The Impact of Social Media on Marketing Strategy and Plan

MARKETING STRATEGY
AND
PLAN

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Increasing use of social media platforms has led to new behaviour among customers and
creates opportunities for marketers
In the technological era, use of social media has become very much crucial especially in
terms of using it as tool for marketing. Marketers use it as a tool that is highly flexible in
nature and the place where different multimedia tools can be used to promote their products
and services. In the recent years it is proving to be one of the best tools using which
companies are targeting their customers at the global level (Smith and Zook, 2011). It is
capable of attracting the larger market base on both local and global levels. It is found that
people that are from the international and local level are also becoming the part of the social
media campaigns run by various companies. It is beneficial for the marketers as it gives them
with new opportunities. At the same time it affects the purchasing behaviour of people.
The most crucial benefit of using social media platforms is that it enables marketers to reach
to larger population at the lowest of cost. It gives an opportunity to the firms to make their
marketing campaign going at the global level. This particularly benefits companies that are
smaller in size or having lesser amount of resources to go for aggressive marketing campaign
on other types of marketing especially the traditional marketing (Erdoğmuş and Cicek, 2012).
Since the social media marketing can be done with the help of lesser numbers of people in the
marketing team hence it increases the effectiveness of the company’s campaign. Since
billions of people are active on these platforms on regular basis. In this some of the people
are hyper active on these platforms hence targeting such people becomes easier. This is an
excellent platform where targeting of the people is very easier to make that too with limited
efforts. In this regards the fan pages or the official pages of the brands always helps the
company to communicate messages quickly among the large numbers of people.
Company uses platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchats to increase the visibility
of their brands. The new launches are promoted through these sites and hence creating buzz
in the market. There is significant increase in the numbers of people that are affected by the
marketing that is done on these social media platforms. It is found that these social media
sites are not only capable enough to change the perception about the product but also attracts
people to make purchase (Ashley and Tuten, 2015). It gives opportunities to the marketer to
make sure that they convert potential customers into the ones that actually makes a purchase.
This is one of the best platforms where different types of multimedia can be used for
improving the quality of the promotional campaigns. The events that are launched by

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different companies are also promoted at these platforms with the help of their own pages or
other supporting pages. Since the news on the social media sites spreads like wildfire hence it
act as an excellent platform where different sorts of multimedia tools can be used to highlight
the characteristics and attributes of the products and services. It is actually the attributes of
the products that attract people towards it. It was also found that the company that is capable
of making long term investment in their social media campaign are more likely to win the
social media war (Hajli, 2014). Social media is a platform where the perceptions are built and
used for improving the sales and profit margins.
Social media platforms also help the companies to change their marketing campaign as per
the demand of the people as well as after seeing the reviews of the people. Companies use
these reviews as a data for analysing the sort of changes that are required as well as to
improve the strategies that they have made for their future. Social media is an excellent
platform to collect data about different customers and hence after analysing the data
companies shows the advertisements related to those products to the customers. These types
of personalised marketing are highly effective in increasing the curiosity about the products
and hence they are more likely to make purchase. With the data that is collected by the profile
of the customers, companies show only those products that are likely to be purchased by the
customers (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). This helps the company to
improvise their efforts and not necessarily waste it on the people that might not purchase the
products. With the use of data management software and the artificial intelligence it has
become easier for the companies to target their customers effectively. This also reduces the
problems which companies might face in the traditional marketing. For example the
restaurant companies might face problems related to showcasing their taste experience of
other customers in other type of marketing strategies (Bruhn, Schoenmueller and Schäfer,
2012). But, this can be easily showcased with the help of videos that contains the taste
experience of people who have enjoyed their food. This makes the advertisements more
attractive and attracts people to see it more than once.
Social media is also a platform where different types of products from different vendors can
be compared. These comparisons have become very much common these days and are
playing a role in the purchasing intention of then people. Many of the companies provides
link of their website on these platforms from where sales can be made. This has influenced
the way in which purchase has been made by the people in the last few years. Providing link
is very much essential in the today’s business (Weinberg and Pehlivan, 2011). This is because