MGT502: Facebook as a Business Development Tool Analysis

This report explores the multifaceted role of Facebook as a pivotal tool in modern business development. It examines Facebook's impact across various sectors, including finance, retail, e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, restaurants, tourism, and media. The analysis highlights how businesses leverage Facebook for marketing, customer engagement, brand building, and revenue generation. The report delves into specific examples, such as the use of Facebook ads by ASOS, the success of Tropicana's social media campaigns, and the role of Facebook in destination marketing. It emphasizes the platform's ability to facilitate targeted advertising, enhance customer interaction, and provide valuable insights for strategic decision-making. The report also acknowledges the challenges associated with social media marketing, such as privacy and misinformation, emphasizing the need for a judicious approach. The report is supported by academic research and provides a comprehensive overview of Facebook's significance in contemporary business strategies.

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.

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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

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FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
(Luarn, Lin & Chiu, 2015).Another crucial area where Facebook has emerged as a successful
business tool is for the restaurant and hotel industry where one can connect with the world’s
largest food community on Facebook and Instagram. Any eating joint can share their updates
with such large communities where the members are quite active and create the carvings,
send in real-time messages to bring in customers and finally boost bard loyalty by providing
personalised values, conversing with customers, getting reviews, taking necessary feedback
and making them feel appreciated (Mariani, Felice & Mura, 2016). The best example of this
is Jack in the Box , this fast food chain completely relied of video ads on Facebook to reach
their delicious looking campaign which no doubt brought them huge amount of success in a
very short time span . The next business sector where Facebook has made remarkable effect
is the Tourism Industry, where Facebook has not only provided ample opportunity to identify
the prospective travellers but to directly communicate with the users, constantly engage with
advocates and create the necessary branded experience through potential advertising along
with custom made Facebook application. In this information age, customers visiting a travel
agent’s office have become obsolete. The travellers feel to be equipped enough to plan
everything on their own from their overall budget to their food, lodging and chosen
destinations. Hence in such a scenario Facebook is often attributed as the right choice by the
tourism business companies. This is also known as Destination marketing which is
increasingly becoming popular in today’s age of digitalisation (Erkan, Gokerik & Acikgoz,
2019). To best understand the impact of Facebook on Destination Marketing Operation it is
necessary to discuss some real life examples, such as: the “Go Scandinavian” campaign
which was designed to promote the culture and invite more people to get exposed to the same
through social media brought in immense amount of positive response. Facebook was used
as the primarily marketing and promotional channel along with other subsidiaries like
Twitter, Youtube, Flikr and Pinterest. The researchers observed that the engagement rate on

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FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
the Facebook Page was over 50% and in a three-moth duration campaign more than 26
million Facebook impression was generated. Indian also witnessed the same success when
Kerala Tourism decided to organise two workshops in association with Facebook. The
workshop was named as “Travel Goes Social” and this social media marketing campaign was
specifically conducted in the cities of Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, to help people explore
the places and know about the same. The work shop also had guest lecturers advising tourism
companies how to infuse social media in tourism marketing as well as appreciating Kerala as
the only Indian state to have a social media presence in promoting their Tourism business
(Weedon, Nuland & Stamos, 2017).The next sector which deserves a mention is media and
entertainment. Today more and more television news and entertainment channels are
launching their own personalised Facebook Pages, the only reason being its wide reach, mass
appeal and the speed. People are always updated and connected. Varied news reporters have
also shared instances where they have first received a piece of news through Facebook and
then from their employed sources. Hence it is very easy to understand how effective and
powerful this platform is when it comes to communication.
According to Trattner & Kappe, (2013), the world of social media never sleeps hence the
marketers need to constantly optimise, develop specific user friendly contents and run
targeted advertising in order to remain relevant and on the top of the mind of its targeted
consumers. However one needs to keep in mind the challenges which might come in this
dynamic world of social media marketing be it in terms of security, privacy or spread of
misinformation Hence using Facebook requires a judicious think and act approach on the part
of these market segments to make the best possible use of this dynamic communication
channel.

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FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Bibliography:
Erkan, I., Gokerik, M., & Acikgoz, F. (2019). The Impacts of Facebook Ads on Brand
Image, Brand Awareness, and Brand Equity. In Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship
and Marketing for Global Reach in the Digital Economy (pp. 442-462). IGI Global.
Kim, D. H., Spiller, L., & Hettche, M. (2015). Analyzing media types and content
orientations in Facebook for global brands. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Lee, D., Hosanagar, K., & Nair, H. S. (2018). Advertising content and consumer
engagement on social media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Science, 64(11), 5105-
5131.
Luarn, P., Lin, Y. F., & Chiu, Y. P. (2015). Influence of Facebook brand-page posts
on online engagement. Online Information Review.
Mariani, M. M., Di Felice, M., & Mura, M. (2016). Facebook as a destination
marketing tool: Evidence from Italian regional Destination Management
Organizations. Tourism management, 54, 321-343.
Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2015). The impact of brand communication on
brand equity through Facebook. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Shin, W., Pang, A., & Kim, H. J. (2015). Building relationships through integrated
online media: Global organizations’ use of brand web sites, Facebook, and Twitter. Journal
of Business and Technical Communication, 29(2), 184-220.
Trattner, C., & Kappe, F. (2013). Social stream marketing on Facebook: a case
study. International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing, 2(1-2), 86-103.

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FACEBOOK AS A TOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Weedon, J., Nuland, W., & Stamos, A. (2017). Information operations and
Facebook. Retrieved from Facebook: https://fbnewsroomus. files. wordpress.
com/2017/04/facebook-and-information-operations-v1. pdf.