Case Study

About Facebook

has brought a whole new level of Personal Marketing to the world of business. It fulfils people’s desire to communicate and interact with each other and uses that power to help other companies target very specific audiences with personalized messages.

HISTORY OF FACEBOOK

• Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg.• It was earlier only accessible from inside Harvard. • Success of facebook was evident from beginning.• Within 2 years, it had spread throughout the globe.• Currently it has over 500 million active users.• It is the most successful venture in the field of personal marketing that made Mark a business tycoon.

Marketing Approach Facebook has become a crucial marketing for just about any brand for several reasons.

• It implements Direct Marketing and delivers the goods and services to the customers without any marketing middlemen thereby saving lot of money doing this.

•Facebook bypasses the high and increasing costs of reaching business markets through a sales force.• It ensures that the companies know enough about each consumer to customize and personalize offers.• Facebook allows various potential clients to create pages where they can personally interact, build awareness and communicate with anyone who takes interest.

Direct Marketing Approach

• Facebook provides a channel for interaction between the company and its prospective customers.• Companies can make their own online communities inviting participation from consumers and creating a long term marketing asset in the process.• A number of advertisements appear in the news feed in facebook which are an effective way of marketing a product.

INTERACTIVE MARKETING

• Even the politics from around the world push their campaigns and communicate with supporters on a local, personalized basis.• Facebook also offers targeted advertising opportunities. Banner ads can target individuals by demographic or keywords based on the specific information they have placed on their profiles.• Companies use facebook to target consumers regionally, promote specific labels within the company and give a personal touch.

MARKETING…

• Consumers us Word of Mouth to talk about dozens of brands each day. Who doesn’t talk about facebook!!• This leads to an automatic marketing of facebook as

nowadays facebook is a compulsion if you belong to the world.• In a survey, college students named Facebook as the

second most popular thing in their undergraduate world.• Increasing word of mouth marketing for the client

companies is driven by communities, pages, etc. on facebook.

Word of Mouth

• Facebook also uses Viral Marketing method and encourages people to exchange online information related to a product or service.• Facebook tends to have more upscale, educated, desirable demographic than the competitive social networks.• This makes Facebook the highest paid entity for advertising ads.

Facebook Rules

Uniqueness of Facebook• Keeping Personal and Public Facebook Content SeparateOne of the top concerns you might have about mixing your marketing messages with your personal profile is keeping your personal things personal.

• Suggest your page to FriendsIf you have lots of friends on Facebook but not lots of fans on your business page, you can suggest your business page to them.

• Segment Friend lists for Targeted messagingWhen it comes to posting updates on your Facebook business page, you can either send your update publicly or target it to people in a specific location.

Recent ChallengesWidening exposure of member information 2011:In 2010, the Electronic Frontier Foundation identified two personal information aggregation techniques called ”connections” and ”instant personalization”. They demonstrated that anyone could get access to information saved to a Facebook profile, even if the information was not intended to be made public. A ”connection” is created when a user clicks a “Bike” button for a product or service, either on Facebook itself or an external site. Facebook treats such relationships as public information, and the user’s identity may be displayed on the Facebook page of the product or service.

Recent Challenges

News Feed and Mini-FeedOn September 5, 2006, Facebook introduced two new features called “News Feed” and “Mini-Feed”. The first of the new features, News Feed, appears on every Facebook member’s home page, displaying recent Facebook activities of the member’s friends. The second feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar events on each member’s profile page. Members can manually delete items from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so, and through privacy settings can control what is actually published in their respective Mini-Feeds.

SOLUTIONS

The following can be some possible solutions :• Develop user-centric privacy control to give customers control.• Avoid multiple intrusions.• Prevent human intrusion by using automation wherever possible.• Let your consumers know you value their privacy and publicize what you are doing to keep their information secure.

MORE SOLUTIONS…

• Let consumers know when their information is being disclosed. If you plan to use their information later on, tell them at the time of asking for the information.• Tell them why you’re asking for their information# and be honest.

CONCLUSION

Facebook has become a crucial marketing for every brand. It provides the best Marketing platform for companies of all types. In 2010, facebook surpassed google as the top website in the world. Fcebook has become an important part of consumers’ everyday lives and therefore a critical component in personal marketing strategies.

Created by Aditya Srivastava of IIT Kanpur during a Marketing Internship by Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.

DISCLAIMER