Blog

Facebook Marketing Assignment

1. Discuss your use of marketing research to be used to gather information on present or potential customers. Which forms of marketing research would be best in gathering consumer information relating to the product/service?
2. Explain several external forces that affect your marketing planning and strategy.
3. Discuss the aspects of your customer relationship management (CRM) program.
4. Explain which consumer characteristics (personal, psychological, cultural, situational, social) matter most in the purchase decision.
5. Explain how the product/service is positioned in the market. Create a positioning statement for the product/service and explain its rationale.

Facebook Marketing Assignment

Q1. Discuss your use of marketing research to be used to gather information on present or potential customers. Which forms of marketing research would be best in gathering consumer information relating to the product/service?

Marketing research is essential in helping to develop product designs and ideas and identifying market segments. Besides gathering consumer information is equally important. Based on research, consumers are sensitive about the safety of the information they post on Facebook. Consumers post their photos, messages, videos, and other crucial information and unauthorized access poises thorny impact on their perception of the platform (Abuhashesh, Al-Khasawneh, Al-Dmour & Masa’Deh, 2019). As such, various forms of marketing research could aid to gather Facebook consumer information. Such include Clickstream data which is the data regarding the number of people who visit Facebook and how long they dwell there. Clickstream data helps to monitor the traffic of visitors of Facebook site and explore why they do not visit certain sites.

Further, the research could be done through interviewing the consumers on a face-to-face basis. Such allows for a fluent flow of information while observing the interviewee’s body language. Facebook use research also provides relevant insight on the usability of the product/service to the target audience. This helps to identify the points of strengths to maximize on them, and weaknesses to improve on them. On this note, daily and long hours spent on Facebook by old and new customers could indicate high usability and benefits of the product.

Q2. Explain several external forces that affect your marketing planning and strategy.

External forces include market trends. These explain the tendency of consumers to utilize Facebook products and services for various reasons. On this note, projections of future trends is relative to the consumers’ purchasing behavior. Further, political factors influence marketing strategies and planning. These include political instabilities and tax policy that may influence consumer preferences. Some government policies could also influence the economy hence impacting negatively the tendency of consumers to spend on social media (Groothuis, Spil & Effing, 2020). Legal allowances in various countries also affect marketing strategy. Based on consumer protection laws, some governments could initiate laws against the use of social medial platforms hence this affects the marketing strategy.

Besides, implementation of new laws could impact how Facebook does its business. Such include the tax levied on patent rights and royalties, and also tax on the consumers through their use of the products and services. Such spark in taxes would affect the marketing plans and strategies. Economic conditions are also determining factors. For instance, an analysis of a specific economy could dictate the sales projection of Facebook products hence aid to assess the potential revenues (Groothuis et al, 2020). However, various factors affect the economy such as lending activity, consumer confidence, and job creation which the company cannot control. As such, it is possible to create a marketing plan based on the status of the economy and yet have different results from the projections.

Q3.

Customer relationship management (CRM) entails the practices of managing data and customer interactions. Facebook uses sales force automation tools to manage strategies for obtaining new customers while building loyalty. This also enables it to track the customer interactions.  Marketing automation also enables to automate repetitive tasks to improve on marketing efforts at various point on the lead generation lifecycle (Groothuis et al., 2020). Facebook also uses geolocation technology to target users with location-based adverts (Groothuis et al., 2020). Although some users may block Facebook from accessing GPS on phones, it creates an illusion of control over location-related targeting of ads.

Q4. Explain which consumer characteristics (personal, psychological, cultural, situational, social) matter most in the purchase decision.

Social characteristics of consumers play a crucial role in influencing the purchase decision. Facebook provides people with the opportunity to connect with family, friends, and colleagues and hence, many people are influenced by others to purchase the product/service. Situational characteristics is also important (Abuhashesh, et al., 2019). Admittedly, people post news and other crucial information on Facebook and hence the zeal to keep updated and equipped with a wide range of information pushes many people to open Facebook accounts (Abuhashesh et al., 2019). Others register to Facebook as a source of entertainment and fun when on leisure time. With its extensive fun tools, people have the product for as a necessity to access entertainment. The cultural characteristic also influences the purchase decision. The enhancement in technology has ‘invited’ the need to have social media platforms where people can interact and transact businesses. On this note, it sounds awkward for an individual in the 21^st century not to have a Facebook account.

Q5. Explain how the product/service is positioned in the market. Create a positioning statement for the product/service and explain its rationale.

Facebook’s market position is effected through value proposition, self and social identity. As a value proposition, Facebook is a communication tool which enables people to share information, host status messages while keeping track on others (Bahcecik, Akay & Akdemir, 2019). As such, people keep in touch and update each other about the happenings in their surroundings. Further, as a self-identity tool, consumers use Facebook to uniquely identify themselves and showcase to influence favor, power, and public purchases (Bahcecik et al., 2019).  An example positioning statement could be; “For organization that wish to advertise their products and improve their network, Facebook is the ideal network providing the opportunity to reach out customers. Unlike other social networks, Facebook assures superb developers committed to persistent development of the website”. Facebook allows the marketers to advertise their products through creating profiles and posting pictures on the Facebook account, where customers access information hence making purchase decisions. As such, using the tool is ideal for connecting with clients and accessing new ones.

References

Abuhashesh, M., Al-Khasawneh, M., Al-Dmour, R., & Masa’Deh, R. (2019). The impact of Facebook on Jordanian consumers’ decision process in the hotel selection. IBIMA Business Review, 1-16. https://ibimapublishing.com/uploads/articles/IBIMABR/2019/928418/928418.pdf

Bahcecik, Y. S., Akay, S. S., & Akdemir, A. (2019). A Review of Digital Brand Positioning Strategies of Internet Entrepreneurship in the Context of Virtual Organizations: Facebook, Instagram and Youtube Samples. Procedia Computer Science, 158, 513-522. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187705091931244X

Groothuis, D., Spil, T., & Effing, R. (2020, January). Facebook marketing intelligence. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://128.171.57.22/handle/10125/64054