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Melinda Steele
Ms. Cyr
Comp I
25 November 2014
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Businesses
Marketing has always been a method for companies to get their brand name out to the public.
Most people think of marketing as commercials, but it can also come in other variations. Along
with commercials, you may see your local stores advertising sales in your local newspaper or
through the United States Postal Service. Both of these can be effective marketing campaigns,
but in recent years, marketing has evolved through the progression of the internet. This
progression is more noticeable through the resources of social media. Businesses all over the
world can benefit from the use of social media marketing for many reasons; it enables cost
cutting, builds customer relationships, distributes accessibility twenty-four hours a day, upsurges
brand recognition and increases traffic as well as sales.

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One of biggest benefits of social media marketing, if not the biggest, is the capability to
significantly cut marketing costs. According to an article found on www.forbes.com by Drew
Hendricks, most successful businesses are using social media technology to generate awareness
through “likes” and “shares” (Hendricks, #5). Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter
allow businesses to create free pages or accounts. Once the page or account is created, just a
few suggestions sent to friends can turn into thousands, or even millions, of followers and fans.
Once a follower or fan “likes” the business page, any post the business makes can be seen by
that follower or fan. Often times, followers are capable of sharing the same posts on their own
personal pages. Considering the free pages and accounts, Hendricks pointed out that for
businesses that elect to handle social media marketing on their own, it will cost them nothing
more than the salary of the person conducting the marketing campaign (Hendricks, #6).
Websites, such as YouTube, offer another opportunity of savings for businesses. Much like
Facebook and Twitter, a business can create a commercial and upload it for no cost. Once the
business adds their commercial to the site, there is potential for thousands if not millions of
views (Constantinides 47). Social sites will even permit the business to upload the video to their
Facebook and Twitter pages for their followers to view, “like” and “share”. This activity
increases traffic and more observations of their commercials. Unlike television commercials
that cost ad space time, the cost involved for an advertisement on sites like YouTube only
amount to budget of creating the commerical. Television commercials also only air in specified
time slots with time restrictions, which limits the exposure to audiences.

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Exposure is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign, and social media provides unlimited
exposure capabilities. The newer generation of customers are always on and attached to the
internet (Hazari, 101). Unlike television which only offers limited viewing experiences, social
media is real time, live and always on. Recent television technology now allows television
viewers to record live television. Along with this technology, viewers have the ability to watch
shows and movies on their own time. This technology offers the ability to fast-forward and skip
through commericials. Some television watchers have even opted out of cable and satellite for
other commercial-free internet broadcasting opportunities. The advantage of social media
marketing as opposed to big media marketing is the continuous exposure which leads to more
brand recognition and exposure. Without exposure, brand recogonition would be impossible.
Some brands have achieved major success with branding; success that is so great, that the
average customer may refer to their competitors using their brand name. One example of this
great success, is Band-Aid. Countless kids with bumps and bruises run to their moms and
teachers asking for a “Band-Aid,” when what they are really asking for is an adhesive bandage.
While not every business can be as successful as Band-Aid, brand awareness is still vital to
businesses. Social Media is a great way to introduce a brand, or even a political canidate.

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The victory of Barack Obama in the 2008 US elections is one classic case of how businesses can
use social media for brand awareness (Constantinides, 46). Engaging online opinion leaders to
attract immediate and free marketing is important to marketers (Constantinides, 47). President
Obama had twenty million more Facebook fans and over nineteen million more Twitter fans
than his opponent, Mitt Romney, during his second term election (Burris, #4, 5).
Brand awareness can also have its downfalls. For big companies like Coca-Cola, research
showed that Coca-Cola was big and iconic, but consumers felt they were not connected with
them (More #8). Coca-Cola set out to connect more with their consumers through relationship
marketing. Social media is one avenue that businesses can use to build relationships and better
connect with their customers.
By incorporating social media marketing into relationship marketing, companies are able to
collaborate and dialogue customers values (Schaupp, 189). One example of relationship
marketing is through blogs (Schaupp, 189). Blogs offer a great way to introduce new products.
Businesses can publish new product information on their blogs, which is available before it has
reached other traditional marketing avenues (Constantinides 47-48). These blogs can also open
the doors for customer collaboration.

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Fig. 1. (More)
One example of of a successful customer
collaboration and relationship project, was the
recent Coca-Cola “Share a Coke” campaign.
The campaign was internally named “Project
Connect” and was created to create a stronger
connection with young adults in Australia
(More #4). Part of the collaboration effort was to encourge drinkers to “Share a Coke” via
Twitter and Facebook with a hashtag.
With their clever way of getting their consumers’ involved, Coca-Cola soon obtained free
advertisements through their consumers’ picture ““shares”” and “likes”. According to Lucie
Austin, former director of South Pacific Coca-Cola Marketing, “Celebrities were picking up
bottles and talking about them without any formal connection to us” (More #1,#2,#16). “I
remember my husband and I driving past a church and noticing a sign with slotted letters, like
Scrabble. It read. ‘Share a Coke with a Christian’” (More #17). The demand for customer
collaberation was so high that Coca-Cola sent traveling kiosks to major malls across the country,
just so consumers could customize their own canned drink (More #18). There is no doubt that
social media played the biggest role in the success of this campaign. “Share a Coke” was
everywhere to be seen.

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I remember the first time I saw a Coke with a name on it. My first thought was that this had to
be the best marketing campaign ever. The next thing I knew pictures of Cokes with names listed
on them flooded my Facebook page for days on end. People would purchase a Coke not
necessarily to drink, but because their name was on the product. I found myself racing to Coca
Cola’s website just to see if my name appeared on a Coke anywhere. My personal experience is
exactly what Coca-Cola wanted, another view of their website. With each view, another
connection from the consumer to their brand was accomplished.
Social Media provides a great avenue for brand awareness and customer collaboration. What it
lacks is the ability to actually conduct business sales. Often times, I will first hear about a
product first through Facebook. I will typically connect to the business website to find out more
information about the product or service I just viewed on Facebook . I know if I am doing this,
thousands, if not millions more are doing the same thing. According the “Social Media
Marketing Industry Report 2014,” more experienced social media marketers reported a seventy-
nine percent increase in traffic (Stelzner, 22).
With this increased traffic to company websites, sales will typically rise. According to the same
report, more than half of those surveyed who have been using social media for three or more
years, reported an increase in sales (Stelzner, 19). While every business wants to increase sales,
some businesses may not benefit from increased sales through social media marketing.

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The report also showed that fify percent of the surveyed marketers reported that social media
hasn’t helped improve sales (Stelzner, 19). Some factors could play into the reported inability to
achieve social media marketing success. One factor could be that many companies don’t know
how to harness social media to provide results (Veeck, 37). According to the “Social Media
Marketing Industry Report 2014,” only thirty-seven percent of those surveyed were able to
measure their return on investment (Stelzner, 9). Another factor could be just a lack of resources
or competency needed to implement social media efforts (Schaupp, 190). “The Cluetrain
Manifesto,” published in 1999, described social media as a communication phenomenon and a
permanent shift to challenge marketing managers (Faulds, 1).
If we combine these factors together and look at the future of social media marketing, there
appears to be a need for more studies and concentration of this form of marketing. According to
the “Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2014,” those surveyed plan on increasing
blogging, YouTube videos, Twitter feed, LinkedIn participation and Facebook posts (Stelzner,
30). As we progress, more colleges and universities are beginning to implement courses
focusing on the different aspects of social media marketing (Faulds, 127).
Social media is here to stay. It can be a major tool for any business big or small. From cost
cutting to increased sales, to real time and always on, social media not only provides cost
effective marketing, it also provides customer service and collaboration any business could
benefit from.

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WorksCited
Burrus, Daniel. "Did Social Media Play a Role in Obama's Victory?". http://www.burrus.com. n.d.
Constantinides, Efthymios. "Foundation of Social Media Marketing." Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences 148 (2014): 40-57.
Faulds, David and Mangold, W. Glynn. "Developing A Social Media and Marketing Course." Marketing
Education Review, Vol 24, no 2 (2014): 127-144.
Hazari, Sunil, and O'Meara Brown, Cheryl, Et. Al. "Investigation Marketing Students' Perceptions of
Active Learningand Social Collaboration in Blogs." Journal of Education for Business, 88 (2013):
101-108.
Hendricks, Drew. "3 Ways Social Media is Driving a Business Revolution.”. http://www.forbes.com. 25
February 2014.
More, Jay. "Share a Coke: How the Groundbreaking Campaign Got Its Start 'Down Under'".
http://www.coca-colacompany.com. 25 September 2014.
Schaupp, Ludwig Christian, and Belanger, France. "The Value of Social Media for Small Businesses."
Journalof Information Systems,American Accounting Association, Volume 28, No. 1 (2014): 187-
207.
Stelzner, Michael A. "2014 Social Meida Marketing Industry Report." 2014.
Veeck, Ann, and Hoger, Beth. "Tools for Monitoring Social Media: A Marketing Research Project."
Marketing Education Review, Vol 24, no 1 (2014): 37-42.