Facebook as a Tool of Business Development

Running head: FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Facebook and its financial impact
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FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
The world of social media has no doubt brought in ample amount of business development
opportunities alongside its very strong networking and marketing approach. The reach, the
speed coupled with cost effectiveness is increasingly making social media the most chosen
platform for business transactions by large as well as small scale companies. According to
Shin, Pang & Kim, H. J. (2015), Facebook with its 2.27 billion monthly users has potential to
promote business products and services, increase customer retention and support as well as
boost recognition.. In this article, the central emphasis would be in understanding the
potentials of Facebook in business development and what are its wide spread impact across
varied business sector
Amidst of multiple other social media tools, Facebook no doubt deserves a special mention
when it comes to the business development aspect for the service sector industries. The
Facebook for business option extended by this social networking site has altogether
revolutionised the impact of social media on business. It promises business flexibility like
never before, allow marketers to tell their brand’s story in their own desired way, enable real
time conversation with the customers to build brand loyalty and facilitate cross- platform
marketing solutions. The concept of Facebook for business is no doubt an integrated
marketing communication approach which according to Schivinski & Dabrowski, (2015) aids
the business organisation by providing multi-media promotional campaign ether through its
class advertisings attractive announcement aspects or sponsored brand advertising stories. It
has catered to the business needs of varied sectors ranging from financial, to retail and e-
commerce, gaming, automotives, restaurants, consumer packaged goods, tourism and
entertainment and media. Mura, (2016) in their research paper identifies and explains the
power of Facebook Pages to the marketers. According to these researchers, the pages are
more like a virtual store front for the business entities to showcase what it has to offer to the
customers.

2
FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
To better analyse the impact of Facebook on business, it is beneficial to analyse what makes
Facebook so attractive to marketers as well as consumers. According to Hence Luarn Lin &
Chiu, (2015) the financial flexibility that the business developers aim to achieve in their
business operation is making them opt for this radical shift from mainstream banking to
mobile banking services where the very process of managing financing is getting digitalised.
Facebook in such a scenario is helping these banks develop mobile built apps which have
significantly gained a lot of popularity in the past five years. Mobile banking apps like “Chat
Banker”, “Paym” have altogether revolutionized the experience of financial service sector for
its customers (Kim, Spiller & Hettche, 2015). Similarly in the retail and e- commerce
business, Facebook for Business has shown tremendous success results where it ensures
perfect reach of the brand across its 2.5 billion user base every month, to bringing in more
buyers through effortless signup process, email marketing and hassle free mobile app
installations to finally making the sell happen. One of the leading example in this sector is
ASOS, the online fashion retailer operating on a dynamic mobile platform which has
significantly used Facebook ads to get customised and personalised advertising messages
spread across varied social media platforms and increase sales by volumes (Lee, Hosanagar
& Nair, 2018). Next is the consumer packed goods sector where it has been observed that
globally 1.59B people have access to Facebook everyday and these CPG can easily market
their products using this social media platform. One of the finest examples of this is none
other than the renowned brand Tropicana which heavily invested in their Facebook and
Instagram promotion apart from their television advertising and witnessed 45% higher return
on the ads given on social media platforms. The prime reason of such a high success rate is
the interactive nature of this platform which according to varied market experts allows the
brands to completely utilize their creative potentials and delivery message using multi-media
channels which can range from audio, video, graphics, motion pictures and much more