Social media is a virtual place/network that enables us to communicate, connect, share, create, and discover through the use of technology. Through various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, Indeed, Pinterest, WhatsApp, YouTube, and many others, an advanced and comprehensive networking chain is helping to bring the world closer together which shows how today it stands as a priority. Evolving from the traditional mediums ( television, radio, magazines), networking has been diverse and continues to grow to date.
In addition to communication, social media has proven to be a core requirement for businesses and organizations to survive in today’s society. It contributes to the formation of the firm’s image by constructing a foundation, recruiting, marketing, organizing events, workshops, and so on.
Even though it wasn’t as popular as it is now, social media marketing began in the 1990s. According to Dean, B. (2021), social media has affected more than half a million people. More than 4 billion individuals use social media regularly nowadays.
Since social media is the most extensively utilized tool for connecting with your audience and building your business, we chose to study how social media had created an impact on marketing.
1. What role does social media play in helping businesses and organizations focus on their target market?
2. What has caused social media to become such an important part of our lives?
3. Why are companies investing in social media?
4. What makes social media unique?
5. Which mediums of marketing has social media replaced?
The digital migration across the globe is an aspect that has got everyone moving towards better and modern ways of conducting activities. Every person desires to achieve this kind of migration as it has a lot of benefits to the organizations and firms as compared to the time when there was little use of media in the business activities. In day-to-day lives a very huge number of people access social media platforms, these maybe Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, print media such as electronic mails among others (Alalwan et al 2017). It is therefore very convenient for a business to use these platforms in marketing their products, conducting market surveys, and creating awareness on the products they make. In companies, the main area of interest in using social media platforms is to conduct market surveys and find proper feedback from the customers, hence helping the firm improve on the products. The fact that so many people access social media platforms is an opportunity to conduct market surveys on a product that is already released into the market while at the same can create awareness of a new product hence can influence the opinions of people on the specific product.
In conducting market surveys there are two aspects the group desires to achieve, these may be: get feedback on already existing products or to find out the market gap and hence utilize these chances by introducing the desired product or improving the current product to fit the gap. In these two aspects, the main area of interest of the company is to conduct the market survey to find out the gap in the market hence develop new ways of filling the gap. When a survey is done on social media it is very easy to determine the opportunities in the market as the customers who are the market for goods will be airing their views on the social media platforms, when this happens it gives an opening to the firm as it will be able to find out what is missing hence can work towards introducing the product or improve the current product to fit the needs of the customers as aired on the social media platforms.
It is important that as the firm does the surveys, several questions need to be answered so that the survey is not done randomly. A guided survey is very important for the firm to succeed. The question on how the survey will be conducted is very vital in this kind of undertaking. Therefore the first question the firm needs to ask is, how will the survey be conducted? Secondly, the consideration of time frame is very key for the success of the firm. Therefore the question here should be, how long will the market survey be conducted? This question will help come up with a frame from the beginning to the end of the research. It is also very important that the firm has a specific group of people that it targets and therefore the question, in this case, will be, who are the main target group during the entire research process? Finally, the group needs to consider the financial need for undertaking these activities since this is the main factor that will drive the whole research therefore the question here will be, how much will the whole research procedure need?
The question on how the survey will be conducted is majorly a question that drives towards the need for strategy during the process. A well-developed strategy will help the organization in working comfortably to achieve the purpose of the undertaking. Secondly, the question on the time frame will enable the firm to have a working plan that will fit within the time stipulated. In the strategy, there should be an indication of how long each sector of the process will take, when this is done the management team will have a focus on time and hence know when to expect the results from the survey. The target group, these are the customers the firm desires to reach and serve is a very important consideration, different age groups of people use different social media platforms. It is therefore very important that the firm understands the market distribution, when this happens the firm will know where to focus and hence help it to reach the desired people. When all these are done, the firm will need to have a financial budget to help achieve all the desires, since all the procedures involve the use of money.
The research questions that will guide the survey will be very important for scholars in the business field as they will give a basis for conducting future research. The questions will give a guideline on the main areas to focus on so that the business may have the perfect results in the process of any other research to this area of interest which is a market survey for a new product. The research will also provide a source of reference to those in the business field who would wish to a market survey but would not like to go through the stress of making a new working plan, the research will enable the researchers, in this case, to work moving forward with the help of the survey questions formulated in this research work. Finally, it will help them save time and money as they will not be required to formulate new measures but rather just pick what had been done before their work. The questions are therefore of great benefit to the scholars in the same business field.
The nature of the research is majorly descriptive. In a descriptive design, the researcher focuses on finding out the opinions and feelings of the target group but does not influence their current mode of life. This is the case in the research, the organization is seeking to find out what the market needs but in the process of all these does not have a say on what is currently being consumed in the market. The survey is conducted only to identify a gap in the market and come up with methods that can be used to fill these market gaps. The survey will then seek to introduce the necessary products in the market hence cover the market gap, when this happens the firm does not have the mandate to force the people to consume the products but rather accept the way the market feels about their products. This brings out the aspect of exploring the current market to try to dominate it.
Being that the research majorly seeks to find out the numbers, it is, therefore, quantitative research. In a quantitative research design, the main investigation is done on the figures to a phenomenon being investigated (Bloomfield, et al 2019). In the research process, the results are set to be gotten in terms of figures which will be recorded out of every research question. The figurative translation of the research survey results leads to the conclusion that the survey is quantitative. The analysis of numerical data to describe the characteristics, find the correlations, and test hypotheses of the research is a quantitative measure.
A research design refers to the overall strategy that is put in use to carry out a research work that defines the logical plan to tackle an established research question. The research design will be descriptive as the method only focuses on observations, describing the subject’s behavior without interfering with the setup of the actual phenomena (Siedlecki,2020). During the research process, the firm has no control over the market but is rather in need of finding out the behavior and trends of the market.
During the research, several weaknesses may present themselves in the cause of using descriptive research design. The main weakness is sincerity, in this case, it will be difficult to gauge if a person is speaking the truth or the data given is false. When this happens during the research process, the research party will not be able to get the most out of the research hence the firm may not act appropriately due to misguided responses.
REFERENCES
Bloomfield, J., & Fisher, M. J. (2019). Quantitative research design. Journal of the Australasian Rehabilitation Nurses Association, 22(2), 27-30.
Siedlecki, S. L. (2020). Understanding descriptive research designs and methods. Clinical Nurse Specialist, 34(1), 8-12.
Alalwan, A. A., Rana, N. P., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Algharabat, R. (2017). Social media in marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics and Informatics, 34(7), 1177-1190.
Jin, S. V., Muqaddam, A., & Ryu, E. (2019). Instafamous and social media influencer marketing. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.
Dean, B., 2021. How Many People Use Social Media in 2021? (65+ Statistics). [online] Backlinko. Available at: <https://backlinko.com/social-media-users> [Accessed 17 October 2021]
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Impact of Social Media on Marketing