also receive a spot on the sPMD coun­cil, ear­ly access to Face­book prod­ucts and extra sup­port from dif­fer­ent teams at Face­book, mak­ing mem­ber­ship both lucra­tive and honorary.

Com­pa­nies on the sPMD Council

The fol­low­ing com­pa­nies are part of the 12 mem­ber Strate­gic Pre­ferred Mar­ket­ing council:

Adobe

AdPar­lor

Alche­my Social / Techlightenment

Brand Net­works

Glow

Graph­Ef­fect

Ken­shoo

Nani­gans

Sales­force

Social­Code

Spruce Media

77 Agency

All of these 12 sPMD com­pa­nies will offer every­thing from adver­tis­ing, appli­ca­tions, insights and pages to the com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er of each brand’s Face­book page, among oth­er types of use­ful mar­ket­ing advice.

What This Means for sPMD Companies

Being includ­ed in this exclu­sive club is a huge accom­plish­ment for all of these com­pa­nies and is an incred­i­bly smart strate­gic part­ner­ship for Face­book. First, these 12 com­pa­nies are all poised to gain a num­ber of clients by being on this list, due in part to the hon­or of being on the list, but also because they will be one of the first B2Bs that clients com­ing to Face­book for mar­ket­ing will see. They will also get the first crack at offer­ing and per­fect­ing new mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Facebook’s new clients. As they are being sup­port­ed by Face­book direct­ly, the sPMD com­pa­nies will also have their prod­ucts pro­tect­ed or quick­ly fixed when the social media jug­ger­naut makes inter­nal changes. In short all the com­pa­nies with the sPMD sta­tus will be cash­ing in over the next year, if not longer, assum­ing they can main­tain this exclu­sive status.

What This Means for Facebook

For Face­book, these 12 top-tier Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing Devel­op­ers keeps their appeal to brands as high as ever, encour­ag­ing a con­stant stream of adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing via the Face­book plat­form. Com­mu­ni­ty man­agers and con­tent man­agers at Face­book know that good mar­ket­ing dri­ves up traf­fic and vice ver­sa, which will help Face­book to main­tain it’s appeal to both adver­tis­ers and it’s bil­lions of users. How­ev­er, this exclu­sive club of top tier sPMD com­pa­nies also show the biggest adver­tis­ers that they will get noth­ing short of the best online mar­ket­ing minds work­ing on their prod­ucts or ser­vices if they do busi­ness with Face­book. While most big brands are already doing busi­ness with Face­book, this new, elite club of mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies may con­vince them to spend even more of their mar­ket­ing bud­gets on the social media site.