IT Marketing Report: SM Mistakes, Strategy, and ROI Analysis

This IT Marketing report examines the common social media mistakes businesses continue to make despite years of experience. It delves into the reasons marketers struggle to demonstrate the influence of social media investments, emphasizing the importance of a clear brand essence and a multichannel social media strategy. The report explores the application of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest in developing sales and brand equity, highlighting the unique contributions of each. It then discusses the broader impact of social media on ROI, emphasizing the need for effective strategies. The report concludes by stressing the importance of aligning social media strategies with overall business objectives to maximize the benefits of social media marketing.

Running head: IT MARKETING
IT Marketing
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
1. Five Reasons why Marketers are incapable to demonstrate influence of SMI................2
2. Importance of Brand Essence and contribution of multichannel SM Strategy...............3
3. Application of Social Media Platform in Developing Sales and Brand Equity..............4
3.1. Facebook...................................................................................................................5
3.2. Twitter.......................................................................................................................5
3.3. YouTube...................................................................................................................5
3.4. Pinterest....................................................................................................................6
4. Contribution of Social Media..........................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................6
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Effective social media (SM) presence can offer several business benefit to a company or
a business. However, to realize the benefit, it is integral for a business organization to design an
effective strategy to promote and advertise the social media presence of the company to the
intended audiences (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). It is integral for any company to ensure social
media presence in all possible social media handles to increase its customer research. The aim of
this report is to discuss the basic of the social media mistakes that companies generally make.
There are several challenges that a company might face in this competitive industry where the
use of the information systems are reshaping. In the following paragraphs, a detailed discussion
is made on the reason why marketers are incapable to demonstrate influence of the social media
investments (SMI), importance of brand essence, application of different social media platforms
and that opportunities that the usage of social marketing can contribute to increase in ROI.
1. Five Reasons why Marketers are incapable to demonstrate influence of SMI
The usage of information system in business world are reshaping and therefore, there
comes a strong need of making an appropriate usage of the social media to promote and advertise
the business and reach to a larger group of audiences (Sajid, 2016). However, it is seen that
majority of the company are unable to realize the benefits it should get on the usage of social
media. There are numerous reasons why marketers are not able to demonstrate the desired
influence on their SMI.
The first reason is that the marketers fail to effectively identify the social media
objectives prior to releasing their content on social media. The marketers generally engage
themselves in increasing the amount of likes, shares and comments on their social media post,

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without actually understanding the customers’ reach or worth of those likes on the business.
They fail to connect with the broader business goals leading to illusive ROI.
Secondly, there is a trend of limiting the brand presence of a business only to the most
popular social media channel, which might not yield the intended result. It is always a wise idea
to have a multichannel approach for the usage of social media as if a business is not using any of
the social media platform, there is a high probability that a brand is missing out the opportunity
to connect to a larger set of audience (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
Thirdly, it is seen that majority of the marketers try to promote their brands in social
media without any clear strategy and then try to connect backward to link their social strategy
with the strategy of their business. This never works as it is very difficult to link a social media
strategy with strategy followed in their business and it is necessary to design the social media
strategy in accordance to the business strategy.
Fourthly, the marketers fail to ensure that correct tools are in place to accomplish the
social media efforts that a brand is putting to promote their brand to the global audiences. For
measuring the brand success, it is necessary to effectively monitor, publish and track the
appropriate analytics or else the marketers may not realize the intended benefits (Felix,
Rauschnabel & Hinsch, 2017).
Lastly, the marketers fail to link the social media presence of a company to the
company’s business goals leading to not realizing the intended benefit. An effective plan for
fulfilling the business processes is necessary to ensure that the brands are realizing their SMI.
2. Importance of Brand Essence and contribution of multichannel SM Strategy

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Brand essence can be described as a core characteristic of a brand and this attribute is
important for separating a brand from the competitor brand. Brand essence is important for
creation of cohesive messages that can significantly help in promoting the brand to the intended
audience (Constantinides, 2014). Presence of a clear brand essence therefore helps is easier
brand promotion over social media.
A multi-channel social media strategy ensure a greater success rate in promotion of a
brand over social media. This is primarily because if a brand is not promoting their brand on all
the social media channels, there is a high likelihood that the brand might be missing out the
valuable business opportunities (Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015). The multichannel strategy contribute to
a higher success rate as there may not be a common set of audiences or customers who are
making use of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and corporate blogs. Therefore,
having social media handles in all of these social media platforms generally helps in reaching out
a larger and a different set of audiences. Furthermore, the different social media handles provides
a different set of opportunities. For example, 93% of the users in Pinterest plan their purchases
on that medium, while 87% of them actually makes the purchase. Snapchat can be used for
reaching out a specific demographics while Instagram is generally useful for lifting up the sales.
Thus, it is clear that having a multichannel strategy is beneficial for business growth and success.
3. Application of Social Media Platform in Developing Sales and Brand Equity
Promotion in various social media handles in important for effectively contributing to the
preparation of sales and brand equity. The usage of four social media platform such as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest in improving the brand equity and the company’s sales are
discussed in the following section.

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3.1. Facebook
Facebook is effectively used by marketers to improve the brand equity and development
of sales. The browsing history and the browsing behavior of the customers help the Facebook
pages to understand the purchasing intention of the customers (Dwivedi, Kapoor & Chen, 2015).
If a company manages to hold a good brand image over Facebook it can significantly affect the
consumer buying behavior. Facebook pages maintained by the company helps in improving the
brand awareness and brand equity by gaining exposure to the potential customers through shares.
Thus Facebook is a platform that can help in achieving new customers and can also help in
driving the sales (Lee, Hosanagar & Nair, 2014). The upsurge in the number of shares on social
media pages and the positive comments gathered in the post helps in improving the brand equity.
3.2. Twitter
Twitter is an effective SM platform that largely contributes to the development of sales.
The promoted tweets by the business organization helps in reaching a larger audience while the
customers’ tweets and retweets about the positive feedbacks help in improving the brand equity.
It generally refers to the commercial value of a business or a product derived from customer
discernment of the brand (Weinberg, 2014). The increase in the positive tweets in respect to the
product offered by the brand increases both the brand equity and the sales.
3.3. YouTube
YouTube is an effective SM platform that has a capability of increasing the sales for the
business. The content marketing process in YouTube is mainly intended in attracting the eyeballs
of the potential customers of the brand (Macarthy, 2018). The targeted advertising can further
help in arousing interest of the new customers towards the brand. With the help of explanatory

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videos in the YouTube channel a brand can effectively promote their products as well. Thus, this
platform is quite effective in promotion of brand equity and increasing the sales.
3.4. Pinterest
Pinterest is a platform that helps a business owner to effectively engage with the
customers. Therefore, it is one effective platform for increasing the brand equity and sales (Youn
& Jin, 2017). The Pinterest helps in effective sharing of the products and with the help of little
SEO efforts, it is possible to maximize the sales.
4. Contribution of Social Media
In this competitive world, where the use of information systems are reshaping the
industry, social media can be put to use for effective business promotion. However, for achieving
the desired result it is quite necessary to design effective social media strategies in relation to the
business strategy of an organization.
Social media efforts that a marketer is putting on a business helps in increasing the
customers reach. With the upsurge in engagement and number of shares over SM, it is possible
to increase the sales as well (Zhu & Chen, 2015). The effectiveness in development of a social
media strategy can significantly help in increasing the social media ROI. For that, effective
identification of the customers who are engaging with the brand is quite necessary. Thus, the
effective promotion on social media and successful maintenance of brand equity has a positive
relationship with ROI as it is directly linked with the increase in sales.
Conclusion

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The increase in sophistication of the business processes mainly demands reshaping of the
business processes and the processes in which information systems are used in an organization.
There are various challenges linked with effective social media promotion and the most
significant one being lack of establishment of any proper link between the business strategy of a
brand and social media strategy. The report discusses the prominence of SM platforms in
establishing brand equity and in increasing the ROI of the business.

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References
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
Chang, Y. T., Yu, H., & Lu, H. P. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-
782.
Constantinides, E. (2014). Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and
behavioral sciences, 148, 40-57.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Kapoor, K. K., & Chen, H. (2015). Social media marketing and advertising. The
Marketing Review, 15(3), 289-309.
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media
marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126.
Lee, D., Hosanagar, K., & Nair, H. S. (2014). The effect of social media marketing content on
consumer engagement: Evidence from Facebook (pp. 1-51). Stanford, CA: Stanford
Graduate School of Business.
Macarthy, A. (2018). 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for
Business Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and
More!. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Sajid, S. I. (2016). Social media and its role in marketing.

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Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.
Weinberg, T. (2014). Social media marketing. O'Reilly Verlag.
Youn, S., & Jin, S. V. (2017). Reconnecting with the past in social media: The moderating role
of social influence in nostalgia marketing on Pinterest. Journal of Consumer
Behaviour, 16(6), 565-576.
Zhu, Y. Q., & Chen, H. G. (2015). Social media and human need satisfaction: Implications for
social media marketing. Business horizons, 58(3), 335-345.