Extensive Use of Facebook Marketing by Entrepreneurs in Gaining a Wider Reach

Introduction

With the emergence of social media marketing through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc., marketing methods have gone through a paradigm shift and more and more number of businesses and entrepreneurs are shifting to internet marketing for showcasing their products and reach out to potential customers.

One such notable and widely used social media platform is Facebook, which initially was just a social networking site but has transformed into a robust social media engagement and optimization tool for corporate (businesses and entrepreneurs). The foremost reason why Facebook is so widely used and being leveraged for having customer base and expanding reach is Facebook has more than 62.5 Million (approx.) Users in India [Internet World Stats- Dec 2012], making it the country with the second highest Facebook users.

According to ‘The Evolution Of Social Media As A Marketing Tool For Entrepreneurs’ [Patrick R. Geho, Jennifer Dangelo], Marketers are not able to precisely piece at each of the details of ROI and how expense-return calculations to be done while marketing through social media as compared to traditional marketing.

The highlights from the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, where more than 3,000 marketers were surveyed, and the results are as follows,

• 1.

  86% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses and use social media to market their businesses. The overwhelming majority (97%) indicated they are participating in social media

• 2.

  89% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses.

• 3.

  Most marketers are using social media to gain marketplace intelligence (69%) and develop loyal fans (65%).

Facebook is one of the most important social networks for marketers. When forced to only select one platform, 49% of marketers selected Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 16%.

Literature Review

Geho, P.R., and Dangelo, J. (2012) highlight the major trend shift of businesses in using traditional marketing methods to Social Media marketing. It showcases how businesses are greatly benefiting from the power social media holds and benefit they have from marketing through it. It also highlights the fact that with rise of analytics tool embedded in social media platforms for analysis and measurement and how effectively entrepreneurs can track and measure the effect and response of any of their marketing campaigns and hence execute Social Media Optimization. The paper also deals with issues related to quantifying ROI from social media marketing and how the new forms of social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr and Google+) have been very successful in the efficient precision of how ROI can be tracked from such activities even on Social Media and the various approaches related to it. The paper showcases Twitter, Facebook Business Pages and analytics through Facebook Insights. Kiron, D., Palmer, D., Phillips, A.N., and Kruschwitz, N. (2012). The paper focuses on the social businesses and how they can effectively maximize their reach.

The paper is divided into various parts, the foremost part of the paper talks about how social businesses are now radically growing, and how their importance is evident in the current social media trends. The middle part of the paper focuses on the challenges of social businesses and identification of where the core business value lies in these businesses, which is also supplemented with practical industry examples of various entrepreneurs and other business leaders and how they are managing their ventures, the latter portion of the paper showcases how social business can be actualized and highlights how a social business can implement itself and grow and the recommended ways to do it.