Effect of Social Media on Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages

This report provides a literature review of the effect of social media on marketing. It discusses various definitions related to the term and analyses the advantages and disadvantages of social media over marketing.

BMM 3113

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Definitions...................................................................................................................................3
Positive Impacts...........................................................................................................................4
Negative Impacts.........................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Social media is a collection of websites and applications facilitating the creation and
sharing of content to a wide range of people. Marketing is the process by which companies aim
to create awareness for their offerings among the targeted customers in the market. Social media
marketing makes use of social media platforms to targeted in aimed audience. In this report the
literature review of the effect of social media on marketing will be done. Various definitions
related to the term will be discussed and supported with literature. Also in this report the
advantages and disadvantages of social over marketing will be analysed.
MAIN BODY
Definitions
According to Wu and et.al. (2019) social media means those websites and applications
that helps in creation of content and its sharing. In the opinion of de Oliveira Santini and et.al.
(2020) the collection of applications that are based over internet that leads to establishment of
web 2.0 based on technology and ideologies. Enke and Borchers (2021) stated that collection of
applications that aims at enhancements in communication, increased level of interaction along
with facilitating content sharing is termed as social media. It is defined as a form of
communication with electronic medium that results in creation of communities over online
network that can share their messages, ideas, information and other content on such a network.
Advancements in the form of media leading to increased level of interactive involvement of
global community is the other definition for social media as per the views of
In the thoughts of Li, Larimo and Leonidou (2021) marketing is the whole process by
which value is created, communicated to the persons for which the creation of value has been
done, and delivery of that value to the concerned. According to Sharma and Verma (2018)
marketing is an activity for businesses to connect and interact with the consumers and targeted
audiences to communicate with them the value it has to offer them, encouraging them to make
their buying decisions and ultimate hand over of the product carrying that value.
In the views of Lunde (2018) social media marketing is the term that is used to refer to
the social media deployment by the companies for the purpose of promoting their services and
products.
Keywords: Social media, marketing, objectives for using social media marketing, advantages,
disadvantages involved. It involves the use of social media platform by the company for

interacting, communicating and encouraging potential customers for making them opting for the
products or services by which company creates value to offer them.
Positive Impacts
There are a number of advantages that are related to the used of social media over the
marketing programmes of an organization. According to Singh and Singh (2018) social media
when used for marketing activities by an organization’s marketing department the brand
awareness of the concern increases at an increasing pace. It is believed to be the most effective
method for marketing based on the cost involved in this form to advertise. The firm through
effective social media marketing can increase its market visibility efficiently. Further the other
advantage in their view is that of inbound traffic. The engagement of buyers with the company is
limited to the regular customer on usual basis. With the utilization of social media network in the
marketing strategy of the company this inbound traffic can be increased to customers reach other
than the loyal customers of the company.
In the opinions of Fraccastoro, Gabrielsson and Chetty (2021) marketing with social
media networking involvement gives the benefits of making the conversion rates high. As the
social media marketing is linked with the increasing level of brand visibility the rate at which
potential customers turns into the actual customers for the company increases. Company can
increase its visibility over the internet through sharing more content over the company social
media pages and being active by interacting more with the targeted market through comments,
status postings etc.
Alobaidi (2021) shares the thoughts over the concerned topic, social media marketing is
believed to increase the level of customer satisfaction. Social media platform supports the
company to communicate and provide voice for itself. Company with the help of social media
marketing can personify itself. The satisfaction of customer increases when they know that the
comments they post on the content of the company will be responded to specially rather than by
the system generated responses. In addition to this the use of keywords and phrases by the
company for its social media content postings in the search engine ranking of the company
improves. The link to the company’s website can be attached with its posts for the increasing the
website reach.
According to Soegoto and Utomo (2019) social media marketing is an excellent way for
company to establish good customer relationships. The number of users are increasingly

increasing over the years on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Thus companies
advertising or carrying out their marketing campaigns over these platforms are guaranteed to
have increase in the customer reach over the years. The connection of company’s public relation
team gets more direct with the customers. It provides a great opportunity for company to know
its customers better which helps it in bring changes to the organization and its offerings for better
serving the customers of the company. An insight of the value perceived by the customers for the
products for the company is known to the company.
Negative Impacts
Alobaidi (2018) states social media marketing is only useful for those business that
already that already have some existing brand awareness among the market audience. Such
companies can invest in social media marketing to increase the level of brand awareness. Small
business in early years of their operations and new start-ups cannot build their brand awareness
by making investments in the social media marketing. Further the negative feedback posted by
the customer on social media can tarnish the entire image of the company. The dark side is being
exposure of company in the public among all types of people the brand name of the company is
highly sensitive. Few people will always aim at damaging the firm’s reputation and company
cannot avoid such attempts.
As per the views of Filipov (2020) the biggest disadvantage of social media marketing is
that the main source of biggest social media platforms’ income is through advertisements. For
getting good amount of reach over these platforms a lot of funds are required to be involved,
which is not recommended from the point of view of every business. The another disadvantage is
low return on investment. Talking about the online based marketing strategies that lowest
amount of return from the social media marketing. Further marketing with the utilisation of
social media consumes a lot of time. Though there exist some tools that can be used for
marketing of business are and available free of cost but it takes a lot of time of understand the
application of such tools. Also the reach of free tools is highly limited.
In the thoughts of Kayumovich and Kamalovna (2019) a company when involves in
social media marketing needs to stay engaged with the online audience base through remaining
active on these platforms. The efforts of marketing must always be remained active. The world
of social media in nature is changing constantly in case the company fails in changing with the
change it will be considered as to be following outdated marketing tactics. Further it is added

that with the utilization of social media platforms for marketing the measurement of efforts
involved in marketing activities gets highly difficult to be measured. Also according to --- one of
the most important disadvantage of social media marketing that cannot be neglected by the
company is security and privacy policy issues. The company makes itself a more potential target
for hackers and other people that unethically use the internet for harming others purposely or just
for their fun. Although the improvements are being made on making social media a safer place
but for a fact it is known that it will never be cent percent safe.
According to Mehmet, Roberts and Nayeem (2020) social media marketing cannot be use
for targeting all groups of people. The pattern of using social media differs from person to person
this is the main reason that social media marketing is not useful when people of all groups are to
be targeted by the company. Reason is that only the content that interest the people is shown to
them the people with common interest to that the interest of people for company’s product are
most likely to encounter the social media marketing content by the company.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of the above report the meaning of social media, marketing and usage of
social media in marketing by business enterprise have been covered. The report has done
literature review of various advantages that are associated with the social media marketing like
increase in brand awareness, high level of employee satisfaction, employee engagement
improvements, etc. Further in this report various disadvantage like non-suitability for every type
of organization, time consumption, etc. have been outlined.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Wu, L. and et.al., 2019. Misinformation in social media: definition, manipulation, and
detection. ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter. 21(2). pp.80-90.
Enke, N. and Borchers, N. S., 2021. Social media influencers in strategic communication: A
conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. In Social
Media Influencers in Strategic Communication (pp. 7-23). Routledge.
de Oliveira Santini, F. and et.al., 2020. Customer engagement in social media: a framework and
meta-analysis. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. 48(6). pp.1211-1228.
Li, F., Larimo, J. and Leonidou, L. C., 2021. Social media marketing strategy: definition,
conceptualization, taxonomy, validation, and future agenda. Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science. 49(1). pp.51-70.
Lunde, M. B., 2018. Sustainability in marketing: A systematic review unifying 20 years of
theoretical and substantive contributions (1997–2016). AMS review. 8(3). pp.85-110.
Sharma, S. and Verma, H. V., 2018. Social media marketing: Evolution and change. In Social
media marketing (pp. 19-36). Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
Fraccastoro, S., Gabrielsson, M. and Chetty, S., 2021. Social media firm specific advantages as
enablers of network embeddedness of international entrepreneurial ventures. Journal of
World Business. 56(3). p.101164.
Alobaidi, E., 2021. A study of outline to the advantages and disadvantages of social
media. ACADEMICIA: AN INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
JOURNAL. 11(1). pp.1437-1444.
Soegoto, E. S. and Utomo, A. T., 2019, November. Marketing Strategy Through Social Media.
In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 662, No. 3, p.
032040). IOP Publishing.
Singh, M. and Singh, G., 2018. Impact of social media on e-commerce. International Journal of
Engineering & Technology. 7(2.30). pp.21-26.
Alobaidi, E., 2018. Outline to the advantages and disadvantages of social media. ACADEMICIA:
An International Multidisciplinary Research Journal. 8(4). pp.4-11.
Filipov, M., 2020. Social media marketing for small and medium-sized enterprises in
Kazakhstan. Central Asian Journal of Innovations on Tourism Management and
Finance. 1(4). pp.1-14.
Kayumovich, K. O. and Kamalovna, S. F., 2019. Social media-marketing-a forceful tool for
tourism industry. European science. (7 (49)). pp.41-43.
Mehmet, M., Roberts, R. and Nayeem, T., 2020. Using digital and social media for health
promotion: A social marketing approach for addressing co‐morbid physical and mental
health. Australian Journal of Rural Health. 28(2). pp.149-158.
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