As a social media platform, Facebook is regarded as the largest platform that is used by consumers on a regular basis, with 1.94 billion users on a monthly basis in 2017 (Statista, 2017). This leads on to suggesting that Facebook is the largest platform that is used by businesses to market their products to potential customers due the usage of Facebook by people; 70% of marketers use Facebook to target new customers (Pick, 2014). Furthermore, Facebook provides a platform for small businesses to be able to market on a much larger scale with little cost due to the service being free; DeMers (2015) suggests that 41% of small business in the US uses Facebook as a main marketing tool to communicate to customers. Facebook provides a chance for businesses to market themselves cheaply and with Facebook being the leading social media platform then it is ideal for businesses to do this; DeMers (2015) suggests that 85% of social media sales comes from Facebook.

Awareness

Businesses use Facebook as a chance to build their awareness of their brand as the social media platform is the largest platform of all social medias (Jahn and Kunz, 2012); this is too build a relationship with their audience over the long-term to drive potential customers to their brand (Tafesse, 2015). The infographic below suggests that Facebook has a much larger follow and like rate compared to the second highest of YouTube. This suggests that businesses are using Facebook much more and their main digital marketing strategy as there is much more in return using Facebook as their main platform. This makes Facebook a much more attractive platform to go too to promote their brand as they receive a much higher response through communication both ways (Malhotra, Malhotra, & See, 2013).

Facebook was made to create personal accounts which will allow people to connect with friends and family to see what they are up to and to communicate with each other; business used this to market themselves to others due to the popularity of the social media platform (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). This makes Facebook a leading platform for businesses due the size of users that use the social media daily.

Facebook Live

The video below shows an example of Facebook live stream that BuzzFeed conducted to help promote their brand.

Facebook live is a new addition to the Facebook community when I was introduced in 2015; this provides the community the chance to be able to communicate effectively with brands that use these marketing options (Donovan, 2017). There are a number of benefits that comes from using Facebook live:

  1. Relationship with potential audience:
    Facebook live provides a chance for the audience to be able to interact with the brand on a real-time scale so that responses and information can be given straight away. This will build a positive relationship with the brands audience if the brand is able to maintain constant communication between them and the audience.
  2. Videos are more desirable:
    Visual content through videos are more appealing to consumers in recent years, as viewers remember content better through videos (Donovan, 2017); for example the John Lewis advert every Christmas brings loads of publicity to the brand. This might not be through Facebook but it shows the power of a video and represents how Facebook live is a marketing tool that brands are using to target and communicate to their audiences.
  3. Be remembered through Live video:
    Through the use of live video, Facebook provides opportunities to brands to boost their awareness and appeal to customers. The Online Publishers Association found that 80% of people that watch a video will recall that video back to the brand leading to over 25% going on further to find more out on the brand. This shows the potential of Facebook live streaming and with Facebook ranking live videos higher on the news feed then this makes it more appealing to brands to use (DeMers, 2016).

There are many brands that have been using Facebook live to their advantage to gain more attention and awareness to their brand, Davis (2016) states these three brands using Facebook live effectively:

  • Airbnb and Disney – Airbnb partnered with Disney for their premier of The Jungle Book movie where they live streamed interviews with the celebrities on the red carpet. This brought a lot of attention to both Disney and Airbnb for this as the live stream was popular.
  • EA sports Madden NFL – Madden NFL live streamed the NFL draft in 2016 which brought huge amounts of viewers to the stream and expressing awareness for the brand.
  • Target – Target used Facebook live to provide behind the scenes footage of Gwen Stefani’s new video before the release of it. This was to build awareness of the video coming out and to communicate effective to their audience about the new thing due to release.

To watch all the live streams, please click here.

Critique of Facebook Marketing

In recent years, social media presence has become a main marketing tool that businesses have been adapting to due the large number of users that use each platform daily. However, in regards to Facebook, other social media platforms have become an alternative for consumers to go to, to find out about other brands and see new products.

The table above shows the key social media platforms that are used to follow brands to keep up to date on the products and offers these brands offer (Hutchinson, 2015). This shows that Instagram and Twitter are the most used social media platforms to follow particular brands; suggesting that Facebook is falling behind the competition in regards to being a social media platform that people turn to for information on brands. Thus, leading to many marketers and businesses marketing themselves on several platforms as a form to communicate effectively to all potential customers that are looking for their products.

Takeaway

To conclude, Facebook is an appealing platform for business to be able to promote and effectively communicate with their audience. This provides brands with instant feedback and can be able to deal with any complaints or request that people may have instead of calling up or going into store which makes it more convenient for customers. Options within Facebook such as Live streaming allows brands to instantly promote a products or offer that they have to build customer awareness and with Facebook ranking live videos the highest on the news feeds this makes it really appealing to brands (Tafesse, 2015). To takeaway from this blog, it is clear that Facebook should be the main platform for brands to operate their digital marketing strategy to be able to target the highest amount of users of all social medias. With additional content such as Live streaming and connectivity to other social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter then Facebook sits as a firm favourite for brands to build their brand on a digital basis.

 

References

Tafesse, W. 2015, “Content strategies and audience response on Facebook brand pages”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 927-943.

Jahn, B. and Kunz, W. (2012), “How to transform consumers into fans of your brand”, Journal of Service Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 344-361.

Malhotra, A., Malhotra, C.K. & See, A. 2013, “How to create brand engagement on Facebook”, MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 18.

Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), pp.59-68.

Statista (2017) Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide. [Online] Available at < https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

Pick, T. (2014) 104 Fascinating Social Media and Marketing Statistics for 2014 (and 2015) [Online] < http://www.business2community.com/social-media/104-fascinating-social-media-marketing-statistics-2014-2015-01084935#zt1WGZczYbg1vSrw.97 > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

DeMers, J. (2015) The definitive guide to marketing your business on Facebook. [Online] Available at < https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/08/20/the-definitive-guide-to-marketing-your-business-on-facebook/#33a190172f51 > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

DeMers, J. (2016) 5 awesome examples of brands using live video for marketing. [Online] Available at < https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/11/23/5-awesome-examples-of-brands-using-live-video-for-marketing/#4a29d51fbcdd > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

Donovan, L. (2017) 5 benefits using Facebook live video. [Online] Available at < http://www.business2community.com/facebook/5-benefits-using-facebook-live-video-01773422#I0EQZCpeOqWBJzeh.97 > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

Hutchinson, A. (2015) How many social media users follow brand pages infographic. [Online] Available at < http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/adhutchinson/2015-10-03/how-many-social-media-users-follow-brand-pages-infographic > [Accessed 05 May 2017]

Davis, B. (2016) 10 pioneering examples of brands using Facebook Live [Online] available at < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67808-10-pioneering-examples-of-brands-using-facebook-live/ > [Accessed 05 May 2017]