Research Report: Social Media as a Marketing Tool in Modern Business

This research report delves into the effectiveness of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube as marketing tools for businesses of all sizes. It highlights the advantages of social media marketing, including direct customer engagement, brand awareness, and cost-effective promotion. The report reviews existing literature on the subject, analyzing various studies and their findings on consumer behavior and the impact of social media marketing strategies. It also presents real-world examples of companies that have successfully leveraged social media for marketing purposes, such as Nivea, Domino's, and Dollar Shave Club. Furthermore, the report addresses the potential drawbacks and challenges of social media marketing, such as the need for constant attention and the risk of data breaches. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and adapting to the evolving landscape of social media marketing to achieve optimal results.

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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Objectives................................................................................................................................................3
Literature.....................................................................................................................................................3
Literary aspect of social media in the real world.....................................................................................5
Twitte..................................................................................................................................................6
Facts and Figures.........................................................................................................................................7
Analysis.....................................................................................................................................................12
Future research..........................................................................................................................................12
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................14
References.................................................................................................................................................15
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Introduction
The research study is based on the topic ‘Social Media as a Marketing tool’. Social media
like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and other internet applications are used to create a
buzz in marketing because people are highly active on these websites (Quora, 2019). It offers
many advantages to both the buyer and the seller as it offers a platform to connect through the
customers. It has been marked as a platform for various small startups by students to
multinational companies for availing further benefits. It has two ways
1. One by building followers, sharing useful, creative content and running interesting
contests to engage your followers.
2. The second way is by paid promotion through any media like Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, YouTube and many more (Socialmarketing, 2012).
It has become an important part of online marketing in the present world. It includes various
companies that have taken the potential advantage of this media and got benefitted also. Because
of its wide coverage various books have been written over social media marketing which act as a
helping hand for its users like The Zen of social media marketing (Lake & Laura, 2019).
It offers benefits like sharing of business profile of an organization on such sites can help a
lot to gain traffic. It provides the opportunity of direct contact with the customer which enables
them to know their interest and choices more clearly. It also supports more loyal customers and
better relation between the customers and the organization (Bhat, 2018). It can be used as a
research tool for conducting a survey about the needs and wants of the customers without
personally contacting them. Number of likes and share on a particular post about a product can
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suggest its popularity and reaction among the buyers. Regular use of social media for the
marketing of a business may improve the search engine ranking within a year (Media, 2019). But
it has some drawbacks like it does not guarantee success, regular attention and proper knowledge
must be require for an effective social media marketing (Jens, 2015). There might be the chances
of hacking of personal data also that can create biggest threat to the company (Memeburn, 2014).
Objectives
The main objective behind conducting this research study is to gain knowledge about the
whole marketing process through social media, further includes the following
 To understand the effectiveness of marketing through this media.
 To appreciate the advantages it offers.
 To be aware about its results and the problems that may arrive.
 To realize its enhancement in the present world.
 To be familiar with its top benefitted organizations.
Literature review
Khan and Jan (2015) have undertaken a study where they concluded that social media
and social media marketing are replaceable with each other but both are used to emphasis
different objectives. Social media is used to connect the humans in the virtual world by assisting
in communication similarly social media marketing is used for connecting people with the
Brands as they both remove the factor of distance in their activity and offer the advantage of
being visible to a large section of people electronically. Yet they both have different objective
and purpose as social media whereas social media marketing is used to increase the awareness
about the Brand to enhance sales. The former is used for building relation between the
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individuals and the latter is used by business organization for profit maximization. Further they
have studies that data available on social media helped the researchers in evaluating the functions
of it and social media marketing assisted them in understanding the depth of the usage these
media holds. This is used by marketers in promoting the brand. They have concluded by saying
that they both are interrelated and redefined the social media marketing as how it affects the
individuals through their usage (Khan & Jane, 2015).
Alves (2016) had undertaken a study and conducted an analysis, he had selected various
articles from the online sources regarding social media marketing. He had analyzed forty four
studies in an organized manner in that study they have also paid attention on Interpretation based
assessment. The result demonstrated from study focused on consumer behavior regarding the
operation of the social media, influencing power of social media on human behavior including
their decisions power and the perception that is the view of each individual on social media. The
study focused not only on the usage of social media but also includes how social media
marketing is done, how better results can be achieved by the marketers, optimum utilization of
these, checking the effectiveness of the result generated after applying social media marketing to
a brand and finding the reasons of deviation if any. Most of the studies were published recently
and were in quantitative terms and it holds relevant fact and data regarding the subject of the
research. The researcher further explains that it not only holds present data but also the future
prospect regarding the subject matter of the research (Alves, 2016).
Stueber and Wurth (2017) have undertaken a study which includes that the use of social
media has been increased and became more popular in the recent years. Facebook has been one
of the top used platforms used by the business organizations and private users for the marketing
of their brand. Marketing to the consumers about the brand is also included because they are the
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ultimate users of the product. Facebook has been one of the hot topics in the social media
marketing and the marketers are showing high interest on it than ever before. The purpose of this
review is how Facebook and marketing are associated with each other. The motive behind this
review is to get a deeper knowledge about Facebook marketing. There are 61 articles covered in
this study which evaluates all the relevant and latest information about the role of organization
and marketers, people and its importance while having Facebook marketing. The researchers
further concluded the implication of such form of marketing for the organization by providing
relevant data (Stueber, 2017).
Literary aspect of social media in the real world
Instagram is one of the top used social media applications for image based content. Any
business can take the advantage of Instagram advertising to reach to every part of the world. The
recent statistics depicts that it has over 400 million users all over the world and business in parts
of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It uses strong images and powerful videos to draw the attention of its
users. Small businesses have more opportunities to explore. To advertise on Instagram one can
either wok on his own advertising operation or hire an agency with specialized knowledge in
social media marketing. Sponsored images have the word ‘sponsored’ on its top and it is clearly
visible. The USA leads in deciding as the criteria for posting ads on Instagram. Despite of
advantages it offers for its users and companies but also has a drawback of Phone advertising .To
make the advertising more effective it uses target approach like
 Gender
 Age group
 Interests (Hsiao, 2017).
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Facebook is the largest social network with 1.56 billion daily users. It has been created to
develop and generate communications between people across the globe. This American social
media has been emerged as a media for marketing of various organizations. When the decision
was made by the owners of the application to use it for digital marketing it was opposed by the
fans and commentators. Earlier it advertises various products on the news feed of the users so
that they will be visible to its users more often whenever they will use that application. It targets
the potential audience in the same way as Instagram does (Conley & Megan, 2019) .In order to
gain attention of the users marketer must begin by creating an appealing Facebook page .so that
the users can find the brand easily (Domors & Jayson, 2015).
Twitter is a worthy marketing tool for the promotion of a brand (Laura, 2018). It has 126
million users worldwide and is considered to be less social networking site but more of
marketing tool. Brands can reach out to its customer and can build healthy relationship with
them. Interaction of the customers on twitter will be more because it maintains a direct contact
with the brand. It also assists in keeping an eye on the competitor’s activities (barker, 2019).
Whatsapp is another social media which was initially used to communicate with the people
but gradually it has been used to discuss business also. In the year 2016 an announcement was
made that testing tools will be developed to assist the business and organizations to reach and
communicate with the users. Whatsapp is not as popular as other social media’s for marketing of
products but one can explore the opportunities because it is free, allows to send catalogs and
images, helps in conducting survey, maintaining direct contact with the customers and assist in
conducting group discussions (muralidharan, 2019).
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YouTube is the 2nd most used search engine and is also used as a social media platform. It has
1.3 billion users all over the world. Since YouTube has become an advertising and marketing
tool for various businesses for the promotion of their products because videos are considered to
be most engaging form of content, uploading a video on YouTube is free of cost and one can
also develop a page regarding a company profile. For the marketing concern one must have an
active presence on YouTube because it is a social network (Domors J. , 2015). One should
comments, likes and respondent to the query and suggestions of the viewer’s regarding their
product or services. Uploading videos on YouTube is not a single task but one has to promote it
also through their blog, website, and other media. Use of keywords should also be used in giving
the title for better search result to the users. Marketing a product through YouTube will how its
effect much sooner if it is performed by a well-known person like an actor or sportsperson and
the cost of advertisement through is average (Edmondson, 2019)
Facts and Figures
The use of social media for marketing is a good step in today’s business world. There are various
examples to prove its importance and success ratio from these examples
a) In 2015, a video from Nivea Skin Care Company that has created a buzz around
people. The Nivea ‘Second skin’ video was uploaded on YouTube which has
received high views for its Non sale approach with right tone. The video depicts a
mother and her son who does not live together. Using virtual reality goggles, mother
and son were reunited. The video concluded that technology can bring people
together but it can also become a reason for loss of human contact (Concepcion,
2016).
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b) In May 2015, the Dominos has taken an initial in order to help the customers to place
online order of pizza by simply tweeting a pizza emoji to the Dominos twitter account
which gained a large media coverage. It has been concluded that most of the orders
came from digital channels only. A small effort of marketing through social media
has helped the Dominos as well its consumers (Tode, 2019).
c) Dollar Shave Club has gained an upstart by using its classic example to enhance its
presence on social media in a campaign that won a 2016 Shorty Award in the
category of retail and e-commerce. The campaign had led to increase in social media
followers by 6% and tweeter engagement with 31% of the company.
Figure 1: Picture posted by the brand
on social media
(Martin, 2016)
d) An inspiring Dove video was
produced by Ogilvy Paris, which
gained about half a million views with thousands of comments and likes on YouTube.
This noncommercial video did not focus on brand but was rather involved in telling a
story. It also encouraged people about telling a story of a person that means a lot to
them by tagging them in the post through social media. This has also resulted in
increasing the brand image of the company (know, 2014).
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e) The Oreo brand which produces delicious cookies has taken the use of Facebook very
effectively. It has dominated the Facebook getting 40 million likes on its post by
sharing the mouthwatering pictures in the form of various recipes cooked from these
cookies combined with creative hash tags (Comm, 2019).
Figure 2: Oreo brand cookies
(comm, 2019)
Some other facts and figures which proved that Social Media is a good channel for the marketing
process
 Around 63% of the customers want their companies or respective brand to provide
customer service through social media. Nearly 90% of the social media users are using it
for communication also with their respective brand.
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 71% of the consumers who had experience good consumer service through social media
had also played an effective role for the brand by suggesting and recommending it to
their near ones.
 Visual content is shared more than 40 times than the other types on social media because
images of brands and products grab the attention of the consumer more frequently.
 There are 3.3 billion active users of the social networking sites which made it an effective
channel to advertise and market their product through these channels.
 Age group from 18-34 keep track of their product brand through social media sites only
by following their profiles.
 There are around 50 million businesses that had made their profile on the Facebook pages
to directly connect to their customers and it had increases their visibility on social media.
 80% of companies have concluded that they deliver good social media services to its
customers but acceptance had come from 8% customers only but that does not mean that
the rest disagree, they might not be interested in giving the feedback or being a part of the
survey.
 Facebook has enhances the consumers offline and online purchase from 36% to 52% in
the year 2015.
 78% of the people, who make a fuss to a brand through Twitter, get a response within an
hour. It had helped the consumers in experiencing early reply to their queries.
 According to the figures about 62% of the customers are more loyal to the brands that
directly contact them.
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 In the year 2015, YouTube had posted a figure which claims that all the branded content
had received 40 billion views of all time. This figure has influenced the 87% of marketers
to plan to use YouTube for the marketing of their products in the coming years.
 Instagram has the highest per follower engagement rate for top brands (Hainla, 2018).
 The youth of the Market is present on almost all the social media platforms (saliba,
2017).
 Facebook produced the best ROI, according to the 8% of the worldwide marketer (Matt,
2018).
 According to the 2017 report the most used Social networking site by marketers for
advertisement is Facebook followed by Twitter and LinkedIn.
(R., 2017)
Analysis
From the following facts
and figures it has been analyzed
that social media is a good source of advertising for brands because it has billions of users and
most of them want to avail the customer care service through social media only. The youth of the
people keep track of their brands through social media only and proved to be more loyal towards
their brand. It has helped the brand in increasing the overall purchase of the customers, offline as
well as online. Developing a profile on social media increases their visibility also. Picture based
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Figure 3: % usage of Social Media in 2017