The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

In the digital age, social media platforms have become an integral part of our daily
lives, transforming the way we connect, communicate, and consume information. Among
these platforms, Facebook stands out as a dominant force, boasting over in
2.8 billion monthly active users. As a result, it has become a gold mine for marketers seeking
to reach and engage their target audience. To maximize the effectiveness of marketing efforts
on Facebook, businesses turn to Facebook Analytics, a powerful tool that provides invaluable
insights and data-driven strategies for target marketing. Facebook Analytics is a robust data
analysis and tracking platform designed specifically for businesses utilizing Facebook's
advertising and marketing solutions. It offers a wide range of tools and features that enable
businesses to measure, analyze, and optimize their marketing efforts. By leveraging the vast
amount of data generated on the platform, marketers can gain valuable insights into their
audience's behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns. This project aims to provide a
comprehensive introduction to Facebook Analytics for target marketing. It will explore the
key features and benefits of this tool, high lighting how businesses can leverage its
capabilities to understand their audience, optimize campaigns, and drive meaningful results.
This will be well explained in the pages below.
1.1 The Background of the Study
Background of the study refers to learning about something by considering its origin and
development. This section is been divided into four different parts that is the Historical
Background, the Theoretical Background, the Conceptual Background and the Contextual
Background.
1.1.1) The Historical Background
Here, we will be looking at the historical background of Facebook and the historical
background of TAS Anointed.
1.1.1.1) The Historical Background of Facebook
Facebook is an American online social media platform and social network service that
is part of the company Meta Platforms. Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg,
Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, all of whom were students at Harvard
University. Facebook became the largest social network in the world, with nearly three billion
users as of 2021, and about half that number was using Facebook every day. The company’s
headquarters are in Menlo Park, California. Access to Facebook is free of charge, and the
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

company earns most of its money from advertisements on the website. New users can create
profiles, upload photos, join a preexisting group, and start new groups. The site has many
components, including Timeline, a space on each user’s profile page where users can post
their content and friends can post messages; Status, which enables users to alert friends to
their current location or situation; and News Feed, which informs users of changes to their
friends’ profiles and status. Users can chat with each other and send each other private
messages. Users can signal their approval of content on Facebook with the Like button, a
feature that also appears on many other websites. Other services that are part of Meta
Platforms are Instagram, a photo- and video-sharing social network; Messenger, an instant-
messaging application; and WhatsApp, a text-message and VoIP service.
The attractiveness of Facebook stems in part from cofounder Zuckerberg’s insistence
from the very beginning that members be transparent about who they are; users are forbidden
from adopting false identities. The company’s management argued that transparency is
necessary for forming personal relationships, sharing ideas and information, and building up
society as a whole. It also noted that the bottom-up, peer-to-peer connectivity among
Facebook users makes it easier for businesses to connect their products with consumers. The
company has a complicated early history. It began at Harvard University in 2003 as
Facemash, an online service for students to judge the attractiveness of their fellow students.
Because the primary developer, Zuckerberg, violated university policy in acquiring resources
for the service, it was shut down after two days. Despite its mayflylike existence, 450 people
(who voted 22,000 times) flocked to Facemash. That success prompted Zuckerberg to register
the URL http://www.thefacebook.com in January 2004. He then created a new social network
at that address with fellow students Saverin, Moskovitz, and Hughes.
The social network TheFacebook.com launched in February 2004. Harvard students
who signed up for the service could post photographs of themselves and personal information
about their lives, such as their class schedules and clubs they belonged to. Its popularity
increased, and soon students from other prestigious schools, such
as Yale and Stanford universities, were allowed to join. By June 2004 more than 250,000
students from 34 schools had signed up, and that same year major corporations such as
the credit card company MasterCard started paying for exposure on the site.
In September 2004 TheFacebook added the Wall to a member’s online profile. This
widely used feature let a user’s friends post information on their Wall and became a key
element in the social aspect of the network. By the end of 2004, TheFacebook had reached
one million active users. However, the company still trailed the then-leading online social
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

network, Myspace, which boasted five million members.

The year 2005 proved to be pivotal for the company. It became simply Facebook and
introduced the idea of “tagging” people in photos that were posted to the site. With tags,
people identified themselves and others in images that could be seen by other Facebook
friends. Facebook allowed users to upload an unlimited number of photos. In 2005 high-
school students and students at universities outside the United States were allowed to join the
service. By year’s end it had six million monthly active users.
In 2006 Facebook opened its membership beyond students to anyone over the age of 13.
As Zuckerberg had predicted, advertisers were able to create new and effective customer
relationships. For example, that year, household product manufacturer Procter &
Gamble attracted 14,000 people to a promotional effort by “expressing affinity” with a teeth-
whitening product. This kind of direct consumer engagement on such a large scale had not
been possible before Facebook, and more companies began using the social network for
marketing and advertising. Privacy remains an ongoing problem for Facebook. It first became
a serious issue for the company in 2006, when it introduced News Feed, which consisted of
every change that a user’s friends had made to their pages. After an outcry from users,
Facebook swiftly implemented privacy controls in which users could control what content
appeared in News Feed. In 2007 Facebook launched a short-lived service called Beacon that
let members’ friends see what products they had purchased from participating companies. It
failed because members felt that it encroached on their privacy. Indeed, a survey of
consumers in 2010 put Facebook in the bottom 5 percent of companies in customer
satisfaction largely because of privacy concerns, and the company continues to be criticized
for the complexity of its user privacy controls and for the frequent changes it makes to them.
In 2008 Facebook surpassed Myspace as the most-visited social media website. With
the introduction of Live Feed, the company also took a competitive swing at the growing
popularity of Twitter, a social network that runs a live feed of news service-like posts from
members whom a user follows. Similar to Twitter’s ongoing stream of user posts, Live Feed
pushed posts from friends automatically to a member’s homepage. (Live Feed has since been
incorporated into News Feed.) Facebook has become a powerful tool for political movements,
beginning with the U.S. presidential election of 2008, when more than 1,000 Facebook groups
were formed in support of either Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican
candidate John McCain. In Colombia the service was used to rally hundreds of thousands in
protests against the antigovernment FARC guerrilla rebellion. In Egypt, activists protesting
the government of Pres. Hosni Mubarak during the uprising of 2011 often organized
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

themselves by forming groups on Facebook.

Facebook encourages third-party software developers to use the service. In 2006 it
released its application programming interface (API) so that programmers could write
software that Facebook members could use directly through the service. By 2009 developers
generated about $500 million in revenue for themselves through Facebook. The company also
earns revenues from developers through payments for virtual or digital products sold through
third-party applications. By 2011 payments from one such company, Zynga Inc., an online
game developer, accounted for 12 percent of the company’s revenues.

In February 2012 Facebook filed to become a public company. Its initial public
offering (IPO) in May raised $16 billion, giving it a market value of $102.4 billion. By
contrast, the largest IPO of an Internet company to date was that of the search-engine
company Google Inc., which had raised $1.9 billion when it went public in 2004. By the end
of the first day of the stock’s trading, Zuckerberg’s holdings were estimated at more than $19
billion.
In October 2021 Facebook announced that it was changing the name of its parent
company to Meta Platforms. The name change reflected an emphasis on the “metaverse,” in
which users would interact in virtual reality environments and weigh their novel opportunities
and risks.
1.1.1.2) The Historical Background of TAS Anointed
TAS ANOINTED enterprise started on the 5 th of May 2008. The name was adopted
from the initials of the proprietors name Takere Akoma Samuel (TAS). TAS Anointed
enterprise was created as secretariat business unit to address the problem of that locality at
that point in time (photocopying, typing, printing, photos etc.) it was a basic necessity since it
was the only secretariat in that locality.
Over the years, it grew expansively to other departments which stress from secretariat-
inforgraphy, videography department .The enterprise started with a single computer system, a
camera, labeling machine (canon), burning machine and a Ricoh printer.
By 2014 to 2016, the enterprise drastically grew to over six computer system, 8
cameras, industrial burning machines 6 labeling machines, three industrial Ricoh printers, a
picture printing hiti machine and six camera tripods.
In 2018 to 2020, it expanded, an audio recording musical studio was established and a
trained sound engineer was employ to handle its activities. Two high performance computer
systems were added to improve the inforgraphier and videographer department. The
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

serigraphy department was equally establish which predominantly produces engrave image
and writings on t-shirt, t-cups, headscarf etc.
1.1.2) The Theoretical Background
Theories are formulated to explain, predict, and understand phenomena and in many
cases, to challenge and extend existing knowledge within the limits of the critical bounding
assumptions. Hence, theoretical frame work introduces and describes the theory which
explains why the research problem under study exists. Here, I will be using 3theories that are
Affordance Theory, Diffusion of innovations Theory and cultivation theory.
1.1.2.1) Affordance Theory by James Gibson
The Affordance Theory was developed by James Gibson in the year 1977. Stuart Hall
preferred negotiated and oppositional readings. All magazines texts are polysomic, and can
be read differently. The preferred reading is often the one that the target audience for a text
will have and conforms to the dominant ideology of society. The negotiated reading will
include some acceptance of the preferred reading but with some personal negotiation, and the

oppositional reading will reject the values of the text.

1.1.2.2) Diffusion of innovation Theory by E.M. Rogers
Diffusion of innovation theory was developed by Everett Rogers in 1962 and states that
a new idea or product will be adopted by the population, but not all at once. Instead, people
are more likely to adopt the idea or product if those in their network have done so first – this
is because they will feel more secure and informed about the new concept if it has already
been tested by someone they know. Diffusion of Innovations can help marketers create
content that spreads faster and to a larger audience.
1.1.2.3) Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner
Cultivation Theory was founded by George Gerbner in 1973. The Cultivation Theory
suggests that individuals develop their attitudes, beliefs, and values through repeated exposure
to media messages. This theory is based on the idea that individuals are influenced by the
messages they encounter on social media.
1.1.3) The Conceptual Background
It defines the relevant variables for your study and maps out how they might relate to
each other. From my topic “The Impacts of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing
for a Business” the variables will comprises of Impacts, Facebook Analytics, Targeted
Marketing, and Business.

1.1.3.1) Impacts (source: dictionary.cambridge.org)

This actually refers to one object coming forcibly into contact with another. In another
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

words it is the force or action of one object hitting another.

1.1.3.2) Facebook Analytics (source:
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebookanalytics)
Facebook analytics is an overarching term for the data and metrics you use to track your
brand’s performance on the platform. This data provides insights into your audience, content
effectiveness, your Facebook Page performance and the overall impact of your marketing
efforts.
1.1.3.3) Targeted Marketing (source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_market)
A target market, also known as serviceable obtainable market (SOM), is a group of
customers within a business's serviceable available market at which a business aims
its marketing efforts and resources. A target market is a subset of the total market for a
product or service.
1.1.3.4) Business (source: https://investopedia.com/terms/b/business.asp)
The term business refers to an organization or enterprising entity engaged in
commercial, industrial, or professional activities. The purpose of a business is to organize
some sort of economic production of goods or services. Businesses can be for-profit entities
or non-profit organizations fulfilling a charitable mission or furthering a social
cause. Businesses range in scale and scope from sole proprietorships to large, international
corporations.
1.1.4) The Contextual Background
This has to deal with the context within which the topic is being chosen. From the topic,
Facebook Analytics is been chosen from social commerce which is a subset of E-commerce.
Social commerce is a rapidly growing branch of e-commerce that uses social networks and
digital media to facilitate transactions between businesses and customers. It encompasses
activities such as product discovery, reviews, ratings, sharing, recommendations, transactions
and loyalty programs. Many businesses use the data gathered from these interactions such as
likes, shares and comments to optimize their offerings over time based on customers'
preferences. This provides customers with an even more personalized shopping experience,
which further increases their bond with a particular brand or business.
1.2 Statement Problem
Facebook Analytics has emerged as a powerful tool for target marketing,
providing businesses with valuable insights and data-driven strategies to reach and engage
their desired audience. However, despite its capabilities, businesses face several challenges in
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

effectively utilizing Facebook Analytics to drive impactful marketing campaigns. The

problem lies in the limited understanding and implementation of this tool, hindering
businesses' ability to fully leverage its potential and achieve desired marketing outcomes. The
following key issues need to be addressed: Limited Knowledge and Skills: Many businesses
lack the necessary knowledge and skills to fully utilize the features and functionalities of
Facebook Analytics. They may be unaware of the various tools and capabilities available or
lack the expertise to interpret and analyze the data provided. This limited understanding
hampers their ability to harness the full potential of Facebook Analytics, resulting in
suboptimal decision-making and campaign optimization. Ineffective Targeting Strategies:
Effective targeting lies at the core of successful marketing campaigns. However, businesses
often struggle to develop and implement effective targeting strategies using Facebook
Analytics. They may face difficulties in leveraging the audience insights, segmentation
capabilities, and cohort analysis provided by the tool. Without a deep understanding of their
target audience and the ability to create personalized and relevant campaigns, businesses fail
to maximize the impact of their marketing efforts.

In this organization (TAS Anointed), the researcher discovered that Facebook analytics
is not use for targeting customers. That is organization does not know how to track its
business progress on Facebook, they don’t know how create a loyal customer base and also
target a wide range of customers.
1.3 Objectives of the Case Study
This has to deal with what the researcher wants to find out. That is, it’s been made up of
general objectives and specific objectives.
1.3.1) General Objectives
 To investigate the impact of Facebook Analytics on targeted marketing for a business.
1.3.2) Specific Objectives
 Examine the effects of Facebook analytics on consumer engagement and conversion rates
when used for target marketing.

 To evaluate the characteristics of the various Facebook analytics solutions available for
target marketing.

 To evaluate the efficiency of Facebook analytics in locating and comprehending the

preferences and actions of the target audience.

 To assess how Facebook analytics affect customer engagement measures likelikes, shares,
and comments.
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

To determine the best methods for enhancing targeted marketing efforts usingFacebook
analytics.

1.4 Research Question

This has to deal with the research question which is been stated in a question form. That is
from general to specific.
1.4.1) General Question
 What the impacts of Facebook Analytics on targeted marketing for a business?
1.4.2) Specific Question
 What is the impact of Facebook analytics on consumer engagement and conversion rates
when used for target marketing?

 What is the impact of the various Facebook analytics solutions available for target
marketing?

 What is the impact of Facebook analytics in locating and comprehending the preferences
and actions of the target audience?

 What is the impact of Facebook analytics affect customer engagement measures like likes,
shares, and comments?
 What is the impact of the various methods for enhancing targeted marketing efforts using
Facebook analytics?

1.5 Hypotheses of the Study

This is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. Its sub divided into two that is
General and Specific hypotheses.
1.5.1) The General Hypotheses
 There are impacts of Facebook analytics on targeted marketing for a business.
1.5.2) Specific Hypotheses
 There are impacts of Facebook analytics on consumer engagement and conversion rates
when used for target marketing.

 There are impacts of the various Facebook analytics solutions available for target
marketing.

 There are impacts of Facebook analytics in locating and comprehending the preferences
and actions of the target audience.

 There are impact of Facebook analytics affect customer engagement measures like likes,
shares, and comments.
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

 There are impacts of the various methods for enhancing targeted marketing efforts using
Facebook analytics.

1.6 Significance of the Study

This has to deal with the importance of this piece of work to the research, his/her case
study and his/her department.

1.6.1) To the researcher

This piece of work is being important to the researcher because in the process of
carrying out research, the researcher will discover new ways, techniques which Facebook
analytics can be used to target a wide range of customers, build a loyal customer base and
track a business progress on Facebook.
1.6.2) To TAS Anointed
This piece of work is being important to TAS Anointed because along the line of the
researcher research, he/she will discover new ideas, techniques which can be applied in the
digital marketing sector which will help to increase sales of the enterprise, create a loyal
customer base, attract customers and also save time.
1.6.3) To the E-commerce and Digital Marketing Department
E-commerce and digital marketing is all about creativity and technical savvy to boost
the online presence and success of an e-commerce business. When new ideas and techniques
are been discover, it is been applied and this helps to facilitate the maketing process and ease
new ways of doing things. Hence, if Facebook analytics are been applied, it will help an e-
commerce digital marketing specialist to know how to target customers, how to create a loyal
base with customers and how to track a business progress.
1.7 Justification of the Study
Magazines shape our lives, telling us what to wear, what to eat, what to think about
ourselves and the world around us. That is magazines helps to create awareness about the
things which are being happening around us for example the Success Story of Cameroon
which talks about the most popul ar successful Cameroonians.
1.8 The Scope of the Study
This comprises of three components that is the Time Scope, the Geographical Scope and
the Thematic Scope.
1.8.1) The Time Scope
This study “The Impacts of Facebook Analytics on targeted marketing for a business” is
carried out within a period of one month that is form the 10th of May to the 10th of June.
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business

1.8.2) The Geographical Scope

This research is being carried out at TAS Anointed which is being located between
Chapel Obili and Carrefour Obili opposite Wandom Hotel in the Yaounde Central town of
the Republic of Cameroon.
1.8.3) The Thematic or Content Scope
Looking at “The Impacts of Facebook Analytics on targeted marketing for a business”,
one can comment that this work falls within the sphere of e-commerce and digital marketing
with particular reference to Facebook. This is because for any online business to be able to
track their performance on Facebook build a loyal base with customers and also target a
particular range of customers, Facebook analytics needs to be taken into consideratio
The Impact of Facebook Analytics on Targeted Marketing for a business