Facebook is a social network that allows people to communicate to one another irrespective of their location. It lets its users to sign up; create their personal profiles, search and invite friends to be part of their contact list. With the friend list one will effectively communicate to the other through a chat, messaging or commenting of an updated status.
Facebook has brought a huge number of people together letting them share ideas, recent news and stories. However, facebook has also helped in the marketing field. It has brought a truly new level in the business world of personal marketing where a business associate can interact with other associates and focus in a specific target audience (Dharra, 2010).
Facebook has proved to be unique in the world of personal marketing. This is because it lets businesses to create a strong business relationship with specific clients. There are many forms of advertising but the use of facebook for personal marketing is unique.
Facebook lets one to brand them self and also to convince their clients of irresistible value of the products or services one is offering, hence positioning one as the leading in the target market. For instance, the price of advertising on facebook is barely little. This is because one is required to sign up in facebook then create a page, invite prospective customers in the page and introduce the product to the customer.
The beauty of this form of personal marketing is that, when one is signing into facebook they voluntarily provide some basic information and details like gender, birth date and location, favorite TV shows and even religious and political views. This helps the marketer to choose the target market, get the views of these clients about the product and also the possible ways to improve the product (Granville, 2004).
Facebook has the option of one uploading ads as a form of personal marketing. With these ads, one marketer will pay for every click by a client on the ads to view the product of interest. This makes facebook very cheap in terms of the price of advertising and its flexibility.
When an audience clicks on the product of interest, the client may pose a clarification or remark on the product, the sales person will be in a position to make adjustments to address questions or concerns of the customer.
This is an advantage as compared to other non-personal forms of advertising like radio advertising which is inflexible in the short term to easily address the questions and concerns of customers. This makes facebook a unique way of personal marketing of products (Granville, 2004).
Facebook is not just a passing fad but is to stay. It has so many strengths in using it for personal marketing. Facebook is a great resource for generating brand awareness since using facebook application will help one to engage consumers and build a relationship with the consumers. Facebook also helps in management due to the response of the consumers on the product being sold.
This helps the management to make the necessary improvements on the product. Facebook is also a good way to acquire new consumers. However, there are risks that are associated with the use of facebook for marketing purpose.
For instance, facebook has millions of users daily, which poses a threat of many hackers to personal accounts, hence the spread of viruses. These viruses affect the web pages. Facebook is also an addictive site and can lead to the waste of professional life (Dharra, 2010).
Facebook was recently affected by a privacy issue since hackers would intentionally hack into people personal accounts and change their personal information.
This privacy issue will not affect personal marketing, since as much as people know the drawbacks of using facebook they are still addicted to the application, in order to keep track of their friends. This means there numerous consumers who use facebook. This has brought a big excellence in marketing (Dharra, 2010).
Reference List
Dharra, B. (2010). What are the disadvantages or dangers of using Facebook. Retrieved from Yahoo Answers website: https://answers.yahoo.com/
Granville, C. (2004). Marketing plan in Facebook an Hour a day. Web.
Kotler, P., Keller, K.L. (2012). Marketing Management (14 Ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.