Facebook Inc. Marketing

FACEBOOK INC. MARKETING 1
Facebook Inc. marketing
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FACEBOOK INC. MARKETING 2
Facebook Inc. marketing
Company
Facebook is one of the leading social-media company which operate an e-commerce
business as its core business. It has been in existence for the last one and half decades since it
was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard University.
Facebook has shown tremendous growth and still has a potential to grow as it is considered as
one of the most popular social-media site harboring more than 1.56 billion active users every
day as at quarter 1 of 2019. This represented an average increase of 11% on a year to year
basis (Treadaway & Smith 2010). According to statista.com, out of the approximate 2.53
billion smartphones perceived to be existing in the world, around 85% of the owners use
Facebook application. Approximately 88% of all Facebook users access it through mobile
devices. According to the Facebook report released in 2018, more women than men use
Facebook where the latter comprises 62% while the former represents 74%. Approximately
25% of Facebook users are aged between 25-34 years forming the largest age group to use
Facebook. Additionally, statistics have shown that 65% of adults ranging from 50-64 years
uses Facebook. It is worth noting that 44% of consumers have confessed that Facebook has
influenced their shopping behaviour. This can be supported by the fact that approximately
95.8% of social media marketers use the Facebook ad platform to influence consumers. Since
its inception in 2004, there has been a constant expansion of Facebook’s target customer
segment. Facebook utilizes four types of segmentation to target its customers. One of the
type of segmentation is geographic which uses region and density as the segmentation
criteria. Demographic segmentation uses age, gender, life-cycle stages and occupation as the
segmentation criteria. The third type of segmentation used by Facebook is behavioural that
makes use of a degree of loyalty, benefits sought, personality and user status as the

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segmentation criteria. Social class and lifestyle are the two segmentation criteria applied by
Facebook in its fourth type of segmentation referred to as psychographic.
Considering its expanded user base of over 2 billion and taking into account that the
company is only 14 years since its inception, Facebook has been viewed as the largest social
app. The growth of Facebook has been influenced by the rate of world development more so
in the last half-decade. A deduction can be made that the huge Facebook user-base build-up
has been promoted through its app optimization for low-bandwidth connections and use of
cheap mobile devices (Dann & Dann 2011). This has helped it to attract all levels of users
from diversified locality depending on the existing technology. Facebook cannot exclusively
be categorized as a product or a service. It is a hybrid of a product and a service. Although
Facebook was developed as a social network, it has broadened up to advertising platform,
service platform and social marketing platform. In the past decade, Facebook Inc has
transformed into an innovation-driven company driving major open-source projects. Thus,
Facebook is a service through which people can connect. Based on Facebook data, many
applications can be developed. It is also an advertisement platform. Therefore, Facebook is
also a product that can be used by users to improve their services. Reports show that in 2018,
Facebook announced annual revenue of approximately 55.84 billion US dollars. It is critical
to note that despite having a user base of over 2 billion, Facebook does not make money
through its content or directly through its user base (O’Connel, 2018). Instead, the primary
source of revenue for Facebook is digital advertising. They offer companies a platform to
access over 2 billion people globally. Therefore, 85% of Facebook’s revenue is sourced from
advertising. The various forms of advertising through which Facebook generates revenue
include self-serve advertising, targeted advertisement, Facebook messenger ads, video ads,
Facebook mobile and data generation. The Facebook non-paying users are important to the

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Facebook goal of money making because it is through them that an audience is created which
is necessary for other companies to target and sell their business.
The PESTEL analysis of Facebook inc looks into the significant external factors
affecting its operation from its macro/remote environment. Facebook needs to satisfy its
corporate vision and mission statement by ensuring that it strategically align itself with
industrial environmental conditions. The Facebook business is associated with the political
landscape. Thus, the effects of government influence the operations of the Facebook
company. Among the political factors affecting Facebook, the business includes political
stability in developed countries. This factor act as an opportunity for the company because a
friendly environment is created for the company to invest more and achieve the envisioned
growth and extension (Smith & Zook 2011). The other political factor is government support
for globalization. This also acts as an opportunity for Facebook since globalization is a key
factor in Facebook business. The imposition of a political barrier to certain markets adds up
to the political factors affecting the Facebook company. An example is the political barriers
in China markets. This is a threat to the company since barriers halt Facebook operations in
the said market. Political action on online data affects the political landscape for Facebook
operations. This is a threat to the company since Facebook relies on data generation to make
revenue. Looking at the economic factors influencing Facebook business, the increment in
the economic stability of the developing countries allows the company to increase its market
penetration. Facebook relies on improved infrastructure to realize its mandate. An economic
factor of rapid economic growth in the developing countries has a consequence of improving
the structural infrastructure. This influences expanding access to Facebook’s social network.
The increment in disposable income in developing countries is an economic factor that leads
to an improvement in Facebook users’ capacity to buy devices that will be used to access
Facebook’s services. This factor creates an environment for the Facebook company to expand