Discuss about the Role of Social Media in Marketing Strategy.
Marketing is continuously evolving with the passage of time and it has been emerging and expanding with rapid growth through the application of Information Systems and Information Technology (Gandomi & Haider, 2015). Currently, the world is experience the service marketing, Social Media Marketing, business to business marketing, and brand management in manner to enhance the performance and output of the organization. Internet has become an integral part of the living for most of the individuals in the current time and thus, there are many opportunities those could be gathered through utilizing the social media within the marketing strategies and gaining competitive advantage in the market.
This research project put emphasis on the objectives presented by different authors and writers on the marketing ideas and using those references, further research focuses on correlating them with the marketing strategies. The aim of this report is to collect data and ideas on the social media marketing and relate these types of advertisement and process in the enhancement of marketing strategies for the enhancement of the brand value for the organizations. This research project is being presented for searching the answer of whether social media can be utilized for enhancing the marketing strategies or not and how effective can be it for the business. This project presents a literature review related to these marketing strategies, identifies the gaps between those researches, and fills the identified gaps.
The scope of the project is to highlight and explain the benefits of the social media’s role in the marketing strategy and how it can be utilized for enhancing the performance and output of the organization or its business. The report will be covering the types of social media marketing and impact of this on the marketing strategies.
The social media including Facebook and others can be represented as a group of internet based applications those have been built on web 2.0, allowing the exchange and creation of the User Generated Content” (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014, p. 330). Social Media can be represented as a platform where interaction can be done between the consumers and companies for the business purposes and thus enhance the experience between them. Social media includes various online websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Emails, Blogs, social networking websites, and many more, among these Facebook has been reported as the most popular media to be used by million audiences.. It has become one of the parts of the organizations for the integrated marketing communication strategy and promotional mix.
It is a context in the digital marketing, which uses video contents in manner to promote the product, services, and market strategies of the organization. These videos are completely related to the specification of the products or services in manner to increase the awareness of the consumers towards the respective organization. Platforms for these videos include YouTube, Televisions, Pinterest, Facebook, and many other social media platforms. Kim & Yang (2017, p. 446) measured the effectiveness and efficiency of these factors in the brand awareness and reported, “Number of reactions is the number of people showing that they like the videos, the number of shares is the number of people bringing the video to their profile pages.”
Marketing strategy is nothing but the set of practices those could be helpful in increasing the awareness among the customers and introduce them with the products and services being delivered to them. It is also represented as the brand equity, and definition is “set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, which adds or subtracts from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or that firm’s customers (Lim & Weaver, 2014, 228).” According to Koch & Dikmen (2015), the marketing strategies equity can be assessed in both the consumer and the firms’ perspectives. Many articles and researches have been made by the reputed authors in manner to relate these marking strategies with the brand value however, many of them lacks because of certain issues and limitations. Australian companies lags in these marketing strategies and until now, there has been not any research proposed in relation with these strategies and the marketing strategies. Following literature review describes the gaps and this research project is to fill those gaps. Following research is based on evaluating the quantity of videos shared on the social media (Facebook), the interaction of those videos with the audience and effect of those advertisements on the brand value.
Marketing strategies value can be enhanced through the involvement of Social Media Marketing in many ways. Writers in two papers (Gamboa & Goncalves, 2014) and (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012) were agreed on the same statement that social media marketing can be helpful in enhancing the marketing strategies whereas, both were incapable in confirming the topic related to the brand loyalty and brand awareness as both the terms are not ‘linear’. Social media platform Facebook, strongly enhance the brand loyalty for then beauty brands (Shen & Bissell, 2013). However, this research was limited to the six beauty brands and thus cannot be accepted as true for every organization. Moving forward Koch & Dikmen (2015, p. 19) supported the argument and state that “only Facebook seems to be a strong predictor of better marketing strategies”. Based on these researches, Ahmad Musa & Harun (2016) currently presented as report in which they stated that Facebook platform could be helpful in maintaining or enhancing the influence on the consumers about the services or products offered by the firms and thus enhances the marketing strategies health sore of the firm. Large number of audiences increases the attention of the companies to attract those audiences towards the organization through increasing awareness about the products and services being offered to them (Webster, 2014). Compelling evidences were presented by Hudson, Huang, Roth & Madden (2016) about the strong relationship between the consumers using branded products and consumers connected via social media platform in manner to the enhancement of the marketing strategies.
Considering the effectiveness and efficiency, various researchers have shown their interest and presented evidence on how social media is a great strategy for the organizations. Ashley & Tuten (2015) reported in their paper that most of the brands are focusing on Facebook, and micro blogs such as twitter and others in manner to target the customers. Two writers Killian and McManus (2015) and Lee (2017) presented two different reports and agreed on the same conclusion that different organizations use different social media platforms with different goals but the goals should be aligned with the strategic communication plan of the firms. Almost every individual who is fond of brand or better services are using these social media platforms and thus, provides the organization a better opportunity and biggest platform in manner to widen the scope of targeted customers (Hassan & Dadwal, 2016). “Pinterest is for the fashion industry, Facebook is for B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and LinkedIn works best in the B2B (Business-to-Business) environment” (Killian & McManus, 2015, p. 34). Going much deeper in the topic, it can be stated that social media can remind the consumers to take action through presenting various products that a consumer might wanted to get and this is happening because of the word of mouth on the social media platforms (Lee, 2017).
It will be helpful in promoting the products and services available to the company and make the customers more informative about the same emphasizing on increasing the role and indulgence of the customers towards the organization. It can also increase the scope and strength of the customers including the assurance that one out of five customer will make the exchange of products and services from the organization (Tuten, 2015). Internet has never been so much beneficial as it is now for the business and other operational purpose and has been continuously boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategies in the context of the enhancement of performance and output of the organization. it will be allowing the customers to be open at the platform and express demand their needs and requirements for the organization and also be suitable for implementing the changes those can contribute in the enhancement of the performance of the organization.
Budget is never a problem for being popular at the social media websites as it is completely free and companies or organizations can share any information they want to be hear by the consumers. However, it does lack in certain challenges as the offline customers who exchange the products and services from the bricks n mortars are more likely to be less assured by the information and data shared on the social media platforms. Proper strategies and establishment need to be established for the proper and effective implementation of the social media strategies within the existing system of the organization. Social media implementation for the marketing purpose is intriguing and most of the marketers might not be able to deploy this strategy in an effective and efficient manner (Agnihotri et al.,2016). Felix, Rauschnabel & Hinsch (2017, p. 124) stated, “Social media marketing is too complex to be done by a single person or even department.” For the successful implementation of social media marketing, coordination between different departments are necessary for the alignment with the business strategy (Lee, 2017). Research report presented by Fulgoni & Lipsman (2014), presented the objectives related to the different perspectives of the collaboration of business strategy in the social media marketing through introducing multi-platform campaign. There are two major difficulties in the implementation including “tremendous involvement and responsiveness to consumers on a regular basis”, and “different parts of marketing strategy are often divided between agencies and they usually don’t collaborate with others” (Killian & McManus, 2015, p. 40 & 41).
Social media is an open platform for everyone and the companies can create their profiles and pages on different Social Medias and no registration or legal factors are needed for this implementation. This makes it the very cost effective medium for sharing information and exchanging feedbacks from the consumers. Companies can use it as opportunity for communicating with the consumers and establishing a better customer relationship through communicating them at the same platform. Most of the consumers are available at the social website and being active and talkative at the social media will not only encourage the same customer but also motivate other employees and present them that company cares for the customers. Most of the consumers and customers do not bother to rate the product or services and provide feedback on the official website however, they are active at social media platform, and thus, it can be utilized as an opportunity for understanding the needs and requirements of the consumers (Lee, 2017). This will be helpful in contributing in the enhancement of the existing system performance or manipulating the existing system as per the requirements of the users. Advertisement at the social pages can be helpful in enhancing the traffic at the official website and thus, increasing the chances of attracting the customers with the best offers and best quality product at affordable prices.
There should be a representative of the organization that will make sure that every individual will get proper replies, support from the organization side, and respond accordingly for enhancing the services and the products being delivered to the customers. This will make sure that the customer gets proper solution and information about the service or the product he or she is looking for. This will also bind the customer loyalty with the organization if proper and effective solution is provided to them. Customers always look for wide range of varieties and competitive price that can be provided through regularly updating the social media pages or the profiles (Gamboa & Goncalves, 2014). All the new arrivals, offers and information about the product should be available at the Social Media Platform ensuring the spread of information to the consumers. The organization should be very active and responsive at the social media platform as it is not the single individual over that platform, rest of the connected users can also see the replies, feedbacks, and responses on the same platform.
It is one of the greatest concerns that the contents being posted on the social media platform should interact and represents about the brand and well communicated with the customers (Akpinar & Berger, 2017). Ahmad, Musa & Harun (2016) concluded that the content and animations should be attractive and understandable for the consumers in manner to attract them. Alhabash et al. (2013) made research on the Facebook fan pages and described that quantity of shared videos or viral videos are strong factor for the enhancement in the brand equity. Brand has become one of the quantitative measures for the organizations in manner to define the company wealth and marketing mix for the organization (McDonald & Wilson, 2016). Alves, Fernades & Raposo (2016) suggests using the Honeycomb model, which has seven blocks: identity, conversation, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups in manner to keep the customers engaged with the company.
Conclusion
Based on the above report it can be concluded that the social media is capable of playing a very crucial role in the enhancement of the better and effective marketing strategies. Various aspects and involvement of the social media have been expressed in this report expressing how effective can be the role of the social media in establishing the marketing strategies that can alternatively contribute in the enhancement of the performance of the organization. The presented literature review is an evidence of reporting how effective can be the application of social media for promoting and spreading the brand awareness among the citizens. Brand of the organization and the business is the most crucial aspect for gathering the attention of the customers and cover a very wide range of the audience. The consumers and the clients can be well introduced about the products and services being delivered as most of the stakeholders are usually connected with the social media. Internet has allowed the individuals to be connected with each other despite of any boundary. Real world example are most of the e-commerce websites those are utilizing the latest technologies such as big data, cloud computing and other mediums for gathering individuals information and utilizing them for the promotional activities. Digital marketing has change the view of the world and so is with the social media marketing strategies and an organization can utilize it for uncountable benefits.
Reference list
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