Social Media Marketing Failures

This assignment analyzes the challenges businesses face in promoting their brand image through social media. While social media offers advantages over traditional marketing, several factors contribute to its failure. The analysis delves into aspects like lack of strategy, inconsistent content, ignoring analytics, neglecting customer engagement, and accessibility issues. The document concludes by emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach that considers these challenges to achieve success in social media marketing.

Running head: MARKETING PRACTICE
Marketing Practice
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Use Social Media for Business Advertisement:.....................................................................2
Broad Reach:......................................................................................................................3
Target:................................................................................................................................3
Low Cost:...........................................................................................................................3
Speed:.................................................................................................................................3
Traditional Media vs. Social Media:......................................................................................4
Reasons for the failure of the Business Organizations in Using Social Media:.....................5
Values:................................................................................................................................6
Consistency:.......................................................................................................................6
Miscommunication:............................................................................................................7
Suitability:..........................................................................................................................7
Privacy:..............................................................................................................................7
Accessibility:......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................8
Reference:..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction:
Social media is one of the most common terms in today’s modern world. It has
become an integral part of daily life. Social media has made a great entry in the world of
advertisements as well (Kaur, 2016). A large portion of the advertisers and business world are
relying on social media to promote their name to the every corner of the world. Here lies the
competition between the traditional media and new media. The style of advertisements has
been transformed with the arrival of social media. It has challenged the existence of the
conventional media (Television, radio, newspaper) to some extent. However, traditional
media as also its strengths those help it to survive in this competitive era (Tuten & Solomon,
2014).
The following article has concentrated on various aspects of traditional media to
provide a vivid concept about what helps it to battle against its rival. Therefore, the report has
articulated the positive and negative aspects of new media. The article aims t providing
broad picture about the use of social as well as traditional media in the world of
advertisement.
Use Social Media for Business Advertisement:
In this twenty first century, social media has become an essential part of daily life. As
per the reports, 73% of the people of society use social media to gather information about the
rest of the world (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). They often access their face book, twitter accounts
during their busy schedules to connect with the world. This has offered a wide opportunity to
the business organizations to reach to their potential consumers by using social media as their
weapon. It is evident now a days that most of the business organizations are using social
media as a medium to reach to their target market who belongs to the different corners of the
world. Globalization has offered a great opportunity to the business organization to expand

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their service in the global market. By using social media, business organizations are now
promoting their brands in the local as well as global market. Thus, it has helped them to
enhance their profit margin and set an example for other companies. In this competitive era,
the use of social media surely distinguishes business organizations from each other in term of
success and profit (Turhan, 2013).
Broad Reach:
Business organizations can share all the relevant information about their business
organization, products and their features in the social media in various interesting forms. It
grabs attention of the large number of consumers from the various parts of the world by using
the broad network of social media (Scott, 2015).
Target:
There are various sites in the social media, such as- Face book, twitter, pinterest,
instagram and so on. All the sites are not used by every social media users. There are specific
groups that actively participate in a particular site. Thus, it helps the business organization to
fix their target. They can easily concentrate on their target market and their activity by using
social media (Chaffey, 2016).
Low Cost:
Social media promotion is low cast consuming, which helps the organization to
maintain the budget. Thus, it puts significant impact on the product cost as well.
Speed:
Another key strength of social media that draws attention of the large number of
consumers is its speed. Business organizations that wish to promote their brand name via
social media can quickly distribute relevant information among the target market.

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Traditional Media vs. Social Media:
Selecting the most suitable media for the brand promotion has become a challenge for
the business leaders now a days. Social media is challenging the existence of traditional
media every now and then (Vinerean et al., 2013). Social media has helped business
organizations in various manners. It helps business organizations to compete against several
rival companies and other obstacles of modern business world. On the other hand, traditional
media was the reason for the exposure of thousands of business organizations since last few
decades. Thus, it also has some key benefits that cannot be compete by the new media. There
is a high competition between the traditional media and social media (Chang, Yu & Lu,
2015). There are few qualities that distinguish traditional media marketing from social media
marketing, such as-
Traditional media is one-way communication. There is no way to receive the
feedback of the consumers or target market and observe their activity. On the other hand,
social media helps business organizations to communicate directly with the consumers and
receive all kind of feedback from them. It helps business organizations to design the
organizational structure according to the requirement of the employees.
Social media is an open forum. It provides equal opportunity to everyone to
communicate with the rest of the world. Large and Small both type of enterprises have equal
scope to promote their brand name. However, traditional media is a closed system. Business
organizations need to meet some criteria here to promote their brand name.
Traditional media marketing is mass marketing. Companies promote their brand name
in a large scale altogether by using traditional media, but in case of social media, its one-on-
one marketing (Constantinides, 2014).

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Social media uses informal language for promotion, which catches the attention of the
large number of audience. However, traditional media mainly uses formal language, which
mainly attracts large number of educated and higher class of the society (Hays, Page &
Buhalis, 2013).
Social media users actively involves in the process. Thus, companies that use social
media for the promotional purpose can promote directly to the target market and interact with
them about all the other aspects of product and its price and features. Readers or audiences of
the traditional media are passively involved with the process. Business organizations do not
interact with the consumers in this type of media.
Traditional media is not as fast as social media. Audience or readers need to wait for a
particular time to receive information from the media. At the same time, social media informs
its users as soon as any incident happens. This quality has increased the competitive
advantage of the employees in significant manner. It is known as the fastest form of
communication (Zhu & Chen, 2015).
Social media is not as cost consuming as traditional media. There are many hidden
costs associated with the traditional media that needs to pay the advertisers in every step. This
has helped social media to gain popularity more than traditional media.
Thus, it can be stated that due to various efficient and effective performance of social
media, it has earned desired reputation among the business organizations and advertisement
agencies. The modern and high quality performance of social media has brought revolution in
the world of advertisement by its performance.

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Reasons for the failure of the Business Organizations in Using Social Media:
Apart from several benefits of social media, business organizations have faced several
challenges in achieving desired goal by using social media. There are many reasons that
indicates that business organizations face various issues while promoting their brand in social
media, such as-
Values:
It is often evident that values of many business organizations do not match with the
social media. While starting up any business, owner has some kind of vision, mission and
values about his business. At the same time, while promoting in social media it is often
evident that owner’s values clashes with social media’s value. Hence, it leads the
organization to face many difficulties in advertising their product in social media. Social
media has different kind of set of norms and values, which do not usually match with the set
of principles of traditional media advertisements or conventional way of advertisement.
Everything that a business organization wants to forecast or promote is mainly based on the
basic principle of business. These values may differ from the values of social media. Thus, it
is one of the major reasons for the failure of business organizations in using social media
(Luo & Zhang, 2013).
Consistency:
Consistency is another major reason that has led the business organizations to face
difficulties while promoting in social media. Social media demands consistency from the
business organizations. It is highly required for the business organizations to continuously
update its information, features, products, price and discounts to remain in the race, as there
are other business organizations in the competition that can beat each other. However, it is
often evident that business organizations fail to perform appropriately. Thus, it leads them to

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face tough competition in social media. It often leads business organizations to face deadly
consequence in social media (Minazzi, 2015).
Miscommunication:
Although, the speed of social media works as a benefit for the business organizations,
but there is a dark side as well. Wrong information shared by the social media can cause
massive hazard for the business organizations. Thus, business leaders need to be careful
while sharing any information regarding organization, product, price, CSR policies in social
media. It may cause miscommunication between the business organization and its target
market. It is considered as the most common mistake of social media (Dahnil et al., 2014).
Suitability:
All type of social media is not suitable for every business organization. For example,
Face Book has a great popularity as social media, but it may not suit a particular type of
business. Thus, choice of wrong social media platform may lead the business organization to
face many difficulties. This mistake is often committed by many business leaders. They need
to analyse their business type and its suitability while choosing social media for the
promotion.
Privacy:
Social media is an open forum. Information that is shared in social media is accessible
by everyone who uses social media. Thus, it can be stated that they can use these information
for their own purpose as well. It is considered as a type of violation of privacy policy. Many
business organizations face various challenges due to this reason and it is considered as one
of the main reason for the failure of business organizations in social media (Minazzi, 2015).

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Accessibility:
There are a large number of people who cannot access social media. Thus, these
people will remain untouched by business organizations that use social media as their
medium to promote their brand name. It will put negative impact on the growth of the
organization. Thus, this is also another reason of failure. Business leaders need to consider
these aspects while choosing media for the advertisement of their brand.
Conclusion:
As per the previous discussion, it can be stated that although, social media as many
strengths that can beat conventional media in terms of promoting the brand image of the
business organizations, there are some reason for which business leaders fail in promoting
their name in social media.

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Reference:
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study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
Chaffey, D. (2016). Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights, 8.
Chang, Y. T., Yu, H., & Lu, H. P. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4),
777-782.
Constantinides, E. (2014). Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and
behavioral sciences, 148, 40-57.
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.
Hays, S., Page, S. J., & Buhalis, D. (2013). Social media as a destination marketing tool: its
use by national tourism organisations. Current issues in Tourism, 16(3), 211-239.
Kaur, G. (2016). Social Media Marketing. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 4(7).
Luo, X., & Zhang, J. (2013). How do consumer buzz and traffic in social media marketing
predict the value of the firm?. Journal of Management Information Systems, 30(2),
213-238.
Minazzi, R. (2015). Social media marketing in tourism and hospitality. Heidelberg: Springer.

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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.
Turhan, A. (2013). Social Media Marketing.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage.
Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L., & Tichindelean, M. (2013). The effects of social
media marketing on online consumer behavior. International Journal of Business and
Management, 8(14), 66.
Zhu, Y. Q., & Chen, H. G. (2015). Social media and human need satisfaction: Implications
for social media marketing. Business horizons, 58(3), 335-345.