How to Best Use Facebook Marketing

Malaysian Facebook Users Statistics, Building Your Business on the Most-Used Social Media, Gaining Loyal Followers & Growing Your Business - All on Facebook

10 years ago, Facebook was the social media platform that replaced Friendster, a handy social media site where you can play Pet Society, Farmville and the like. You’d make Facebook notes, post statuses and pictures et cetera. It was THE social media website - a platform that would cause you to get weird looks from your peers if you were to tell them, “I don’t have a Facebook account.”

Today, it’s a flexible and powerful online marketing tool, and it’s as if your business is expected to have your own Facebook page, just like how you should already have your own business website.

And guess what? That’s true.

Why You Need to Put Your Business on Facebook

You probably already know this, but Facebook really has a large user base with various accessible insights and targeting options if you know how to look for it.

Whether you are trying to build up your company brand via Facebook, reaching mass , generic audience or a small niche market - 46-55 years old females staying in Petaling Jaya with ‘Chief Marketing Officer’ as their Facebook job titles AND interested in beauty and healthcare, you can do this all via Facebook.

Of course, this is only possible if the users have logged their interests based on their page likes and post engagement habits, or if they have updated their job titles in their profile.



Look, we know the rumors and craze. Facebook is collecting your data, it shows you ads about things that you have just been talking about, blah blah blah.

In truth, Facebook will not be able to target you if you have no such information displayed on your profile or in your browsing patterns, but we can find out the rough estimate of these figures without finding your personal details via Facebook Audience Insight and Facebook Ad Manager.

Malaysian Facebook User Statistics 2019

If you haven’t tried using Facebook Audience Insight, then you totally should. This handy little tool helped us to find all the information and statistics below!

Most Facebook guides out there focus on the U.S. audience or worldwide audience, but we understand that most of our clients here are looking for a more local-based ad targeting and relevant statistics to help them understand why Facebook is a good platform to start with social media marketing.

Pretty much every single type of data below can be an ad targeting option for your Facebook Ad campaigns. See why we say Facebook is a super flexible and powerful marketing and advertising platform? Let’s take a look at some of the information of Malaysian Facebook users below.

User Demographics - Active Facebook Users, Age Range & Gender

According to Facebook Audience Insight tools, there are 20-25M monthly active users in Malaysia alone, with 56% being male and the remaining 44% female.

Generally speaking, it’s still the younger audience aged between 18 and 34 that are active on Facebook, but it’s still possible to target older audiences on Facebook.

It would be a good idea to provide Facebook content for both genders when you first start up your Facebook Business Page, but later on as you are able to access your page insights to find more specific details about the audience on your page, you can cater your Facebook page content to suit specific age ranges and genders better.

User Demographics - Relationship Status & Education Level

While most of these Facebook users are married and have graduated from one university or another, there is also quite a portion of other relationship and education level demographics.

These little details, while seemingly trivial, could be the perfect targeting option for, let’s say, romantic holiday resorts for the engaged couples’ upcoming honeymoon, your upcoming flower bouquet with custom delivery instructions for those in a relationship on Valentine’s Day, or even college admission prompts for high school student graduates.

User Demographics - Cities and Towns

Not too surprisingly, the majority of Malaysian Facebook users are from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor with it being Malaysia’s capital city - the state with denser population as compared to several other states in Malaysia.

As such, Facebook marketing and ad targeting - which we would come to later - in the Klang Valley could reach more users compared to if you, let’s say, target only Kulim in Kedah, or Pulai in Johor.

Contrary to popular beliefs, the number of Facebook users from Kuching, Sarawak and Kota Kinabalu, Sabah made it in the Top 10 Facebook users’ towns/cities too, right after Penang, Selangor and Johor! Hmm, perhaps it’s about time that we stop neglecting these states in our marketing efforts simply because they are not within Semenanjung Malaysia!

User Demographics - Job Titles & Industries

So, which industry is your business in? Industrial businesses can easily target users from construction and maintenance services and production, while food production lines can target users working in food and restaurants, etc.

While this list only shows the industry of our local Facebook users, you can target individuals with specific job titles via Facebook Ad Manager if you want to.

However, do keep in mind that the more niche and focused your target group is, the less the number of people that you can expect your ads to reach, or they might not even run at all!

User Facebook Usage - Top Languages

What you’re looking at is the average Malaysian Facebook users’ language setting on this platform, and not the language in which they post their statuses or the content language that they view.

Well, we DO live in Malaysia, so it’s not too surprising to see that Malay is a close second top language as compared to English (US), followed by English (UK)!

Generally, you can still opt to target English (All) or Chinese (All) if you are thinking about reaching only users who reach a certain language - no need to target exclusively English (UK) or English (US)!

It would also be important to keep in mind that some Malay users would still set their Facebook language settings to English or other languages, just like how Chinese or Indian Facebook users would have their Facebook accounts set to the default English settings despite posting in other languages. it’s still best to leave the language targeting untouched, and to make your ad content relevant instead!

User Facebook Usage - Top Devices

82% of these users are active on Facebook via mobile devices only, whereas another 16% is active on platforms. The percentage of desktop-exclusive users? Only 2%.

If you haven’t mobile-optimized your business website or any other sites that you are inviting your Facebook users to, we hope that this statistic would serve as a gentle reminder for you to do so!

Similarly, your page content - especially the images, should be optimized for mobile display. This means no wall of text, no tiny texts or fancy formats that would be difficult to read from the phone!

Now that you have the insights into the behaviour of Malaysian Facebook audience, what are you planning to do with the information?

Enjoyed reading this post? This is part 1 of our 5-part Facebook marketing guide.