Social Media And Marketing Strategies

Social media being an ever growing industry, companies have incorporated their marketing and strategies to better their businesses. We explore that the reasons for the importance of incorporating this is: The daily use of handheld devices to access social media on a daily basis amongst computer use, Big data: online tracking produces oceans of data, challenging business analytics programs, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest

One of the key roles of social media from a marketing perspective is the development of a client based platform. It is becoming an increasingly important part of any business’s marketing. Businesses can utilize existing online platforms to build networks of current and potential clients. By being active online allows businesses to connect with their customers in innovative ways to become a trusted source of information and convey the passion they have for their industry.

Social media has become essential as a marketing tool for CU's, which is why 74% of marketers are incorporating social media into their marketing budgets. The CMO Survey released in August 2014, indicates that “marketing budgets are expected to increase by 7.2% in the next year.” With 1.65 billion social accounts that are active globally, social media has become an effective

Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to

Social Media: Social networks like all the online matter such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are so important that relevant companies should not defer their efforts to create the public image and enhance their both market and products’ effectiveness”

The way that individuals and businesses communicate and interact has radically changed. With the development of technology and the internet, people can connect almost instantaneously and with very little effort. Social media has come to play a huge part in the way that the world communicates with each other. In fact, a recent report shows that in a single month people spend over 25 hours on social networks (“The Digital Consumer”). With consumers committing that much time to social media sites, social networking has become an important aspect of everyday life for individuals—and businesses. Like most marketing activities, social media marketing poses some risk. However, it is advantageous for businesses to exploit this opportunity, and develop an effective and ethical marketing strategy that includes using social media as a marketing tool.

The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and

Throughout the centuries the advances of technology have drastically changed the marketing field. The 21st century was revolutionary for the development of social media. With the expansion of social media, the marketing world needed to successfully reach a new audience. Before the advances in technology, marketers had no interaction with their customers. The marketers would simply throw advertisements in the face of the consumers. This strategy would result in short-term results and give businesses no true way to measure their work. Social media gave marketers an inexpensive way to advertise that interacted with customers and measured the effectiveness of an advertisement. This however meant marketing no longer consisted of a one-sided relationship with customers. Marketers had to sail into the uncharted waters of consumer needs. By interacting, understanding, and communicating with customers, marketers began to see the impact of social media had on marketing.

Social media has had a big influence on almost all aspects of society. It has given people the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and distant acquaintances. Along with this, it has provided people with the convenience of making new friends, exchanging ideas or thoughts, sharing content and pictures, and indulging themselves in many other activities. Many companies use social media to market and sell their products. It has helped them build loyalty among customers and start campaigns. Companies use these platforms to interact and receive feedback from customers to better understand their markets so that they may improve products and strategies. Through social sites, businesses can hold contests and give away prizes that help them generate more traffic on their social media pages, thereby acquiring more customers. When comparing social networks to other forms of marketing such as television or paper ads, it is a cheaper and more effective means of enhancing a brand or building popularity.

Throughout history, humans as a society have grown tremendously since the industrial revolution. We now live in the Information Age. This is an age in human history that is characterized by the introduction of the personal computer in the 1970s. Since then technology continues to be introduced to allow us to have networking, the news, the latest technologies right at our finger tips. About eighty-six percent of people spend about five hours a day on cell phones, we spend twenty hours a week online, and we spend about one hundred fifty minutes a day on social media. Social media has been one of the biggest movements of the information age. What exactly is social media? And how does it affect businesses today? We will explore how Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter among other social media platforms have helped boost sales to unimaginable heights, this single most important effect, has forced companies to consider its policies and thereafter direct sales. Also, we will explore why a company’s online presence is important and the effects of it in a business marketing strategy and direct sales.

Social media is used to define the online means of communication, collaboration, share, and cultivation between interdependent platforms (Tuten and Solomon, 2014) and social media marketing is the use of social media to induce consumers to buy or support a brand, company, website, etc (Barker et al., 2013). Today’s advertisements are much more interactive and specially designed for a targeted customer because social media provides this facility. Also, it helps companies to track customer’s age, gender, habits in a way to adapt their products and reach them more easily.

The world that we reside in currently has been introduced to a fresh phenomenon, which has completely taken over the world of communication. Consumers from all over the globe were accustomed to communicating with one another one on one. Local hangouts, temples, and parks where places were consumers communicated and formed relationships with one another. However, over the last few years things have drastically changed. With the invention of the Internet and the technologies that utilize them, the way consumers communicate and relate to one another has changed. This fresh way of communication has been coined the term, “social media”. Social media refers to the interaction among individuals in which they create, share, and or exchange information and ideas within networks and virtual communities. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, message boards, and LinkedIn are all types of social media. It has become one of the greatest opportunities to brand businesses’ products to potential buyers. Businesses all over the world acknowledge the utilization of social media as a marketing platform. A successful business cannot afford not to be involved in marketing via social media. Consequently, social media has become a vital tool for both small and large businesses.

Technology has become a groundbreaking opportunity and advantage in the business world, especially for marketing. With technology, marketers can market on social networks, text messages, the app store, etc. Technology has become a huge source in expanding a brand and marketing a brand in ways that were not possible before. More people are spending more time on mobiles, tablets, and laptops than in an actual store. So marketers have to reach customers through all of these devices in real time and create campaigns that will work across social media, display advertising and e-commerce (Benady, 2014). Marketers are using technology to reach out to certain target markets as well. The social media outlets include: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram,

Companies have started hiring manpower in seeking to maintain a positive social media outlook for the community to associate with. Today having social connections with your consumers does mean a lot to your company’s reputation, it is not always about having quality goods and services only (Wege, C. and Haenlein, 2013). Companies now no longer see marketing themselves in social media as a want but as a need that has to be done. It has influenced the marketing strategy that almost seventy-six percent of businesses use it to fully reach the targets in their marketing objectives. Direct sales on the other have been increasing, triggered by an increase in the use of smartphones and electronic means of payment (Wege, C. and Haenlein, 2013).

“Old school marketing used traditional channels such as broadcast and print to communicate with the target market. Today marketers employ traditional methods mixed with digital technology to communicate with consumers on a deeper level. Today marketing relies on such Internet channels as Web sites, blogs and social networks” (Uhlig, 2015). Marketers are shifting focus and budgets to include social media as a large means of marketing. In fact, research from Econsultancy shows that 71 percent of