EDU10010: Critically Evaluating Social Media Marketing - Essay

This essay provides a critical evaluation of social media marketing, exploring its advantages and disadvantages. It highlights the cost-efficiency of social media marketing in increasing business visibility and brand loyalty, emphasizing the importance of creating a social media profile to interact with customers. The essay discusses advantages such as increased brand awareness, inbound traffic, high conversion rates, and improved customer satisfaction through quick feedback mechanisms. However, it also addresses disadvantages including delayed return on investment, the time and cost-consuming nature of maintaining a strong online presence, and the potential for negative public reviews to damage brand reputation. The essay concludes that while social media marketing offers significant benefits for business expansion and promotion, careful management and strategic implementation are necessary to overcome its challenges. It recommends leveraging new technologies and smartphone applications to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in social media marketing efforts.

Social Media Marketing

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Social media refers to a source of sharing information to each other through the internet.
Nowadays, it is the largest means of communication which is rapidly growing. It helps to
share ideas, information, News, and many other with the much faster speed (Lifewire, 2018).
Within short period, social media captured millions of users around the world. It plays an
important role in the daily routine life of an individual; it shares the information from a single
click. It helps in the social growth of the society by developing the business on the social sites
(Perrin, 2015). These social sites provide the tools for operating the business such as social
media marketing from which entrepreneurs can easily reach to the millions of people. Social
media marketing refers to the methods that target the social networks and social sites to
promote the product and services of the company. E-marketing and Digital marketing are
becoming more popular for selling the products and services. It is a beneficial tool for the
business because it provides a global-scale interaction between the business and its
stakeholder and customers (Constantinides, 2014). In this paper, the discussion will be made
on the topic of “Social Media Marketing”.
Social media marketing is a cost-efficient marketing method which is used to increases the
business visibility. It helps the companies and business to increase their brand loyalty by
spreading the brand awareness among the millions of people. To get started the business, it is
necessary to create the social media profile to interacting with others and operating the
business. Millions of people like and share the pages; it means the people interact with the
business services and getting attracted towards the idea of business. Like and share
information is the sign of spreading the brand awareness and building the brand reputation.
91% of marketers agreed with the statement that the social media marketing greatly increased
their brand awareness and contacts (Jens, 2015). It can be said that increasing the contact, the
business is also expanded at the higher level. Inbound traffic is another advantage of social
media marketing. People can easily search their favourite brand on the social sites and buy
the products instead of moving here and there. Every single post upload by the company
attracts the customer and this post opens an opportunity for the business to acquire a new
customer. Social media marketing target the different type of consumers all over the world.
For example- Amazon started its business by selling the books but now it sells all types of
products. It expands business due to increasing demand of the consumers of online products
(Amazon, 2018).
The high conversion rate is the major advantage of social media marketing, with the more
reflectiveness business attain the more opportunities to change or expanded the business at

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higher level. Each and every blog post, video, image, or comment connects the viewers with
the business. It helps the companies to give the positive impression on social media through a
humanisation factor. 51% of marketers claimed that social media marketing develops the
relationship with the consumer which shows the positive result in sales (Internet Marketing,
2018). By uploading the pictures, videos of new products; the consumers are getting attracted
towards the sales. The better impression helps to attract the visitor and influence them to buy
the products and services at the time of requirement. For example- Brands uploading the
pictures on Instagram on their own page which attracts the consumers of goods and services.
People can also order the products by sending the message on the brand page.
Better customer satisfaction is one the advantage of social media marketing which is gained
by the customer. The company gains the quick feedback from the consumers through online
comments on the post. The consumers can express their feedback on the post to tell their
experience; which helps the brand to improve the product and satisfy the consumers. It has
been seen that the satisfied consumers always post the good feedback which increases the
brand loyalty (Hollensen, and Raman, 2014). Social sites also provide the personal message
box from which the consumers can easily send the personal message to the brands, quick
response on the complaints have a positive impact on the brand image. From the above
analysis, it can be said that consumer satisfaction is an advantage of social media marketing
for the consumers as well as for the brand. It has been observed that 62% brand loyalty
increases due to its comments and reviews (Allen, 2017). For example- Amazon has its own
page on social sites such as Instagram, Facebook; these sites provide the message and
comment box to give the feedback and express their experience. Comment and reviews help
the brand to improve their services. Although social media marketing has many advantages
but it also has some disadvantages that face by the brand as well as consumers. In the next
phase of the paper, the discussion is made on the disadvantage of social media marketing.
Delayed in return on Investment is a disadvantage of social media marketing. It is a long-term
investment process and the result cannot meet quickly as compare to the traditional media.
The companies have the big risk of long-term investment because the result cannot be
expected. It has been seen that it is very difficult to maintain the social relationship through
online sometimes the people do not trust these sites which decrease the brand loyalty of the
company. There are many reasons due to which the customer did not prefer online shopping
due to it the company suffer loss because it puts 100% efforts to gain the advantage (Stone,

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and Woodcock, 2014). Businesses looking at the immediate sale; traditional advertising is
more preferable for immediate sale as compared to social site advertising. Social sites
promote the goods but if any consumer did not like the services and had a bad experience
with the brand product then he has a right to share his experience publically. One review
affects the brand reputation thus; this process has a big risk to invest and its delays in return.
For example- Brands start operating on Twitter, the application provides the facility to twit in
which millions of people can share their experience and reviews (Twitter, 2018). According
to the research, 48% of marketers get a return on investment (Allen, 2017). It states that
social media marketing give the less return.
Time and cost consuming process are the major disadvantages of social media marketing.
Social media marketing is a cost and time-consuming process. Although it has a cost-efficient
process it is difficult for old shopkeepers or small enterprises to invest in the online business
because it requires a huge amount of investment which is not affordable by many enterprises.
Advertisement on television is able to see alone without any distraction but post on social
media are ignored and missed because of overflowing of post and newsfeed. Old people did
not consume their time on these sites; these sites can only target the young people but
traditional business attracts all age of the audience. This is a time-consuming process, it is
necessary for the brands to post the pictures regularly to update the page. Thus, it can be said
that it consumes a large amount of time of design and update the page. Time and money are
necessary for this process to build the strong relationship with the customer (Hudson, Huang,
Roth, and Madden, 2016). For building the relation, the brand has to create an online profile
of its own page after it has to update the page on the regular basis and after that, the
consumers get attracted towards the goods and services (Ashley, and Tuten, 2015). It can be
said that this process consumes more time as compared to the traditional business. If people
require the goods and services on the urgent basis, they did not prefer online shopping
because it takes time in delivering the goods. For example- To operate the business on
Instagram, brands require the designers, computers, and models to attract the customer which
consume the cost as well as the time of the company (Tsimonis, and Dimitriadis, 2014).
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that social media marketing is a modern
technique to spread the brand awareness in all over the world. It has been seen that the social
media marketing provides the many benefits to the consumers as well as the society such as
brand loyalty, expanding business and many others. Although it provides the many benefits it
has many disadvantages such as time and cost consuming. It has been recommended that if

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new technology use in a correct manner then the brands gains the many advantages, without
consuming investing in computers it can edit the pictures or design with the smartphone
applications. According to the research, it can be said that social media marketing is a
favourable process for the brands to expand the business or to promote the goods and
services.

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