Facebook: Adoption and Marketing Fact File

At HealthCARE360, a new Digital Health initiative we launched, we chose Facebook as the preferred channel for personalized Doctor-Patient engagement and also for patient outreach and digital brand building for the Healthcare Provider. We believe that this Patient-Doctor dialogue increasingly needs to be easy to have and similar to your conversation with a family member or with a friend and Facebook Messenger provides us with the perfect platform for this exchange. In addition to this, Facebook serves as a great platform for Healthcare Providers to create their digital brand and foster Patient trust with an ability to show their constant focus on the health and wellness of their community and patient population. Healthcare Providers can use Facebook to share tips on general wellness or innovation in their field with their community and patient population through posts, videos, or through live events on the platform. A pandemic like Covid-19 has accentuated this need further, and while their plenty of publicly available information, a word of advice coming straight from your doctor is what you would any day prefer and appreciate.

Below, I attempt to list some statistics and observations that led us to choose Facebook (Messenger) as the ideal channel for Patient-Doctor engagement and for all businesses wanting to understand if Facebook (FB) is the right platform for your Brand/Service Awareness and Customer Engagement, these should help you in making you an informed choice. Our very own decisions were driven by some of these and more. Note the numbers are Global averages, with those for India mentioned alongside wherever I had access to them.

Do feel free to PM me here if you see that any numbers are seriously flawed.

Facebook Adoption Stats

• 2.5B Monthly Active Users Globally with 1.6M Daily Active Users. India, with 313M users at the end of 2019, has the largest user base. Mumbai has the maximum FB users in India at 3.7M users.
• Last year (2019), Daily Active Users grew by approximately 7-9%. India was the largest contributor to this increase. India added approximately 32M users in 2019.
• After WhatsApp, Facebook is the most used app globally in terms of time spent daily. The average US adult spends approximately 30-35 min/per day on Facebook. Indians spend an average of 140-150 min daily on Social Media platforms, split between Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram &Twitter primarily. Post Covid-19 (Mar’20), this time went up by 70-75%.
• The fastest-growing age group from a usage perspective globally is, surprisingly, users 65+ years of age. In India, the largest FB user group is between 18-24 years of age and is 47% of all users.
• 85-88% of FB users are there to be in touch with their friends and family, and 17-20% to stay in touch with Businesses. There are about 50M+ Business pages on Facebook, and India is the second-largest market after the US. According to some reports from Apr’2019, India has more than 1.5 million (15 lakhs) SMB Pages and is growing at over 70 percent year-on-year.

Facebook Marketing Statistics from 2019

• Facebook has over 7 million advertisers globally.
• Facebook’s revenue amounted to 70.7 billion US dollars, up from 55.8 billion U.S. dollars from the previous fiscal 2018. Facebook India reported revenues of Rs 892 crore in fiscal 2019, compared to revenues of Rs 521 crore in fiscal 2018, a 71% jump.
• The average price for Facebook Ads decreased globally by an average of 6% in 2019. Overall, Facebook Ad impressions increased by 37% over that in 2018.
• The average cost per click for a Facebook Ad is around $1.72, with Healthcare at 1.32$ approximately. The average cost per click in India is around 0.12$ – 0.14$.
• The average cost for a thousand impressions (CPM) is approximately 7-7.5$ in the US. Do not have the cost for India.
• 94% of Facebook Ad revenue is from Mobile.

Below are also some observations and comparisons with Google AdWords. I do have to highlight though that the decision between choosing one between the two for your marketing, would be driven by the specific need you have. Your choice is also driven by what stage of your product/service journey you are in. Generally, you would need a combination of the two in most cases.

• Facebook is far better than Google when it comes to creating brand awareness and demand generation. Google is better at demand capture (lead generation).
• While Google is more economical for Lead generation, you typically see better conversion rates with Facebook owing to an ability to identify and target your customer segment better.
• If you are looking to capture customers at the moment of purchasing a product or service, Google Ads would be your best bet due to the high level of intent (search for keywords). However, if you’re trying to bring more initial awareness or influence the ongoing consideration of your offering, then Facebook ads can help you target those with a current or unknown need for your product or service better.
• Instead of targeting by user intent, as you would do with Google, with Facebook, you can do so by demographics and interests, introducing your offer to your desired audience.
• If the purchase of your product or service strongly correlates based on specific life events, and audiences based, then Facebook is most likely your better option. Facebook has powerful targeting capabilities, such as being able to target based on life-changing events. While Google gives you the ability to target life events, you are still targeting people that are searching for those terms.

Hope this helps. As I mentioned above, you can pm me on LinkedIn for any further details you might need or for corrections.

Sources of the Statistics:
Facebook, Statista, Economic Times, SocialBakers, Business of Apps, AdEspresso, eMarketer, The Hindu, Financial Express.