Analyzing Social Media Marketing: Benefits and Limitations Essay

This essay delves into the effectiveness of social media as a contemporary marketing tool, exploring its impact on customer engagement and market potential. It highlights how businesses leverage platforms like Facebook and Twitter to interact with their target audiences, gather feedback, and build brand awareness. The essay examines the benefits of social media marketing, including its cost-effectiveness and vast market reach, while also acknowledging its limitations, such as the potential for negative word-of-mouth, time and resource investments, and concerns about trustworthiness. The analysis covers the evolution of relationship marketing, emphasizing direct interactions between buyers and sellers. The essay concludes that while social media marketing presents significant opportunities, businesses must navigate its challenges to maximize its benefits.

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AS MARKETING TOOL
Social media as marketing tool
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
Technology is one of the key factors that are having huge contribution in changing the
existing business scenario for the contemporary business organizations. In the current state of
affairs, business organizations initiate the use of technologies in enhancing the convenience of
their customers along with gaining competitive advantages in the market (Nguyen, Newby &
Macaulay, 2015). One of the key and effective technologies being used by the contemporary
business organizations is the social media. In the recent times, social media emerged as one of
the key effective tools for the business organizations for enhancing their marketing activities.
This is due to the reason that use of social media for the marketing activities will help the
business organizations in effectively engaging with their target customers (Erdogmus & Cicek,
2012). This essay will discuss about the effectiveness of the use of social media in the marketing
activities along with determining the limitations of the concept.
Importance of customer engagement
Contemporary business organizations have to compete and operate in the intensely
competitive business environment due to the having the presence of competitors operating in the
similar sector (Mithas, Tafti & Mitchell, 2013). Thus, engaging the customers along with
effectively determining the requirement of the customers is having much importance for the
business organizations. Thus, business organizations initiate various tools and procedures in
order to effectively engage with the customers. In this case, social media will be beneficial for
the business organizations. This is due to the reason that, involvement of social media such as
Twitter and Facebook will help the business organizations to engage with their target customers
effectively. As stated by Bashar, Ahmad and Wasiq (2012), involvement of social media as

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marketing tool will be beneficial due to the reason that, it involves two way communications.
According to the authors, social media marketing involves two way communications mechanism,
where both the customers and the organizations can able to communicate with each other
effectively. For instance, social media such as Facebook will enable the business organizations to
advertise their products or services along with attracting the live responses from the probable
customers. Customers will have the opportunity to provide their feedback regarding the
advertised offerings in the social media. Afterwards, business organizations can communicate
with the particular respondent to further determining his requirement and expectation (Gu & Ye,
2014).
Thus, with the help of the social media advertising or marketing, business organizations
will have the opportunity to gather the feedback from their target market and accordingly
modifying the products to meet the latest requirement. In addition, the authors also stated that,
initiation of these engagements will have positive impact on enhancing the loyalty and
satisfaction level of the customers. This is due to the reason that, initiation of modifying the
customer offerings according to the gathered feedback will help the organization to meet the
market requirement effectively. Moreover, according to the authors, the more be the engagement
with the customers, the more will be brand awareness among the target market. Thus, having
more brand awareness will have positive impact for the potential of the business.
Huge market potentiality
As discussed earlier, contemporary business organizations have to compete in intensely
competitive market scenario. Thus, with having strategies for retaining the existing customers,
they also need to attract more number of new customers in order to increase their market

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presence and share. Moreover, the more will be the market share and market presence, the more
will be the brand awareness among the potential customers. In this case also, initiation of the
social media for marketing activities will be beneficial for the business organizations. This is due
to the reason that, in the recent time, it is being reported that majority of the present generation is
spending more time in social media. Thus, the market potentiality in the social media is more
compared to the use of the traditional media. According to Singh, Lehnert and Bostick (2012),
with the increase in the internet connectivity around the world, more people are connecting in the
social media. Thus, the market size in the social media is rapidly increasing. Thus, involving of
social media for the marketing activities will help the business organizations to target more
number of the potential customers. The advertisement that they initiate in the social media will
be visible to million of the customers around the world.
Figure:1 Social media usage
Source: (Mannino, 2017)

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Relationship marketing
As discussed earlier, effective relationship between the buyer and the seller is important
to gain competitive advantages in the market. This is due to the reason that, initiation of the
building effective relationship by the business organizations with their customers helps in
effective and timely determination of the market requirement along with enhancing the customer
loyalty. According to Sashi (2012), social media is one of the most effective tools in building the
customer relationship due to the direct interaction between the both parties. Thus, the more will
be the effective relationship between the seller and buyer, the more will be loyalty of the brand
among its target customers. Initiation of the social media marketing will help the business
organizations to directly engage and interact with the customers along with determining the
change in the taste and preference pattern of the customers (Reinhold & Alt, 2012).
Cost of marketing activities
Initiation of the marketing activities by the contemporary business organizations involves
huge cost due to the fact that, to attract customers from among the various competitors, extensive
marketing activities are required. Thus, it is important for the business organizations to reduce
the cost involved in the marketing activities along with enhancing the effectiveness. In this case,
social media marketing is the most effective form of marketing. According to Castronovo and
Huang (2012), initiation of the social media marketing involves much lesser cost compared to
the traditional and conventional marketing medium. This is due to the fact that, in the case of the
initiation of the traditional marketing medium, various intermediaries are being involved, which
further increase the marketing cost.

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On the other hand, social media marketing will involve only posting the advertisements
in the social media platforms, which will automatically being communicated and made visible to
the huge online customers around the world. According to the authors, initiation of the social
media marketing will only involve subscription charge for the particular social media platform.
Thus, according to them, it will less cost compared to the traditional media along with
communicating with more number of potential customers. This is another key advantage of
initiation of social media marketing.
Limitations of the social media marketing
Though there are various advantages being discussed above in this essay, still social
media marketing have several limitations as well. One of the key limitations is the transmission
of negative word of mouth. According to Pfeffer, Zorbach and Carley (2014), initiation of social
media marketing also involves word of mouth from the potential customers. However, in case of
the negative word of mouth, the business potentiality as well as the goodwill and reputation will
be at stake. For instance, if a particular customer is dissatisfied with the online advertising or
offering of the organization, then he will communicate it with his peers in the social media,
which will spread among other and at the end the market reputation of the particular organization
will be affected.
Another disadvantage of social media marketing is the time and resource being involved
in maintaining the marketing activities. According to Schlinke and Crain (2013), initiation of
social media marketing will attract various legal complications and the organizations have to
adhere with that. Moreover, the business organization opting for social media marketing also has
to maintain a team of experts who will manage the social media of the organization and will

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answer to the queries of the customers. Thus, for the small business organizations, it will be
difficult to maintain the required resources for the social media marketing along with changing
the approach of the marketing according to the change in the market scenario.
Another key limitation of initiating the social media marketing is the less trustworthiness
among the customers. This is due to the fact that, with the emergence of various scams and
fraudulent activities in the social media marketing, customers are now less influenced with this
concept. Thus, the effectiveness of the social media marketing is reducing. According to
Vinerean, Cetina, Dumitrescu and Tichindelean (2013), customer behavior for the online and
offline marketing is different and it is being seen that the social media marketing is having
positive market penetration rate but it is not that effective in influencing the customer behavior.
Thus, according to the authors, the effectiveness of the social media marketing is more of a myth
than being practical.
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion it is being concluded that, social media marketing is
having both advantages as well as disadvantages for the business organizations. All the relevant
and major merits and demerits are being discussed in this essay. Moreover, it can also be
concluded that, with the emergence of technological revolution in the current business scenario,
social media marketing should be initiated. However, the limitations should be avoided in order
to enhance the effectiveness of the social media marketing.

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Reference
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Castronovo, C., & Huang, L. (2012). Social media in an alternative marketing communication
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Erdoğmuş, İ. E., & Cicek, M. (2012). The impact of social media marketing on brand
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Gu, B., & Ye, Q. (2014). First step in social media: Measuring the influence of online
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