Marketing Assignment: The Influence of Social Media Advertising
Question
Task: You task is to develop a detailed marketing assignment explaining the differences between how marketing was before compared to nowadays.
Answer
Introduction
The concept of marketing explored in the present context of marketing assignment is related to the activities which are regarded to the company's buying and selling behavior. Marketing is comprised of different practices like selling, advertisement, and product delivery to the doorsteps of the customers. In recent days, with the advancement of the digital world, social media marketing has created a major improvement in all segments of businesses. In this process, the company or business has used social media like Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram etc. as a platform where they can buy, sell or advertise the products (Ebrahim, 2019). It has a direct connection with the audiences where they can be aware of the brand, resulting in an increase of the brand image. This platform has helped the company to engage with the existing customers along with reach to the new ones. It is also helpful in promoting the desired mission, culture, and tone. The following study will discuss social media marketing with comparing to traditional marketing. The effects of social media and the use of e-commerce will also be discussed.
Main Body
Explanation of Traditional marketing and Digital Marketing
In the era of Digitalization, the practice of digital marketing is enormously evolving. It has been seen that the way of marketing that has been seen in the past, is changing with time. In general digital marketing refers to the way of marketing where the organization or business has used digital platforms such as websites and social media as an important tool of marketing communication. On the other hand, traditional marketing refers to the use of traditional channels for advertisement. In this case, the use of billboards, printed materials, paid advertisement in the existing media can be considered. It has also been seen that until the 1990s, the traditional marketing ways were the only mode of marketing that existed(Bailey, 2021). From the definition of both the marketing methods, the main difference that has been identified is the medium, through which the company has reached the customers. On none hand, the traditional process has used traditional ways like use of magazines, newspapers, billboards for their marketing purpose. Similarly, on the other hand, digital marketing uses digital mediums like social media and websites for making the connection with the customers.
It has been seen that the different big companies have used the traditional marketing techniques through the different platforms. Mainly, the use of magazines and newspapers were predominant platforms for advertisement. Pepsi is one of the biggest beverage companies across the world and in the early '90s, it has been seen that they have targeted the local newspapers and popular magazines for advertisement. Moreover, they have also targeted popular personalities like Players of the Indian Cricket Team for their commercial which has been telecasted on televisions. However, the present scenario is different. It has been seen that 51% of the companies which are involved with social media marketing have used at least 8 channels for interaction with their customers. From the statistics, 95% of the companies have stated the importance of multichannel marketing whereas only 73% of them have used this strategy in real life (Saleh, 2021). Almost 60% of the agencies have considered content marketing as one of the most significant strategies in the present day. The famous brand Coca-Cola has used this strategy after shifting from the traditional process. Some of the practical examples of social marketing are Organic Social, paid social, Podcasting, paid SEM, and Blogging. It has been seen that one out of six minutes, an average person has visited social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. The marketing team of Coca Cola has created content for these platforms so that they can reach customers easily. It is also done in the pattern of paid social where the companies have paid for publishing the content to a particular area(Sloan, 2020).
Although digital marketing has captured the market and is more effective in the marketing segment, traditional marketing has its caliber in this competition. The US social media advertisement spend reached $43 billion in the year of 2020, which was a 20% increase from 2019.In the recent age, it is also noticed that commercials have been played on televisions. It has been done the recalling the memories that have been buried 20 years ago. It is also important as subconsciously it can capture the audiences with the brand emotion (Retailers struggling to master omnichannel | News, 2021). In recent days, the traditional ways have been represented in the different social platforms like the image of the old posters of the product has been uploaded in the website so that the company can highlight the product by calling the emotional attachments. Moreover, it has been seen that both the segment has its pros and cons and in case of traditional marketing, it is highly impactful, stays permanent in the market and easily memorable. On the other hand, traditional marketing is hard to measure, expensive, and has no direct interaction. However, digital marketing is high engagement power, easily measurable, and target-oriented. On the contrary, it is potentially annoying, less permanent, and requires constant evolution. The marketing engagement and importance of social media marketing can be described with the thoughts of Philipp Kotler.
Philipp Kotler’s Contribution in Marketing
Philipp Kotler is an American author, who is also associated with marketing consultancy and professor of International Marketing at Kellogg School of management. He has given the unique definition of the marketing mix and according to him, marketing is the science and art of values related to the creation, exploration, and delivery to satisfy the requirement of the identified market with a certain profit (Kotler, 2018). Marketing highlighted the remained desires for the company. He is considered the father of marketing as he was the first individual who explained the importance of promotion, advertisement, and direct sales along with the price functioning. He first explained the concept of marketing along with the distribution channels and their links with the profit margin. According to the concept of Kotler, there are four types of marketing strategy such as market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification.
A marketing penetration strategy has been used when the company has intended to sell new products to its existing customers. It can be done with the increment of the awareness through marketing communications and in this case with the help of digital marketing, the flow of communication has eased rapidly. Market development strategy has been used to sell an existing product in the new market and it requires entering into new geographic markets(Stewart, 2021). In this case, also social media marketing has played a great role as with the help of it the company can reach any landscapes with their marketing commercials. In order to enforce a product development strategy that is the creation of the new product to sell among the existing customers requires a firm communicational practice with the customers. For example, American Express has built a relationship with credit card customers to sell travel-related services (Tan, 2020). In this matter, the company has taken the help of a digital platform where the company has used the internet to explain the offers for the customers. Diversification is the process where the involvement of digital marketing is highly highlighted. In this case, the company has targeted the new market to sell their new product. For that purpose, marketing becomes essential and it is required to do in a limited time span. For that reason, digital marketing can purely sit in this scenario.
Apart from the marketing strategies and implementation of digital marketing in those sectors, Philipp Kotler has given different ideas to own social media and digital marketing strategies. According to the study made by Kotler, a general person in the United States has faced between 3000 to 5000 advertisements in a day. It is the cause of saturation among the customers. It has been seen that 60% of the interviewed people hate publicity and marketing due to saturation (Montserrat and Montserrat, 2021). 70% of the people change the channel or leave the program due to annoying traditional advertisements. In order to cope with the situation, Kotler has introduced different principles regarding those. In his first principle, he mentioned that recognition of the powers that the customers have played a great role in the success of the marketing. In the age of digitalization, information is ubiquitous and for that reason, marketing should be short and impactful. The marketing strategy must be organized from the views of customers so that digital marketing can be eye-catching for the customers. Identification of the customer expectation and delivery of the values can be the compact marketing pattern for a company (Kotler, Kartajaya, and Setiawan, 2018). Additionally, he stated that engagement of the customers can create more value to the marketing and for that purpose digital platforms can be used as a marketing domain as the customers are directly involved in the social media.
Effects of Social Media Marketing
The main aim of marketing is to engage with the people so that business can grow at warp speed. With digitalization, it has been seen that the social media industry has been growing rapidly and it will be growing in recent years also. On the other hand, in recent days, almost every person is using social media and it has a high reach capability rather than the other platforms. According to the infographics, it has been seen that 71% of the customers are likely to recommend the brand to others if the brand has a positive review on social media (Pliszka, 2021). Moreover, it has been seen that 70% of the population of the United States has a profile on at least one social site (32 Social Media Marketing Statistics You Should Know This 2019, 2021). According to the statistics, there are a total 3.2 billion of social media users are available and it is 42% of the total population of the globe.
The main importance of social media marketing is the capability of reach to a vast amount of people with ease. Social media advertisement is one of the new concepts that different companies have taken (Seo and Park, 2021). It is highly effective for many reasons and one of them is the high reach to the target segment.Whereas, the traditional methods don't have the access to reach a vast number of people.As it is not measurable how much quantity of people is influenced by billboard advertisement of advertisement of magazines. Moreover, it is lower in cost as it cost lesser than the traditional method. As the reach of social media marketing is high, it is also possible to calculate the real-time performance level. Paid social media advertisements have kept the company track of how the advertisement is performing in the targeted segment. It also helps in boosting brand awareness among the customers. Finding out the targeted customers and their availability can enhance the marketing strategy of a particular company. It has been seen that a Business to Business Company can find many audiences on the LinkedIn platform rather than Facebook.
Moreover, the involvement of social media has helped in building the conversation. The companies used the social media platform to do one-way conversations which are considered as one of the most attractive processes to gather customers. Search engine optimization is also a useful tool in making a direct connection with the customers. It has been seen that in the case of online marketing, there is a high probability of outside search prior to shopping. In that scenario, search engine optimization has helped the company to be the first segment when a customer searched for a product (Jin, Muqaddam, and Ryu, 2019). With the increase of social media advertisement, the use of online shopping has also been increased.
E-Commerce
E-commerce is represented as electronic commerce where the company has used the internet to practice buying and selling process. With the advancement of a digital platform, the use of digital marketing is not only a beneficial factor but also the rise of e-commerce has also been seen. The availability of the internet has made e-commerce more accessible for everyone (Kumar et al., 2020). As most of the country has access to the high speed of internet, there is a high possibility of getting success in the e-commerce section. In this process, the company has made a web portal or application which is accessible for the customers. Customers can buy or sell products through it from their homes. In recent days the customers prefer online shopping rather than physical shopping. With time it has been seen that most of the companies make the web portals and applications more accessible for the customers. The accessibility is crucial for everyone in order to deliver similar access to all sorts of people.
In recent days, the e-commerce application has different features enable for different people with disabilities. For blind people, the applications provide voice assistance where the customers can interact with the application with their voice commands. It is one of the highly applicable improvements for increasing accessibility for a certain type of person (Sohaib and Kang, 2017). In the Amazon application, there is an option where anyone can put a voice command to search required items. On the other hand, the web applications are now easily handled like amazon has categorized the selling goods into a different category so that the customers can find the product in the particular category. It has another benefit too like customers can see similar products along with the price and popularity tag. On the other hand, the inclusion of the review section has helped the customers to understand the quality of the products from the different users. It has helped the company in gathering more customers for their business. It is also seen that most of the e-commerce site can be easily open in very week internet connection too. The modification in this section is one of the biggest up-gradation for the company with the digital marketing segment (Zhang, Du, Wang, and Wang, 2019). This particular feature has helped the different sorts of customers to feel the same experience.
Conclusion
From the entire study, it can be stated that the marketing pattern has been evolved from traditional to digital. In most of the scenarios, it has been seen that digital marketing is more beneficial with respect to reaching customers, managing time and cost. The main difference that the study has highlighted between the two types of marketing is the medium. Philipp Kotler has explained the importance of marketing in business growth and also shows the effective feature of digital marketing in customer engagement along with accessibility. The popular companies have targeted the customer segments to choose social media and it has seen a great effect in marketing management. The advantages of digital marketing have also evolved the e-commerce section as it becomes accessible to the different genera of people.
Reference List
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