Highlighting The Significant Role of Social Media in Marketing

Marketing is basically something done by a business to achieve customer satisfaction and to maximize profits. It is done in order to give rise to revenue for the brand, company or organization by capturing attention of the audience. Marketing is something that requires planning, strategies and implementing. While there have been various way people have done marketing in the past, in today’s time, technology has become a major tool.

Social media is something that almost everyone uses and it has influence on a large amount of audience. It covers people of different age groups, preference, taste, etc. and gives the businesses an opportunity to display their brand in before a large amount of their target audience. While social media had a huge impact before as well, people got really dependent on these platforms. With lockdowns being implemented everywhere, people were stuck at home with nothing else to do. Everyone got into social media platforms and that’s where a lot of us spent our time. Businesses were able to cease this opportunity in order to promote their businesses and make up their brands.

Marketing through social media has become so prominent that platforms like Instagram and Facebook now have promotion tools updated in them which enable users to promote their businesses efficiently. This also encouraged a large amount of people to start their own E-businesses. This paper looks into the role of social media in marketing, in today’s time and how it has opened a new area of exploration for businesses.

Introduction

The first thing that most of us do in the morning after waking up, is check our phones. Especially after the pandemic, most of the people depend on the internet for news. Everyone feels the need to know what is going around them, in order to be aware of their surroundings. This is where the role of social media comes in. Social media has now taken over many jobs. It provides news to people, enables them to share information, helps them start businesses, helps them promote those businesses, raise awareness against major issues prevailing, etc.

Due to the above reasons, it can be said that social media has become the backbone of our society. It’s accessible to everyone for free and encourages productive interaction to a huge extent. The interactions on social media earlier were limited to people joining communities but now people have also started contributing. From Instagram to YouTube, people have started contributing and interacting way more than earlier and this has led to social media being a strong tool for marketing. People of all ages, castes, race, gender are at this point part of this community in one way or another.

One of the key points about marketing is the importance of relations. Be it of business with another or be it that a business has a with their consumer. Relations are valued. The communities on social media offer a platform for businesses to find, attract and utilize the resources and promote their brand, products and services. Without any restriction of age and without it being too complicated, social media has become a place where literally anyone can do business which is a factor of huge benefit in today’s time. Though traditional ways of marketing still exist, it is rare for business to not promote themselves on social media.

The objective of this paper is to highlight the significance of social media especially after Covid-19 hit us and its role in marketing. The facilities it provides and how it has become a widely used, effective tool of marketing. This research has been done using descriptive method and the content of this paper has been collected from secondary data. The data was collected by reading and observing work of other author. Their work includes case studies, articles, etc. I’ve compared, combined and summarized the data I got over the internet by using google scholar, research gate, etc. and other commercial information sources. The data collected has been used as content for this paper after evaluation of its reliability.

Literature Review and Analysis

Social media allows you to interact with your customers. It is a creative approach of marketing that can be done without overwhelming the audience. It gives you a platform to let people know about your business while being able to remind them about the services you have to offer. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitters have hashtags and keywords that not only allows you to attract potential customers but also for the prospective customers to find you. Unlike other methods of marketing, social media marketing is free and affordable.

Social media not only opens up a new platform for you to promote your business also opens up a whole new world of opportunities. It enables you to creative a brand and then further letting you promote and grow it. When it comes to E- businesses the main goal is the purchase of their products and services. Social media provides the required and relevant statistics based on what the likes and dislikes of the consumers are. Hence, the ability to attract the required target audience and have an insight on their preferences becomes very beneficial for the business.

When it comes to B2B companies they do business with other businesses and not public consumers as such but even with B2B businesses, human relations matter. Social media acts like a conductor when it comes to improving relations. The impact of social media on improving human relations really came into effect after the pandemic when everyone was separated. It gave B2B companies a place to meet prospective partners.

One of the most important aspects of social media is the access it gives its users to information. Information about anything, is just a click away. From skill development to new ways to endorse a product, everything can be found on social media. While social media has proven to be both harmful and useful, the positive side of it has overpowered the negative because the power of being able to share and get information and the change it brings into businesses in general is huge.

Social media has become a channel for brands to get through to their target audience or customers directly. Social media marketing has grown to the point where brand influencers are on a rise. Most of the brands are now contacting influencers on Instagram, YouTube, etc. to promote their products and services. By using social media influencers, brands are able to make promotional content that the audience can relate to.

International businesses believe that social media promotion is the new potential marketing tool that has a huge impact and the scope is so high, that it is still growing. Not having a stand on social media nowadays puts the brand at a disadvantage especially if their competitor is already promoting on social media. The brands and companies that have resorted to social media marketing have become more sophisticated.

Nowadays, social media has become a necessity. It is used for accessing information and news, for communication, for social interactions and even decision making. It helps you share and create information and has no geographical barrier. Social media has had a great influence on news and journalism as the internet has become the fastest way to find or spread information. Marketing tools on social media have become an essential. Even small businesses are resorting to social media to promote their products and services. The possibilities of social media have become endless, and it is very unlikely that it will lose its significance. During the time of “social distance” social media became a place where people came together, this way the pandemic increased the usage of social media. Since so many people are online and are spending time one their devices, which is why online ads are getting more interactions nowadays. Social media with story and video formats have increased to the point where the year-on-year impressions have increased by 20%.

Conclusion

Social media has now started affecting the decision-making skills of people. A study by Neilson Social Media Report stated that, the people who are actively on social media are easily influenced offline as well. There are so many people posting blogs, reviews and reports about various products and services that are offered by different brands. Consumers read these blogs and reports before consuming those. Good reviews would not only increase sales, and make greater promotions but also create good public image for these brands. Social media gives consumer a platform to interact with each other and lets them talk about the various products and services companies have to offer.

With the mobility of the public being restricted, going shopping was out of the picture. Online shopping became a daily thing for people which is why online advertising is the go-to place for businesses. Some popular brands that heavily rely on social media marketing are, PlayStation and Nike. While the pandemic created a havoc, this is a way business could take advantage of the situation, and calm the storm of economic crisis. Companies and organizations need to use such opportunities of consumer behavior shifts to sustainably survive.

Being stuck at home, there wasn’t much that people could do which is why creating relatable, interesting content in terms of advertising would attract consumers by large extent. It also increases consumer relations. Making an effort with maintaining a good social media account, helps in improving consumer relations.

To conclude, in today’s time and the time to come social media will remain to have a major impact on the public. The large variety of audience it covers makes it the perfect place to do marketing of your brand, company or organizations. While the world had paused and the economies had slowed down, the internet was running faster than ever. Businesses were able to cease that opportunity and use this fast-racing platform to increase their sales. Even teens have been able to start small online businesses and run that successfully. This is not only encouraging to the you to become more productive but also for all those people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

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