Social Media's Impact on Marketing: A Comprehensive Literature Review

This report provides a comprehensive literature review on the effects of social media on marketing. It begins by defining social media and explores its positive impacts, such as increased website traffic, enhanced brand awareness, improved search engine rankings, and valuable insights into customer behavior. The report also highlights how social media facilitates content segmentation and cost-effective brand promotion. Conversely, it delves into the negative impacts, including the potential for damage to a brand's reputation through negative reviews, the need for significant investment in social media tools and management, and the loss of control over content dissemination. The analysis concludes by emphasizing the importance of thoughtful implementation to harness the benefits while mitigating the risks associated with social media marketing.

The Effect of Social
Media On Marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Definitions...................................................................................................................................1
Positive effects of social media on marketing.............................................................................1
Negative impacts of social mdia on marketing............................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Social media comprises of internet based applications which facilitates active interaction
through sharing of thoughts, ideas, and information. This becomes feasible though a
development of virtual networks (Salimi and et.al., 2019). Social media significantly impacts
marketing activities by providing novel approaches and methods that can be used by
organizations to reach their customers.
The key words that were used to find literature were social media, effect, marketing,
impact, promotion. This literature review aims to explore the effects of social media on
marketing. Both positive as well as negative effects of social media have been analysed in the
literature review.
Definitions
According to Ebrahim (2020), Social media is defined as websites and applications with
the help of the users are able to interact thorough creation and sharing of content. The various
viral communities and networks assist in fast sharing of ideas and content. As per the view of
Alalwan (2018), social media are computer based technologies through which ideas and content
can be shared by building virtual networks. Being internet based, it facilitates communication of
electronic content in a timely manner. Chatzigeorgiou, (2017) defined social media as a
collective term that encompasses websites and applications that lay emphasis on communication.
The different types of social media are forums, social bookmarking, social curation, etc.
Positive effects of social media on marketing
According to Lim and et.al., (2017), social media has significant positive effects on
business. It affects the business by impacting website traffic. It can be analysed that a
considerable amount of time is now spent by people on social media. It is for this reason that
social media can be regarded as a perfect medium that can drive traffic to the website of
businesses. However, Jayasuriya, Azam and Ferdous (2017) argued that social media can only be
beneficial in driving traffic to the organization’s website if it is implemented in the right manner.
But, Alalwan and et.al., (2017) stated that social media is one of the most effective media which
1

assists organizations to share posts. It therefore leads to sharing of brand to multiple users that
may be present at different locations all over the world.
Beig and Khan (2018) found that social media affects the marketing positively as it has
significant impact on brand awareness. It can be analyse that immense opportunities are offered
by social media to brands which assists them in crafting social media campaigns creatively.
Moreover, a platform is provided to the businesses with the help of which they can engage with
their audience and gain their attention. In this way, the organizations can improve their brand
awareness. As per the views of Kizgin and et.al., (2018), brand awareness takes consistent efforts
and a long period of time to be built. It requires organizations to gain the trusts of their
customers. As social media assists in being visible on a number of platforms, it positively
impacts marketing by assisting the organization to connect with a larger number of audience. It
thus, helps in growing the brand awareness multiple folds.
According to Tajudeen, Jaafar and Ainin, (2018), social media impacts marketing
positively by improving search engine rankings. In order to obtain higher traffic, it is important
for organizations to pay attention to search engine optimization. It can be analysed that social
media indirectly improves search engine rankings. If an organization is able to rank in top
positions for its key words, it will have significantly impacts on the traffic leading to positive
results. As compared to this, Sohail and Al-Jabri (2017) stated that social media helps in gaining
valuable insights about the marketplace. In this way, it has a significant impact on marketing.
Social media assist in gaining information about the needs and thoughts of customers. The
interest and opinions of the customers can be determined by monitoring their activity. It can be
analysed that social media thus helps in analyzing the demographic characteristics of the existing
and potential customers.
As such, it helps in planning promotion and marketing strategies effectively. Appel and
et.al., (2020) asserted that social media enables segmentation of content syndication lists on the
basis of topic. This further assists in identifying the type of content that leads to most number of
impressions. With the help of these tools, measure of conversions can be done on the basis of
posts on various social media platform. As per the views of Pick (2020), one of the ways in
which social media impacts marketing positively is by enabling to produce well – written
content. It can be analysed that posting thoughtful content assists the organization in becoming a
2

leader in the market field. In this way, the business is able to promote its authority by connecting
with the audience and sharing useful content. According to Salimi and et.al., (2019), social
media helps in promoting the brand in the marketplace in a cost effective manner, thus impacting
marketing positively. As compared to other marketing tactics, it provides a low cost option to the
organization to carry out its promotional activities. In this way, it helps the marketing function to
contribute more to the organizational goals and objectives.
As per the views of Alalwan (2018), social media has significant impact on sales by
providing the brands with an opportunity to enhance their conversions. It can be analysed that as
with the help of social media, organizations are better able to interact with customers, it helps in
increasing their conversions. Furthermore, adopting s proactive social media approach provides
strategy to the marketing strategy of organization. It can be analysed that with this tool,
organizations learn to interact and communicate with their employees in a better way. In this
way, they are able to engage with the customers efficiently which makes the latter convinced to
buy the products.
Negative impacts of social mdia on marketing
But, Lim and et.al., (2017) argued that if social media campaign is not executed in the
right manner, it can negatively impact the marketing strategy of the firm. It can be analysed that
inefficient implementation of social media strategy makes the overall marketing strategy of an
organization weak. This can have drastic impact on the existing as well as potential customer
base of the business. According to Jayasuriya, Azam and Ferdous (2017), social media
negatively impacts marketing of an organization as it is complicated to correct mistakes due to
inability to censor the content. It can be analysed that small mistakes on social media can turn
out to be a costly aspect for the organization. Moreover, if the customers are not satisfied with
the products and services of the company, they have the freedom to criticize it through posts
which sometimes may become viral. Failure to take corrective action on time may lead to huge
costs in terms of reputation of the firm. It can be analysed that drastic damage can be caused to
the firm’s reputation due to negative reviews given by customers. The social media profiles of
the organization can be piled up with negative reviews of customers that not only harm its
relations with existing customers but also lead to failure on developing relations with the
potential customers.
3

Beig and Khan (2018) stated that social media requires large investments in terms of
money and efforts. Organizations that aim at obtaining maximum engagement for their brand
need to make investments in certain social media tools. For the effective management of these
tools, the organization requires hiring a social media manager who will be responsible for
creating the right campaigns. Further, there may also be the requirement of creating an entire
department for social media marketing. It thus adds to the costs of the organization without
ensuring promising results. It can be analysed that a lot of resources of the company need to be
directed to the social media strategy making the entire marketing function a costly affair. As per
the views of Tajudeen, Jaafar and Ainin (2018), incorporating a social media strategy within the
marketing strategy of a firm may make it lose control over the latter. This is because the
organizations do not have control over their followers on social media. It can be analysed that
when a post is shared on a social media tool, multiple users have the freedom to interact with it.
They are also free to spread the message further. This can be a trouble for the organizations when
the posts give a negative impression about them.
From the literature review, it can be concluded that social media has become an
important tool in marketing strategy of organization. It provides numerous ways in which
organizations can interact with existing as well as potential customers. It enables organizations to
share content and ideas and interact with customers. Moreover, it provides meaningful insights
about the customer needs and thoughts to the organization thus assisting in formulating a robust
marketing strategy. Social media enables real time interaction with customers and helps the
business to increase its conversions. Moreover, positive word of mouth on social media increases
prospective customers. However, it can have negative impact on an organization’s marketing
strategy if customers post negative reviews about a product or service. It can drastically harm the
reputation of the organization. Therefore, thoughtful implementation of social media is important
in order to reap profits from it.
4

REFERENCES
Journals and Books
Salimi, D. and et.al., 2019. The impact of social media on marketing using bibliometrics
analysis. International Journal of Data and Network Science. 3(3). pp.165-184.
Ebrahim, R. S., 2020. The role of trust in understanding the impact of social media marketing on
brand equity and brand loyalty. Journal of Relationship Marketing. 19(4). pp.287-308.
Alalwan, A. A., 2018. Investigating the impact of social media advertising features on customer
purchase intention. International Journal of Information Management. 42. pp.65-77.
Chatzigeorgiou, C., 2017. Modelling the impact of social media influencers on behavioural
intentions of millennials: The case of tourism in rural areas in Greece. Journal of
Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing (JTHSM). 3(2). pp.25-29.
Lim, X. J. and et.al., 2017. The impact of social media influencers on purchase intention and the
mediation effect of customer attitude. Asian Journal of Business Research. 7(2). pp.19-
36.
Jayasuriya, N. A., Azam, S. F. and Ferdous, M., 2017. The impact of social media marketing on
brand equity: A study of fashion-wear retail in Sri Lanka. International Review of
Management and Marketing. 7(5). pp.178-183.
Alalwan, A. A. and et.al., 2017. Social media in marketing: A review and analysis of the existing
literature. Telematics and Informatics. 34(7). pp.1177-1190.
Beig, F. A. and Khan, M. F., 2018. Impact of social media marketing on brand experience: A
study of select apparel brands on Facebook. Vision. 22(3). pp.264-275.
Kizgin, H. and et.al., 2018. The impact of social media on consumers’ acculturation and
purchase intentions. Information Systems Frontiers. 20(3). pp.503-514.
Tajudeen, F. P., Jaafar, N. I. and Ainin, S., 2018. Understanding the impact of social media
usage among organizations. Information & Management. 55(3). pp.308-321.
Sohail, M. S. and Al-Jabri, I., 2017. Evolving factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward
social media marketing and its impact on social media usage. International Journal of
Marketing, Communication and New Media. (2).
Appel, G. and et.al., 2020. The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science. 48(1). pp.79-95.
Pick, M., 2020. Psychological ownership in social media influencer marketing. European
Business Review.
5

6