MBA Project: Analyzing the Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing

This MBA project investigates the effectiveness of social media marketing on businesses. It begins with an introduction highlighting the importance of social media in modern marketing and the need for businesses to establish a strong online presence. The research aims to analyze the benefits of incorporating social media marketing, identify its impact on brand awareness and customer engagement, and evaluate its influence on consumer decision-making. The project poses several research questions, such as how businesses benefit from social media marketing, the impact of social media on consumer buying processes, and the ways companies use social media to reach their target markets. The literature review covers various aspects, including the role of social media for businesses, its advantages like improved brand awareness and cost-effectiveness, and the different social media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The methodology section outlines data collection and analysis methods. The project also addresses research limitations and includes a timeline and conclusion summarizing the findings. The reference list provides a comprehensive overview of the sources used in the research.

MBA PROJECT
2018-2019
“The effectiveness of Social media marketing on a Business”
WORD COUNT-2877
SUBMISSION DATE-19-MAY-2019

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Table of Contents
1. Title of the proposed research............................................................................3
2. Introduction........................................................................................................3
3. Research Aims and objectives............................................................................3
3.1 . Research Aims............................................................................................3
3.2 . Research Objectives....................................................................................3
4. Research Questions.............................................................................................4
5. Literature Review...............................................................................................4
5.1. Social Media for businesses.......................................................................4
5.2. Advantages of social media marketing on businesses...............................6
Improves Brand Awareness................................................................................6
Cost-effective......................................................................................................6
Targeting Right Audience..................................................................................7
Generating Inbound Traffic................................................................................7
Customer trust and satisfaction...........................................................................7
Use of Search Engine Optimization...................................................................8
5.3. Social Media Channels..............................................................................8
Facebook.............................................................................................................9
YouTube.............................................................................................................9
Instagram............................................................................................................9
Twitter..............................................................................................................10
LinkedIn............................................................................................................10

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6. Methodology.....................................................................................................11
6.1. Data Collection Methods.........................................................................11
6.2 . Data Analysis............................................................................................12
7. Limitations of research.....................................................................................13
8. Timeline............................................................................................................13
9. Conclusion........................................................................................................15
10. Reference List................................................................................................16

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1. Title of the proposed research
The title of the proposed research is “The effectiveness of Social Media marketing
on a business”.
2. Introduction
Social media and its marketing has become an inevitable part of every business
regardless of its size and nature of operation. Approximately 90% of all marketers
believe to derive maximum revenues from inculcating social media marketing into
their businesses. In the current scenario, businesses not utilizing social media
platforms and marketing techniques fail to create their presence in the market. The
following research proposal will help to analyze the extent social media marketing
has helped businesses to increase their exposure and dominance in the competitive
market. The research will help to clarify the aims, objectives and answer the
research questions framed by using appropriate literature.
3. Research Aims and objectives
3.1. Research Aims
The aim of the research is to analyze the benefits and opportunities businesses gain
by inculcating social media marketing into their operations. The research will
focus on identifying the solutions that would improve the brand awareness of a
business by utilizing different social media channels.
3.2. Research Objectives
The research objectives framed are-
 Identify the importance of social media marketing and its impact on
businesses

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 Analyze the reasons for companies to utilize social media marketing as an
important method of attracting more customers
 Evaluate the impact of social media marketing on the growth, profitability
and brand image of a company
 Evaluate the social media extent and how it helps in consumer decision
making process
 Evaluate and suggest strategies for businesses to meet the expectations of
customers by use social media marketing
4. Research Questions
The research questions are as follows-
 How can businesses benefit from use of social media marketing?
 What are the different ways in which social media marketing influences
consumer buying process?
 What are the different ways social media platforms used by companies to
reach its target market?
 What impact does an enhanced strategy of social media has on a company’s
brand impact and profitability?
5. Literature Review
5.1. Social Media for businesses
As opined by Brown and Duguid (2017), technology has enabled entrepreneurs as
well as business owners to embrace the need of keeping up the fast pace of change.
In the current scenario, business models are no more made of pure bricks but
instead businesses are designing marketing strategies which comprises of social

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media networks. The rapid technological advancements have revolutionized the
ways to conduct business by effectively utilizing marketing on social media in
order to engage with the market and consumers. As identified by Ramanathan,
Subramanian and Parrott (2017), social media is an essential ingredient of
marketing mix of a company. In the recent years, the power of internet has brought
a plethora of opportunities the world, making it easier for business to bring their
products and services accessible to their target market. It has become increasingly
important for businesses of any kind or size. Since people have become more
social by nature and keep gathering information over the social media platforms, it
gives opportunities for businesses to analyze the preferences and needs of
customers. Social media marketing is all about understanding the benefits of
technology on people and how businesses can make profits from that
understanding. The advent of technology has enabled more and more customers to
utilize social media either for personal use, business-to-business or business-to-
consumer purposes. This kind of remarkable progress of social media marketing
allows businesses to build innovative content on social media networks with the
motive of improving brand awareness, creating an online presence, and gaining a
competitive position among the competitors.
The introduction of social media has become powerful tool that helps to share
pieces of information all over the world in no time. There can be businesses which
still lag behind in adopting social media marketing strategies but many of them
have identified great opportunities by utilizing social media strategies. As
identified by Nylén and Holmström (2015), approximately 97% of businesses
utilize social media to attract new customers but majority of them have faced the
issue of identifying the best social media tools for their business. Businesses with

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established social media presence are more likely to purchase the products of that
company rather than becoming consumers of any brand that has low online
presence. This shows that social media marketing has huge potential to improve
the brand awareness thereby increasing the sales of any company. The longer a
business ways to create an online presence, the longer it has to wait to grab the
attention of the customers. As suggested by Patrutiu-Baltes (2016), the effective
utilization of social media marketing will certainly pull customers towards the
company generating more traffic and engagement.
5.2. Advantages of social media marketing on businesses
As opined by He, et. al. (2015), brand awareness can be achieved by social media
marketing tools for more customer engagement, and improve the brand image of
the business. The utilization of right social media strategy has been important for
targeting customers thereby understanding the customer preferences and needs.
Improves Brand Awareness
The growing demands of social media networks and with the rise of activities
online makes it an ideal place for businesses spread awareness for its products and
services. Companies are spending on their marketing efforts to improve their
visibility online. As suggested by Tuten and Solomon (2017), a company receives
exposure by creating social media profiles to promote its products and services.
When people like, comment and share the content shared by the company, it leads
to improved brand awareness.
Cost-effective
In order to promote the products and services of a company, utilization of social
media tools is comparatively less expensive than any other traditional ways of

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marketing. The return on investment is high due to increased conversion rates. As
identified by Main (2018), the investments in opening up a Facebook profile is
much cheaper than posting an advertisement in a newspaper.
Targeting Right Audience
Advertising requires hitting on the right notes to attract the right set of customers.
According to Pearson (2016), when a company promotes it promotes its products
and services, the audience persona must be understood to connect with the right
customers and their attributes to target. Targeting customers on Facebook and
Instagram requires to collect info from their user profiles and daily online
activities. As suggested by West (2019), customers can be identified from
LinkedIn and Twitter by analyzing the hashtags and keywords they use for search.
Targeting the right is important but monitoring the performance of these social
media platforms is of greater importance for a company.
Generating Inbound Traffic
As identified by Iblasi, Bader and Al-Qreini (2016), inbound traffic is generally
generated by incorporating specific keywords and interactive content on social
media pages and on company website in order to attract more customers. Inbound
traffic can be increased by using current trends like innovative and customer
interactive content, micro influencers, use of big data and artificial intelligence.
Customer trust and satisfaction
As identified by Jackson (2018), the right content being advertised on different
social media profiles become the unique selling point for any company. Customers
often look for posts and advertisements that connects with them at an emotional
level and wins their trust. For instance, as stated by Touloupi (2018), British

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Airways advertise to highlight the value they create for customers. As identified by
Singh (2018), Amazon majorly highlights their product delivery services. This
kind of personalized attention seeks the attention of customers as they are relatable
and demonstrates a sense of compassion that the company values its customers.
This in return influences the consumer purchase decisions and retains the loyal
customers.
Use of Search Engine Optimization
SEO has a crucial role in the digital promotion strategies of a company. SEO
influences the digital channels positioning that is available to a company such as
company website, social networking profiles, blogs, etc. Optimization of web
pages provides with attractive content for the search engines so that it can be
viewed on top of the search list. Rehman, et. al. (2019), the work of SEO is to
identify the keywords customers by use of Google Analytics tool.
5.3. Social Media Channels
The use of social media platforms by companies have increased for the acquisition
of its target customers. With the availability of content in the market, it can be
challenging for businesses to select the right social media channels for marketing
purposes. Social media is more than just a hype, as it provides which better lead
generation, higher return on investment and better engagement with customers. For
instance, approximately 91% of marketing professionals agree that their companies
have gained better exposure and customer loyalty. As per Sproutsocial (2017),
48% of the customers might take decisions of purchasing the product instantly if
they receive a personalized attention. The use of right content can be convert up to
42% of customers. A considerable effort made by companies will result in enhance

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lead generation with better revenue generation, customer loyalty and improved
exposure.
Facebook
Facebook is world’s biggest and perhaps the most effective social media platform.
As identified in Statista (2019a), with approximately 2.27 billion active users,
Facebook constitutes of the widest customer base. Facebook has marketing
features for businesses that provides opportunities for customer engagement. The
use of paid promotions for advertising and dynamic video retargeting campaigns
prove to be highly effective for businesses. Approximately 93% of marketers
routinely run paid promotions on Facebook.
YouTube
Looking at the current scenario, YouTube remains as a dominant search engine
platform for social media use. As identified by Forbes (2018), serving 1.2 billion
users worldwide, YouTube enables businesses to optimize their content such as
advertisement clips, informative videos, and testimonials. This social media giant
encourages marketers to bring originality and innovation in their content which
serves the purpose of attracting customer attention thereby generating revenues for
the business. As suggested by Tewari (2018), collaboration with famous
YouTubers will allow marketers to promote their products.
Instagram
The universally popular social media platform, Instagram is considered to be the
hub of more than 800 million active users where majority of them are millennials
between the ages 18 to 24 (Statista, 2019b). The routine posts by this photo-sharing
platform makes it one of the most loved social media applications among its users.

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Visually, Instagram appears to be attractive and provides a different experience to
the users. Businesses can take the advantage of the popular hashtag culture and
provide users with various promotional offers such as prizes, giveaways, discount
coupons etc. Promotional activities by Influencers can influence people to be
aware of the product offerings of the company.
Twitter
As per Murthy (2018), Twitter is a microblogging social media platform which has
become immensely popular in the recent years. Just like any other social media
platform, the motive businesses on Twitter is to increase the number of followers.
This 140 character microblogging platform allows users and marketers to tweet by
using catchy phrases and let them become viral. As opined by Duran (2017), the
use of hashtags can be of great use for businesses to enhance the level of customer
engagement on Twitter.
LinkedIn
As suggested by Graham and Mudambi (2016), LinkedIn has served as a beneficial
tool for business to business marketing. Companies are able to post professional
content about their companies such their recent achievements, future plans and
objectives. It allows businesses to connect with skilled professionals and LinkedIn
Group serves the purpose of connecting with them.
As identified by Holt (2016), the popularity of these social media channels have
gone beyond imagination which can be determined by the number of users each
channels carries. Reviews are posted on these social media platforms concerning
the companies. These posts can either be positive or negative which has the
potential to influence consumers to make their purchase decisions. A positive

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review will draw the attention of customers whereas negative reviews resonate the
experiences of other customers, hence customers might never return. Therefore, it
becomes essential for businesses to identify the preferences of customers and
accordingly frame their marketing strategies. There can be companies preferring
the use of traditional means of marketing their products and services but utilizing
social media channels reaches masses much faster. Alongside using these
platforms, as Wertz (2018) has suggested that selecting the right social media
platform may determine better opportunities to communicate with the target
customers. For instance, anything related to fashion and clothing can be marketed
over Instagram, promotional offers, contests and polls can be conducted on
Facebook, and “how-to” small videos can be uploaded on YouTube.
6. Methodology
6.1. Data Collection Methods
The research will be conducted by using primary and secondary data to determine
the objectives framed for analyzing the impact social media has on businesses. The
data collection method will utilize qualitative method. As opined by Morse (2016),
the use of qualitative method will help to gain an understanding of the underlying
opinions, motivations and reasons. This method provides insight into the research
problem and helps identifying ideas for the qualitative research. There can be
different qualitative data collection methods which includes interviews,
observations and focus group. In this report, the primary data will be collected by
use of interview method. The rationale of selecting interview method is to gather
primary data through interview questions which will provide a flexibility of
questioning the respondents. The interview questions will be open ended in nature
and directly with regards to effectiveness of social media marketing on business.