Marketing Mix of Facebook: 7Ps

Facebook is a leading social media company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in the year 2004. In around 16 years of existence, the company has enjoyed very sharp growth and boasts of a user base of more than 2.5 billion monthly active users from around the globe. Apart from connecting with others and forming communities, social media users around the world also use Facebook for marketing and promotions as well as messaging. Facebook has brought many more products apart from its social media platform. The main source of Facebook’s revenue is digital advertising which forms substantially all of its revenue. A large part of its revenue now comes from mobile devices since the number of mobile device users around the world has grown leading to more and more people accessing online services through smartphones and other mobile devices. In recent years, the company has been investing in its platform to grow user engagement and that has resulted in higher earnings from advertising. The headquarters of Facebook is located at Menlo Park, California in the United States. 

Target Market of Facebook:

The primary target market of Facebook is the tech-savvy millennial users. The largest demographic of Facebook users are in the 18-34 age group, including males and females. According to Statista’s research, women in the 18-24 age group and men in the 18-34 age group were among the largest demographics of Facebook users in 2020. Facebook’s appeal is the strongest among the young users that lie in the 18-40 age segment. These are the users that access Facebook’s services most often. However, the network has also seen its popularity among the middle-aged users grow. The growing base of smartphone users worldwide has led to many users globally accessing Facebook’s website from their mobile devices. The target market of Facebook includes students and professionals mainly.

This is a marketing mix of Facebook analysing the 7 Ps.

Product:

Facebook has brought products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality headsets, and in-home devices.  Apart from the social media platform Facebook, the company has also brought other products that include Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Oculus. These products and services are dealt with in detail below:

Facebook: 

Facebook is the leading social media platform in the world. While YouTube has seen its audience size growing swiftly in recent years, Facebook is still the most favorite social networking platform of people around the world which becomes evident from the size of its global audience. As of December 2019, the number of Monthly Active Users on Facebook had grown bigger than 2.5 billion. People use Facebook to connect with family and friends and to form communities or build groups. Apart from that businesses can use Facebook to engage with their fans and followers from around the world and to promote their brand and products to a large audience worldwide. Facebook is the favorite channel of social media marketers because of the vast reach it offers as well as the cost-efficiency of the platform in terms of marketing and promotions. Nearly every big brand and a large number of small brands use Facebook to grow their marketing reach and to promote their products and services before their customers worldwide.

Instagram:

Facebook has continued to grow its business through acquisitions and has acquired at least three platforms in its history, one of which is Instagram. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and since then the photo-sharing app has seen a lot of success as a social media platform and become the favorite of millions of users worldwide. Apart from the common users, Instagram has also grown heavily popular among celebrities and a large number of celebs like Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez use it to stay connected with their fans and followers worldwide. Instagram’s popularity as a marketing tool has also grown a lot worldwide and companies are partnering with what they call Instagram influencers (Instagrammers with a large fan base) to market their products or promote their services. 

Messenger:

Messenger is Facebook’s messaging app that the company has developed to help people chat with others. Messenger despite being simple is a powerful chat application that allows people to connect with friends and family. Apart from that businesses also use the features of messenger to respond to their customers’ on Facebook. Messenger has also become highly popular as a messaging tool like another Facebook product WhatsApp. 

WhatsApp:

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps used by people around the world. Its popularity as a messaging tool used by both individuals and businesses has surged a lot in recent years. Its feature rich and easy to use interface is the main reason that  the tool has found heavy popularity. Apart from sending messages, people or businesses can use the tool to send photos and other kinds of attachments like pdf and doc files. A large number of businesses around the world are using WhatsApp for messaging and internal communication.

Oculus:

Oculus is an ecosystem of hardware, software and developers. Oculus was a virtual reality hardware and software company that Facebook acquired in 2014. It sells three types of virtual reality headsets that include Oculus Go, Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S. 

Place:

In the era of the internet, the number of services being sold online has grown exceptionally. All of Facebook’s services are available online and people from around the world can access it using internet-enabled devices. The headquarters of Facebook are located at Menlo Park, California.  However, apart from its headquarter the company also operates more than 70 offices around the world. While Facebook is available in more than 100 different languages, the company has offices and data centers in more than 30 countries around the world. 

Price:

Pricing is not a barrier for a very large number of Facebook users globally since anybody can create an account and start using Facebook to connect with others, be a part of communities or for marketing and promotions. However, the company also sells advertising placements to the marketers who can advertise their products or services using Facebook before a very large and global audience. However, when it comes to digital marketing, Facebook offers advertising placements at quite competitive rates. It is why a large number of businesses from around the world including big and small businesses use Facebook for running campaigns and seasonal promotions. One major benefit of using Facebook for marketing, it allows you to start even with a very small marketing budget. 

Promotions:

Facebook is a well-known brand around the world and enjoys very strong brand awareness in nearly all corners of the globe. The company has experienced a great rise in its user base and particularly from the Asia Pacific region, its user base has grown a lot in the past year. In order to grow its popularity and expand its user base, the company has continued to invest in its platform to bring superior and more innovative features that engage users better. However, the company also markets its products and services by using digital marketing tools mainly.  In the past two years, the company has greatly expanded its marketing and sales budget which is now very close to $ 10 billion. During 2019, the company invested $9.88 billion in marketing and sales. Within a year, its marketing and sales expenses increased by more than $2 billion. In the previous year, the company had invested $7.8 billion in marketing and sales. Apart from higher competitive pressure, another main reason behind the growth in the marketing and sales investment of Facebook is the higher focus on generating superior results for marketers buying ads on Facebook. The company also invests in CSR and sustainability to strengthen its reputation.

People:

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook. As a technology company, Facebook places a very heavy focus on managing its people and invests a lot in their compensation, training and career development. As of December 2019, the company employed 44,942 employees. By investing in employee satisfaction, the company has successfully established itself as one of the most preferred technology brands for tech graduates. Apart from higher salaries and other non-financial benefits, the company is also known for offering its employees a great workplace and work environment.

Processes:

As a social media platform, Facebook offers a very easy to use web application that is feature-rich and requires little to no technical knowledge to work with. A large number of users from around the world that are not tech-savvy can also use Facebook skillfully. Creating accounts and building business pages is easy on Facebook. However, apart from these the company also offers a number of features that are meant especially for developers and requires programming knowledge. However, a basic user generally does not need programming knowledge to make use of the connection features or even for marketing.

Physical Evidence:

In the era of internet and digital technology, a large number of companies offer their services online solely and payments are carried out digitally. In the case of Facebook, the physical evidence is limited to the physical infrastructure of the company as well as the app and the user interface that people open on their laptops and mobile devices. Payment receipts for the payments that the users make online on the platform are provided digitally as a pdf or in an email attachment. Moreover, the importance of physical evidence due to the growing use of digital technology and the internet has diminished continuously. Technology brands like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are trusted worldwide by businesses and individual users.