Facebook Marketing by Private Design Schools in the Higher Education Industry in Sri Lanka
Alex QUAH Ban Thong
PhD student, Management & Science University
Md Gapar Md Johar
Management & Science University, University Drive, Off Persiaran Olahraga, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Nalin Abeysekera
The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
Keywords: Higher education, Social media marketing, High school student, Design schools, ROI, Facebook, Culture, Sri Lanka.
Abstract
The swift growth and revolution in the social media globally catapulted by easy access to internet supported by technological advancements and availability of mobile devices for the public, social media marketing has become an unlimited way to reach the high school students (HSS) in Si Lanka. The growth of social media is phenomenal supported by technological advancement by globally multinational companies specialised in making better and stronger phones with faster and superior software and applications. The usage of Facebook as the main tool to reach the target audience is phenomenal in Sri Lanka. Despite the fact that the growth and development of social media especially the usage of Facebook in Sri Lanka which is assisted by the factors that support the growth and usage of mobile devices and development of ICT, many Private Design Schools (PDS) in Sri Lanka are not realizing the full potential. Many contributing factors such as the know-how, the speed the social media is growing, the disadvantages of having a very open marketing and many reasons of not using social media for marketing. Information of the result on the investment, the effectiveness of Facebook to gain the required results will be encouraging to all PDS that this may be a good channel to pay more attention to. Understanding the reasons of such gap and the factors affecting the growth and development of social media would be very useful for the marketing arms of the PDS to make use of Facebook to reach the high school students at the relatively lower cost ratio.