Social Media Marketing - Essay Example

 Social media marketing Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Introduction In the wake of technological advancement of the modern world, many organizations are realizing the value of the Internet as an integral part of the communication platform to reach out to diverse customers. The consequent effect is that most of these companies are now adopting alternative marketing strategies and practices that are efficient and less costly to actively reach many consumers. This change of tact has seen a sharp decline in the use of traditional advertising channels, especially for small companies. According to recent researches, Small medium enterprises (SMEs) are opting for cost-effective marketing practices because they often lack the resources to use traditional methods of advertising. In spite of the increasing use of the Internet by companies to market their goods and services, the underlying challenge today is the problem of identifying the best practices to help in executing these advantageous marketing tools (Castronovo, &, Huang, 2012). Correspondingly, top marketers have been unable to discern social media’s quantitative impact on their businesses. To that effect, this study will use underlying theoretical concepts in macroeconomics to discuss the best practices that a small company can adapt to maximize social media as a marketing tool. Applicable Theories Related to Social Media Overtly, the key theories which help in the study and understanding of social media are divided into three schools, and include: micro-theories, which study the contributing changes to online information and communication involving individual social actors. The second aspect refers to the macro-theories, which study the structure and changes of social media, content, and social actors via abstract or global views. Finally, there are the pseudo-theories, which encompass current theoretical frameworks in social media marketing often proposed by non-academicians. According to Pan, &, Crotts (2012), all the aforementioned schools of theories and conceptual frameworks contribute to better understanding of nature and dynamics of social media such as, why people form relationships, make social contributions, and how they discover valuable social media content. This study uses Social Exchange Theory, which falls under micro-theories to explore the link between social media and marketing. Social Exchange Theory Neti (2011) argues that since most social media platforms depend on various users who provide content for consumption by others, it is fundamental to understand what motivates individuals to participate in the social exchange programs. The essence of Social exchange theory can be traced back to early sociological studies that investigated interactions between individuals or small groups. The theory primarily applies cost-benefit conceptual frameworks and contrast of alternatives to study and explain various aspects of human social life. Notable aspects include; how humans socialize and form relationships, how they communicate with each other, and lastly how such communication exchanges lead to formation of communities. According to the theory, people have a tendency to indulge in behaviors they deem rewarding and appropriate, and conversely avoid those behaviors that come with higher costs. In sum, all social behaviors are motivated by an individual’s biased assessment of the cost-benefit advantage of adding to a social change. In order to analyze the mutual reinforcement resulting from social exchanges, a microeconomic framework should be applied. This is apparent, despite the fact that most of the rewards are non-fiscal. Conclusively, this theory posits that the possible reasons that explain why people indulge in a social exchange are, altruism, inadvertent gain in reputation and likewise influence on others, an expected reciprocity from others, and direct reward postulated . The first three reasons are significantly relevant to the topic of the study, and give a concise picture why people use social media. Maximizing social media as a marketing tool “Social Media” can best be described as the various platforms through which internet users interact and socialize with one another. Such interaction involves activities like creating and sharing contents, commenting on others content such as on blogs, or communicating with others through social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn (Kirtiş & Karahan, 2011). Also, the development of new media akin to display advertising and online searches like video games, search engines, and user-generated contents has brought significant marketing advantages for small firms. For this reason, stakeholders and decision makers in SMEs should adequately allocate firm’s resources to obtain maximum profit since social media also provides an avenue for firms to collect free marketing data. Marketing data collected from online customers platforms will keep the companies ahead of the competition. For instance, it will enable the company to know what customer choices and preferences are, and best-selling market products among other numerous advantages. Existing social media platforms have significantly increased interpersonal connections between individuals, and consequently created an efficient platform through which product information can be rapidly shared and disseminated among potential future customers. Marketing decision makers should, therefore, use these online communities and interpersonal networks to expose their products and services via electronic forms of word-of-mouth. Evidently, this approach is a cost-effective way to ensure that a firm’s product is adopted by the market. On-line groups give quick feedback and provide firms with early signs of what improvements or changes are needed to ensure that the products and services remain competitive in the market. In this regard, such platforms are advantageous for small companies because they offer cross-selling opportunities to unique groups of people who share the same platform. Similarly, SMEs should use social networking sites to bring competitive employees on board. For example, Human resource departments can use professional sites like LinkedIn to find suitable candidates for specific jobs. The graph below shows how various social media platforms were utilized by Fortune 500 companies to reach customers between 2012 and 2013: From the graph above, it is evident that the use of social media networks by world’s top companies increased significantly within a one year period. As consumers increasingly opt to obtain product information from online sources, small companies should focus on integrated marketing communications to benefit from Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SMEs can organize for SEO campaigns by first developing keywords that easily identify their products with consumers. Contents on the company website are then designed to include the keywords with respect to tags, titles, and other text (Scott, 2015). Companies can alternatively pay for search advertisements, whereby search engines like Google are paid to display text adverts in response to specific branded or generic keywords. To ascertain whether the campaign was successful, the company can analyze the traffic and ranking of the website based on referrals, impressions, and clicks. Additionally, small companies can form consent-based email database where customers and service providers can exchange information about the product. Such platforms are invaluable tools of marketing since they offer SMEs with fast and efficient means to get new customers, besides the added advantage of strengthening customer relations. Furthermore, Email enables advertisers to build a more grounded brand loyalty and increases customers' contribution through word-of-mouth communication. Email marketing significantly increases brand performance which can be measured through analysis of financial returns and profits. Best Practices The best practices help in executing these advantageous marketing tools, and assist SME marketers to discern social media’s quantitative impact on their businesses as discussed with respect to Business Environment, Management, Organization, and End Users. With regards to the business environment, SMEs should equip the business with the latest technology to stay ahead of the competition. Newer technologies fast-track business operations in the firm, and increase productions exponentially. Factors like Government policy, influence, and initiatives affect the adoption of internet platforms to businesses. Other factors like infrastructure, high-speed internet connection, and readiness of the target market to use the new mediums of customer service, all affect the business environment. Marketers should, therefore, streamline the business environment to accommodate these factors. On management, since decisions in SMEs are mostly affected by top managers, the firms should ensure that the leaders are well acquainted with new technologies before electronically-based marketing practices are adopted. Firms with leaders who are well-versed in e-commerce management have in the past shown greater productivity and financial success. This is generally attributed to the fact that they encourage and support innovations that benefit the whole business venture. To that effect, Small businesses should ensure that top managers are techno-savvy individuals with the knowledgeable, innovative, and positive attitude towards the implementation of newer technology. Also, organizational practices will determine how successful social media marketing strategies are. Top managers in small companies should facilitate and rationalize information interchange in the new structure (Dahnil, Marzuki, Langgat, & Fabeil, 2014). For example, they can exert their influence in matters regarding the allocation of resources like money, time and human capital to ensure successful initiation and implementation of e-commerce projects. The last best practice is with regards to end users. Historically, end users determine how successful newly adopted technologies become in SMEs. In practice, this implies that adequately training users to operate and apply technology enables quick transfer of knowledge needed to effectively run new tools. Such training also positively impacts employee attitude towards technological advancement. However, there are several factors that still affect the ability of small companies to fully implement social media marketing methods. For example, insufficient technical knowledge, failure to recognize the resultant benefits of using e-commerce, and insufficient funds to run online advertisements. Nonetheless, SMEs can overcome the majority of these limitations by hiring persons with solid technical backgrounds. Conclusion It is quite evident that traditional methods of marketing are slowly giving way to newer and sophisticated marketing practices like the use of social media tools. For this reason, future marketers should focus their efforts on one-to-one relationship building via online communities to promote their products and create brand loyalty. Currently, most economists and researchers contend that social media marketing will effectively help in creating brand loyalty through communication and word-of-mouth referrals in the future. Thus, if properly effected can benefit small firms as opposed to conventional forms product marketing. In sum, social media marketing can help SMEs to reach global customers, receive their feedback, and act on them. It can also help small-sized companies to market their products and services at minimal costs. Sometimes, such advertisements come at zero costs in form of tradeshows and classified. In fact, the prospect of online media can never be underscored, since it enhances success of a product. Indeed, the mainstream market can easily have a prefect knowledge of the product if social media is effectively used to advertise the product. References Castronovo, C., & Huang, L. (2012). Social media in an alternative marketing communication model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), 117. Dahnil, M. I., Marzuki, K. M., Langgat, J., & Fabeil, N. F. (2014). Factors influencing SMEs adoption of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and behavioral sciences, 148, 119-126. Kirtiş, A. K., & Karahan, F. (2011). To be or not to be in social media arena as the most cost-efficient marketing strategy after the global recession. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 24, 260-268. Neti, S. (2011). Social media and its role in marketing. International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business Systems, 1(2), 1-15. Pan, B., & Crotts, J. C. (2012). Theoretical models of social media, marketing implications, and future research directions. Social media in travel, tourism and hospitality: Theory, practice, and cases, 73-85. Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons. Read More