Social Media Is An Economical And Effective Channel For Marketing (Research Paper Sample)

Name
Course
Tutor
Date
Social media is an economical and effective channel for marketing
In the current era of increased technological advancement and existence of several social media platforms, there has been a huge change in the manner in which people connect, and share information. Many companies have embraced social media as means of marketing their brands. The technology that helps many people to connect online makes it possible for companies marketing their products on the social networks to gain huge website traffic as well as brand recognition. Even though, some marketers carry the view that marketing on social media marketing may not be as effective as other modes of marketing, the trend of marketing products on social media cannot be ignored. This paper presents an argument that social media is an economical and effective channel for marketing.
Studies on social media marketing indicate that social media is a cheap means to increase the brand recognition (Dave 16; Kim and Ko 1486). For example, it is free for a company to join a social network platform like Facebook and create a company page. The cost of running a single advert on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest is equally low. The low cost of running a single marketing campaign on social media platform makes it easy for companies to organize their budgets and run several campaigns. Such a campaign will end up increasing brand recognition as well as a high number of follows which boosts the trust and credibility of the company.
Social media marketing increases website traffic and conversion rates of the company (DeMers 1). When a company posts a marketing campaign on social media platform, social media users will share information regarding the company to their friends. Increased sharing of information about the company leads to a larger audience reach and followers. As users on social media follow the brand, they interact with the company page and visit the company website trying to gather more information about the company. The effect is that the company will end up having an increasing website traffic that may be converted into sales. As such, social media would improve the conversation rates of the existing traffic.
Additionally, social media makes it easy for a company to interact with its audience and receive instant feedback (Dave 16; Vinerean et al 67). In many cases, companies may have a page on social media that allows users to interact with the company directly. A customer will easily lookup the company page, and send a message to the company regarding his or her concerns. There are situations where customers would engage on a one on one conversation with an official from the company. These conversations are useful because they provide the company instant feedback on their performance and brand among other issues.
Social media marketing will improve the number of sales of a company. A study conducted in this field reported that social media marketing is likely to improve the performance of a company (Kim and Ko, 1485). According to the study, 49% of social media consumers have made their procurement decisions as a result of persuasive information published on social media channels. In this case, publishing enticing information on social media platform about the company is likely to lead to high engagement between the company and the customers, which in turn increases the conversion rates and sales.
One opposing view to use social media for marketing is the view that the changes in consumer behavior may not be noticed by social media marketing. Tiago et al argued that as a result of the changes in the behaviors of consumers, companies should rethink the use of social media for marketing (704). Social media marketing has no direct way of assessing the changes in the consumer behavior. The focus of the marketing, in most cases, targets a certain random age group and location of consumers with assumptions that the targeted group is the appropriate audience for the company. It is for this reason that many social media marketing campaigns have been accused of targeting the wrong audience. Using age and location of social media users as means of targeting consumers is a major drawback to the argument as it leads to targeting the wrong audience which neither increases the engagements nor the followers of the brand.
To address the counterargument on use of social media for marketing, there are some methods that have been introduced to help in targeting marketin...