Facebook as communications tool in the digital age for marketers

Social network Facebook as Communications
Tool in The Digital Age for Marketers
Touseef Ahmed
STUDENT ID: 10375436
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS IN A DIGITAL AGE

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Table of Contents
Social Media: ..............................................................................................................................................................2
Social Media Networks:..............................................................................................................................................3
Reasons to Practice Social Media Marketing: ............................................................................................................3
Social Media Sites:......................................................................................................................................................6
Instagram:...............................................................................................................................................................6
Twitter:...................................................................................................................................................................7
YouTube:.................................................................................................................................................................7
Facebook: ...............................................................................................................................................................7
Social Media Marketing:.............................................................................................................................................8
Segmentation .............................................................................................................................................................9
Types of market segmentation:........................................................................................................................... 10
Targeting and Positioning of customer base:.......................................................................................................... 13
Methods used by marketers to analyse data traits:................................................................................................ 14
Conclusion and Criticism: ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Problems and risk for individuals ........................................................................................................................ 15
Problems and risk within organizations .............................................................................................................. 16
My thoughts: ...........................................................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
References............................................................................................................................................................... 16

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Social Media:
Social Media can be defined as one of the forms of electronic communications through which users are
able to create online communities to share data and information, ideas, personal messages, and other
content such as videos. These forms could be a website related to social networking or microblogging.
These websites serve as a platform / media for people looking to outreach a larger group of communities
already present/part of the online/website community.
[Merrian-Webster, 2018]
The upcoming of social media networks has altered the ways individuals interact with families, friends,
businesses, and even strangers. Since, Social media is used as a communications medium, therefore it
can rightly be said as a tool to reach out to that population already present on the platform. As per
Statista, there are around 2.46 billion active social media users in and around the world. This is expected to grow
to 2.77 billion users until 2019. An average user spent 135 minutes over Social media platform in 2017 as
compared to 90 minutes spent over social media in 2012. Globally, total number of social network users surpassed
the count of 2 billion users in 2016.
[Statista, 2018]
The continuing growth of social media harnesses opportunities as well as challenges to marketing
departments from smallest single-family business to major corporations. Social media creates chances
for instant buzz and excitement. [For example: all the buzz and hype created before launch of a Samsung
or Apple mobile device]. Social media gives marketers opportunities to build a formal interaction with
their customers. While there is a catch in here, a negative word of mouth is deemed to damage the
brand they are advertising across a wider range of customers.

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Few of the well-known examples of a social media platform in this digital age can be named as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or Snapchat.
Social Media Networks:
Social media network users mainly comprise of the young generation, But, is fairly spread over among other size
and shapes of generations. As the name suggests, Social media is used by these generations for communicating
as well as for passing information over to another. Social networking sites seek to appeal to all demographics,
regardless of gender, age, race, income, or education. These sites serve as venues for inter-personal
communication. Individuals keep in touch and follow with others, share events, and make new friends. An ideal
social networking site focusses on an interest, hobby, or demographic group.
This communication can be of various types as stated below:
➢ Social
➢ Formal/Business
➢ Campaigning/Advertising
➢ Passing/Gathering information
Social media sites such as LinkedIn, offers interactions between business-people. Dating sites provide an outlet to
meet potential mates including target groups on sites such as Tinder, OurTime etc. Special interest and hobby
sites vary widely and include sites that focus on a sport, hobby or other activities. Similarly, there are shopping
networks which provide platform to individuals to share product reviews and information about brands and
products. These are not e-commerce sites but rather provide meeting places that enable individuals to share
information with others about products or brands along with comments about their shopping experiences. Social
bookmarking sites allow individuals to share bookmarks of websites. While most people bookmark their favorite
sites on computers, social bookmarking sites make these public. They can be organized in many ways and can be
accessed at any time by anyone. Individuals provide comments about sites they have bookmarked and encourage
comments by others.
Reasons to Practice Social Media Marketing:
Though majority of businesses operate off the base of social marketing, yet, there are some good reasons for
using social media marketing:
➢ It’s natural: You get to generate honest customer base having a certain trait and your website is also
exposed to large groups of people in a unique way. This is very different from traditional paid advertising
which is getting monotonous day by day.
➢ It’s defensible: Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great source of traffic on top of
any attention you are already receiving from other search engines. While it is tough to continuously
increase your traffic, But, once generated, it can very easily be controlled through strategic marketing.
➢ It’s low-cost/high returns: If learnt and practiced well, the only cost that you will be investing is the time
and perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. However, once in practice,
the benefit is going to exceed the cost invested. It takes thousands of dollars to buy links; while social
media has the ability to generate that for free.

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➢ It complements other efforts: Social media marketing optimization is mainly community-specific. It
doesn’t involve with other methods to generate the desired traffic. It normally fits perfectly with an
advertising campaign targeting other websites or search engines.
Marketing is a strategy used by companies to increase their brand awareness, sales and, more importantly, profits.
The long-term viability of any business depends upon how successful its marketing campaign is. Whether a
company offers only one product or multiple products, it has to identify its target market in order to run an
effective marketing campaign. In the past, companies ran mass marketing campaigns through TV or radio ads in
the hopes of catching the attention of the consumers in target markets. Today, businesses are able to offer more
personalized marketing schemes to each individual in its target pool, as opposed to a mass audience all at once.
This strategy is also referred to as micromarketing.
The increase in emergent innovation, such as big data, is heavily relied on by marketers to capture data from
mobile communication devices and e-commerce platforms. The captured data is sorted according to
demographics, geo-graphics (IP address), site or brand preference, spending habits, etc. to track the type of
products that a consumer views or purchases, allowing a website to match related products to digital consumers.
By running a tailored marketing program to a well-defined segment of consumers, marketing intends to entice
the target audience to take an action, such as making a purchase of goods or services. In effect, the end goal of
marketing is to match products to a consumer’s tracked preferences in order to generate profit for a business
from customer satisfaction. Marketing is widely referred as to how Product, Price, Place and Promotion strategies
- the four P's of marketing - create demand for goods and services, and thus influence what is produced and sold
in an economy.
There are different approaches to marketing. For example, a business may decide to run a marketing program by
offering promotions specifically to its loyal customer base; matching special offers to unhappy or lost consumers;
tailoring products to consumers with unique needs; marketing goods and services to residents in a particular town
or region; or offering products to targeted consumers.
Examples of companies that have run successful marketing campaigns are Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Uber. P&G
ran a unique marketing campaign to target African American women when it introduced its Pantene Relaxed
& Natural shampoo and conditioner product line. By using big data from social media platforms, Uber was able to
understand the specific transportation problems in each city it was expanding to. The resulting effect was the
growth of the company’s client base through tailored promotions and referral benefits.
[Investopedia, 2018]
Social Media captures over 30% of Online Time

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[Source: Social Media captures over 30% of Online Time, Katie Young, 2017]
Global social network penetration rate until January 2018:

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[Statista, 2018]
Social Media Sites:
The social media market as is evident, evolves rapidly. Marketers do recognize how valuable it is to keep a check
over the major social media sites and its users. Approximately 42 percent of online consumers are being redirected
from various social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Instagram:
Originally now a Facebook product after its famous acquisition is a widely known photo and video sharing is new
to the league garnering 520 million active monthly users. Majority of Instagram users are young, and wealthy.

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Lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret, Ben and Jerry’s, Bloomingdale’s, Lipton, Macy’s, Gucci, and Michael Kors are
some of the famous brands which have generated considerable online presence over Instagram using the media
of photo and video sharing of their advertisements. Contests and Crowdsourcing for photos are the most popular
tactics used by marketers over Instagram to attract brand awareness.
One of the small businesses that have benefitted from Instagram is Bow Truss Coffee Roasters which have earned
6000 followers by posting authentic pictures of their products.
Twitter:
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that have a wide reach over the online audience including high profile
celebrities, Sports-persons as well as Politicians having a total of 54 million users. Since it is a micro-blogging site,
Companies can monitor what consumers or people are talking about them. Software such as Tweetscan or
Summize, locates a brand or company name mentioned in tweets.
Companies such as JetBlue, Starbucks, Comcast, H&R Block, and Southwest Airlines use Twitter to their best.
Starbucks’ ‘Tweet-a-Coffee’ was very successful in garnering them 54000 new Twitter users. In two months’ time
the campaign generated 180,000 USD in purchases.
YouTube:
As is widely known, it is a video browsing platform. Users create videos using their devices and post it to YouTube.
Based on its engagement, users soon start viewing this video hence, generating number of views. The proliferation
of videos has led to a new venue for fans to interact with brands. Companies maintain their YouTube channels
where they regularly post videos of their brand lines or a specific product. Broadcast videos and Video Reviews
are the most common methods over YouTube to target audiences. Well known example is ‘Covergirl’ which had
251 million viewers of a message that they posted over YouTube.
Facebook:
Currently, the most popular social network all around the world is Facebook; with 2.2 billion monthly active users.
Other popular social networks in this league include WeChat, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and even LinkedIn. As of
January 2018, the global average social network penetration rate is 42 percent. North America and Northern
Europe ranked first and second in this category at 70 and 66 percent respectively. As per AdWeek, Facebook’s
popularity is because of its sheer size, record of publishing useful content, and the extent of consumer interaction
available.
In addition to brands advertised on its pages, Facebook is expanding advertising services to allow marketers to
target customers on mobile devices based on an individual’s activity offline. This type of behavioural targeting
tool called ‘custom audiences’ allows marketers to gather information from the company’s websites and
applications and then uses that data to target individuals when they visit Facebook on a mobile or static device.
Facebook makes it possible to match customer demographics with Facebook characteristics using email
addresses, phone numbers, names, gender, and home addresses. This means that only individuals who match a
brand’s target market will be able to see Facebook advertising. According to Brad Kim, Vice president of research
firm Curebit, compared to Twitter, Facebook generates ten times the number of shares, 20 times the amount of
site traffic, and 20 times the number of new customers acquired. This is because Twitter teds to be a one-way
message service whereas Facebook features two-way communication between friends and other networks. As
per Adweek, the companies with most successful Facebook presence are Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, and

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Microsoft. This online social activity presence has garnered these companies increase in their revenues more than
the companies that lack a social media presence.
[‘Clow, E. Kenneth and Baack, Donald’, (2018), p. 274]
And Facebook being the biggest and most popular Social media is therefore the largest platform for opportunity
seekers. This makes it a hotspot over the internet for companies to advertise/market their products over the
Facebook platform. Advertisers/marketers run campaigns and advertisements to try and reach those 2.2 billion
active users who could potentially buy their product and become their customer at the same time in the longer
run.
Every user has certain trait while being on Facebook. There are various ways through which data of user
about the Likes, Dislikes, Follows, Fan-page and various other types is created. Businesses look for these
kinds of data to target a certain group having similar traits as that of the product. Facebook thus, provides
all these pre-requisites to allow a business market to use such data in their marketing or advertising
campaigns.
[Prezi, Alison Koning, 2018]
Facebook user share in the social network around the world:
[Facebook Business, 2018]
Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing involves the utilization of social media and/or social networks to market a
product, company, or brand using the market segmentation techniques.
Some of the Facebook advertising features include:

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• Demographic target by Facebook user data using age, location, education, and interests of
users.
• Capability to set ad budgets.
• Ad testing, in which multiple ad versions can be run simultaneously in order to compare ad
designs and setup.
• Built-in ad performance measurement tools.
Segmentation
A digital marketer can use Facebook for market segmentation as a tool. With the application of a correct
approach, it can generate huge benefits towards the Return on Investment as well as build a reliable
model for the target audience. Segmentation is basically narrowing or breaking down a larger market
into different, tiny groups. These tiny groups are then known as segments and can further be combined
or narrowed down to analyze more details/traits. An advertiser at that point builds up a compelling
notifier framework which is in a state of harmony with each portion when required separately or all in
all. The business at that point chooses which section they need to target. Facebook as a publicizing stage,
gives the computerized advertisers, the group of onlookers to investigate the division ideas and decide
how to execute showcase division by utilizing Facebook promotions and Facebook Insights.

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Types of market segmentation:
Geographic Segmentation:
This is segmentation of the market based on the country, region, state, neighbourhood, postal codes,
or even more general characteristics like rural/suburban/urban.
Demographic:
Segmentation of a demographic market refers to separating the market into bunches based on factors
such as gender, age, income, occupation, size of the family, education, marital status, ethnicity, and
others.

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Lifestyle/Psychographics segmentation:
This segmentation is characterized by the way of life a man is living. It includes contemplating the identities,
sentiments, considerations, convictions, conclusions, and estimations of shoppers. How would they invest their
relaxation energy? What sort of side interests do they have? What is vital to them? How would they see the world?

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Benefit segmentation:
There is a purpose for each purchase a buyer makes. An advertiser needs to discover what that reason
was so the showcasing endeavors are lined up with the inspirations and needs of your customer. With
gathering of people bits of knowledge, you are fit for discovering individuals who need to purchase
something because of the purpose for the purchasing choice. That is the thing that advantage division is
about. What you have to ask yourself is: how does a client benefit from purchasing my item or
administration?

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All these types can be easily done using Audience Insight tool of Facebook Ads Manager. Facebook is
the best suitable platform which enables a user to perform incredible market division for advertisement
campaigns.
Targeting and Positioning of customer base:
It means what it literally means. As an advertiser, I would need to explicitly Target my crowd and Position
myself into a superior mode to overcome the consistently developing rivalry and to keep up the
item/mark status. Market division utilizing Custom Audiences. Advertisers can additionally channel their
gathering of people by focusing on them in certain ways based on the following:
➢ Customer files
➢ Website traffic
➢ Pulled up from App (applications) activity
➢ Engagement on Facebook
➢ Lookalike Audiences

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[Source: Matchnodes, Online, 2018]
Methods used by marketers to analyse data traits:
Facebook offers ample methods to the business people which they can use to collect and analyse data
for potential business opportunity:
➢ Through Facebook Business page: A Facebook page is a free marketing tool for businesses. These
pages let organizations recognize themselves – through posting item offerings and administrations, as
well as by sharing connections, pictures, and posts on an adjustable page to give a superior feeling of a
business' identity and character. Facebook business page is an incredible spot to build up your image
personality and demonstrate your human side.
➢ Facebook Advertising: Classic ads: Facebook offers its own type of promoting with Facebook
advertisements, which show up in the side segments of the Facebook site. These exemplary
advertisements are alluded to all the more particularly as Marketplace Ads. They incorporate a feature
with duplicate, a picture, and a navigate connect to either a Facebook page, a Facebook application, or an
outside site.

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➢ Hosting Facebook contests: Running Facebook contests, sweepstakes, or advancements is
another Facebook promoting strategy that can expand fans and brand awareness.
➢ Facebook promoted posts: Facebook Promoted Posts let Facebook page proprietors pay a level
rate to have their individual Facebook posts achieve a specific number of clients, expanding a
particular post's span and impressions.
➢ Sponsored stories: Sponsored Stories are a type of Facebook ad that demonstrates a user’s
connections, such as a Facebook like, to the user’s friends. Sponsored Stories look to benefit from
the ‘word of mouth’ marketing concept. In the event that a user sees that few of his companions
like a certain page, he is more inclined to pay attention. The objective of Sponsored Stories is to
have a client make an indistinguishable move from their companions. Sponsors can indicate
companions "likes" on the off chance that they need more page likes, demonstrate companions
who have "guaranteed this offer" if a business needs more clients to assert offers, and so on.
➢ Facebook open graph: Facebook Open Graph gives organizations a chance to name a client's
activity with their application. Billions of co-operations are posted with Facebook Open Graph
each day. Organizations can make outsider applications that associate with a client and post a
notice on Facebook when a client plays out a particular activity with the application. Facebook's
Open Graph takes into consideration inventive intuitive choices outside of the standard "like"
and "remark." Posts can propose that clients "tune in," "taste," "read," – it's up to organizations
to get imaginative. For all intents and purposes whenever a site or application prompts clients to
sign in to Facebook, it has a remark with associating the client with the Facebook Open Graph.
➢ Facebook exchange: Facebook Exchange gives publicists a chance to exploit advertisement
retargeting on Facebook through continuous offering. Sponsors can target gatherings of people
in light of web history information – when a client visits an item page on a retailer's site, yet
neglects to make a buy, the retailer would then be able to show a promotion for that same item
on Facebook with FBX.
[WordStream, Meagan Marss, 2018]
Conclusion and Criticism:
Despite all the acclaimed benefits, Social Media has its own disadvantages. People as an individual or as an
organisation face problem when using Social media for their purposes which could result in disasters. Some of
these hidden or apparent shortcomings are as mentioned below:
Problems and risk for individuals
➢ Chances to un-knowingly share personal information leading to unwanted communications from company
personal.
➢ Personal information can easily be used to find out exact location and address of users.
➢ Increase in Identity theft cases where individuals pretend to be someone else. Hence, leveraging on the data
being shared with them.

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Problems and risk within organizations
➢ To create and maintain a social media handle or page for their employees having set of commonly agreed
guidelines in terms of organization’s policies.
➢ Having an on-board social media networking team to manage and monitor any crisis of negative or false
information regarding company’s name and brand image using social mediums such as Twitscoop, RSS feeds,
or Technorati to keep track of recent posts where they have been mentioned.
One such disaster where a company felt the heat of abrupt use of social media is Domino’s Pizzas. This incidence
occurred 2009 when two Domino’s employees shared a video on YouTube. This video showed these employees
doing disgusting things with pizza toppings. The employees were then fired and faced criminal charges, but
Domino’s Pizza had to deal with a disaster that could in normal life be prevented.
[Melissa Agnes, 2012]
References
1. Merriam-Webster, ‘Social Media’. Available at: https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/social%20media (accessed on 01.04.2018)
2. Statista, ‘Daily time spent on social networking by internet users worldwide from 2012 to 2017’. Available at:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/ (accessed on 01.04.2018)
3. Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/ (accessed on 03.04.2018)
4. globalwebindex, ‘Social Media Captures Over 30% of Online Time’. Available at:
https://blog.globalwebindex.net/chart-of-the-day/social-media-captures-30-of-online-time/ (accessed on
31.03.2018)
5. Statista, ‘Global social network penetration rate as of January 2018, by region’. Available at:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269615/social-network-penetration-by-region/ (accessed on 31.03.2018)
6. ‘Clow, E. Kenneth and Baack, Donald’, (2018), ‘Social Media’, ‘Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and
marketing Communications’, 8th edn. UK: Pearson Education Ltd

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7. prezi.com, ‘Social Media Information Systems: What it is important and..’. Available at:
https://prezi.com/4au3rmkjn5lz/social-media-information-systems-what-it-is-important-and-h/ (accessed
on 02.04.2018)
8. Facebook, ‘Your people are here’. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/products/ads (Accessed
on 31.03.2018)
9. Facebook, ‘Know your audience like never before’. Available at:
https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-audience-insights (Accessed on 31.03.2018)
10. Facebook, ‘Ads Manager’. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-ads-reporting-
ads-manager (Accessed on 31.03.2018)
11. matchnode.com, ‘Market Segmentation Using Facebook’. Available at:
http://www.matchnode.com/blog/market-segmentation-using-facebook/ (accessed on 07.04.2018)
12. WordStream, ‘7 Ways to Use Facebook for Marketing’. Available at:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/04/15/facebook-marketing (accessed on 07.04.2018)
13. Mellissa Agnes, ‘Domino’s Pizza: A Look At the Timelessness of A Social Media Crisis Plan’. Available at:
https://melissaagnes.com/dominos-pizza-a-look-at-the-timelessness-of-a-social-media-crisis-plan/(accessed on
07.04.2018)
Other References used:
14. The next web, ‘Advertising in the digital age: why online-first is the future’. Available at:
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/02/25/advertising-digital-age-online-first-future/ (accessed on
08.04.2018)
15. Insights for professionals, ‘The Power of Traditional Marketing in the Digital Age’. Available at:
https://www.insightsforprofessionals.com/blog/the-power-of-traditional-marketing-in-the-digital-age (accessed
on 08.04.2018)
16. Astrid-online, ‘The Digital and Social Media Revolution in Public Affairs’. Available at: http://www.astrid-
online.it/static/upload/the-/the-digital-and-social-media-revolution-in-public-affairs.pdf (accessed on
02.04.2018)
17. Adweek, Available at: http://www.adweek.com/ (accessed on 03.04.2018)

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