Impact of Social Media Platforms on Purchasing Behaviour and Marketing Opportunities

Marketing strategy
and
Plan

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Social media platforms affect the purchasing behaviour of the people and gives new
opportunities to the marketers
Social media platforms have been widely used in different formats of business. Social media
platform such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram are capable of solving multiple problems
faced by the organisation especially the issues that are faced by marketers. Numbers of
people that are attached with such social media platforms are in billions. It acts as a
wonderful opportunity for the companies to market their products among larger population
across boundaries with limited efforts and costing. In the increasing competitive market,
these social media sites acts a platform where companies could do one to one marketing
easily understanding the need of each and every individual (Berthon, et al. 2012).
The increased use of these platforms has not only changed the working nature of the
company but has also brought new behaviour among the customers. This has generated
multiple opportunities for the both consumers and marketers. These opportunities have
originated because of the fact that bringing use of such technologies has changed the
purchasing behaviour of the people. The firs and the most crucial opportunities that these
social media sites have created is that it has given the platform for the marketers to re-build
their marketing campaigns (Solomon, et al. 2014). It is because of the fact that social media
platforms are capable of posting advertisements that are unique and innovative. They take use
of different types of multimedia tools for improving the quality of the marketing campaign as
well as to make it more attractive.
It is essential for the organisation to take use of different social media strategies so as to
improve the quality of the social media campaign. This must be done on the basis of the
problems that are faced by the firm in their marketing. One of the most essential problems
that company is facing in their modern day marketing is related to doing research. Since these
platforms have enormous amount of data related to client’s choice and about their likes hence
it acts an effective place where data can be gathered and evaluated (Chu and Kim, 2011).
After evaluating the data, personalised marketing can be made more effective. Social media
platforms such as Facebook also allow companies to get the feedbacks from the customers in
the form of comments. These feedbacks enable them to maintain equal and effective relations
with the customers. Most importantly, these feedbacks help them in understanding the
consumer’s behaviour. It is essential for the marketers to change their marketing campaign as

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per the changing marketing behaviour. These platforms provide an effective space to the
users also so as to know about the company and their choice. Snapchat, Facebook and
Instagram help the company to generate fan pages that are capable of improving the visibility
of the products and services.
It is not that social media platforms are only capable of attracting people but they are also
effective in changing the mind-set of the people. The analysis of the social media marketing
shows that firms that are performing well on the social media platforms are always able to
maintain a good lead over the competitors. The major reason for this is the fact that
companies have more chance to understanding the priorities about the changes in the market
(Kim and Ko, 2012). Apart from this, social media platforms are capable of maintaining good
leads with their clients. Customer’s engagement can be increased with the help of social
media platforms. There is significant increase in the numbers of people that are engaging
with the companies at such platforms. Companies also use this engagement for their strategy
making. Such strategies prove to be more worthy and give opportunity to the firm to ensure
the enhancement in the number of satisfied customers.
It is the social media platform that helps the companies to understand the demands of the
public world-wide. Social media has a significant impact on the making and spreading of
trends in any industry. This further has a significant impact on the customer’s choice and the
way they make a purchase (Chen, Fay and Wang, 2011). In the time when people are making
most of their purchase through online mediums, such social media platforms are able to
provide direct link to their online sites from where purchase could be easily made.
Social media sites are like gifts to the small and medium size enterprises as they do not have
huge amount of resources for promoting their products at the lower cost. It also enables these
SMEs to find potential markets along with customers. This increases their effectiveness as a
marketer as they can easily challenge the autonomy of the bigger firms (Schivinski and
Dabrowski, 2016). It has given opportunities for the firms to go global as they can easily do
both local and international marketing by the help of these social media platforms.
One of the biggest challenges that company faced previously was related to distributing
reward coupons among the people. For example the flexible pricing strategies that need to be
conveyed to the customers on the daily basis can be easily done with the help of social media
platforms. Since people are highly active on these sites hence there is a higher probability for
the companies to showcase their promotional steps to the targeted customers (Hudson, et al.