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A Project Report On: "Social Media Marketing"
A Project Report On: "Social Media Marketing"
BY
SAFDER M.A
(A0633512012)
MBA (CI & SM)
AMITY UNIVERSITY
SUBMITTED TO
RENITA DUBEY
FACULTY GUIDE
AICISM
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COMPANY PROFILE
KwalityBazaar.com is an independent online store, a one stop shop solution for fresh
and hygienic fruits and vegetables. It is NCR’s first branded online vegetable, fruits platform
launched in the year 2013. It brings first time the concept of providing fresh ozone purified
fruits, vegetables with Brand "GREENO" at door step in NCR. It is also an initiative by IIM
alumnus as a part of IIM’s CSR.
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BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that this project report entitled “Social Media Marketing” submitted to Amity
Institute of Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Management is a bonafide record of work
done by “Safder M A” under my supervision from “05/05/2013” to “15/06/2013”.
Dr Renita Dubey
Assistant Professor
AICISM
Dr Mamta Mohan
Head of Institute
Noida
22/08/2013
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DECLARATION BY AUTHOR
This is to declare that this report has been written by me the author. No part of the report is
plagiarized from other sources. All information included from other sources has been duly
acknowledged. I aver that if any part of the report is found to be plagiarized, I shall take full
responsibility for it.
Safder M.A
A06335512012
Noida
22/08/2013
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AKNOWLEDGEMENT
I have taken efforts in this project. However, it would not have been possible without the kind
support and help of many individuals and organizations. I would like to extend my sincere
thanks to all of them.
I am highly indebted to Mr. Vikram Arora for their guidance and constant supervision as well
as for providing necessary information regarding the project & also for their support in
completing the project.
I would like to express my gratitude towards my faculty guide Dr. Renita Dubey & member
of Kwalitybazaar.com for their kind co-operation and encouragement which help me in
completion of this project.
I would like to express my special gratitude and thanks to industry persons for giving me
such attention and time.
My thanks and appreciations also go to my colleague in developing the project and people
who have willingly helped me out with their abilities.
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ABSTRACT
Introduction: Social media has gained importance and acceptance at a very past pace. It has
become an avenue to share one’s personal and professional life. The usage of social media as
a marketing tool is already implemented by many businesses. This reports analysed how
effectively social media be used as a marketing tool. The comparison of social media versus
traditional media for marketing was studied and advantages and disadvantages of both are
compiled. This report also analysed how small business start-ups can benefit from the ever
growing social media industry.
Method: This report used journals, magazine articles, newspaper articles, business reviews,
online survey and so on from the library of Amity University. Further official social media
pages of various companies on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were analysed to generate
statistics.
Result: Social media presence is definitely an advantage for all kinds of businesses. Social
media marketing has wider market appeal and is relatively cheaper than traditional
advertisements. With a huge number of audiences and high customisability of social media
for required content, social media marketing emerges as an exciting and effective tool for
marketing.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
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CHAPTER - 1
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INTRODUCTION
Social Networking sites have taken over today’s world. From what was started merely for
entertainment, today these websites provide a host of opportunities to its users ranging from
marketing their products, increasing awareness on social issues, sharing photos, video calls,
joining groups and forums of interests, promoting an idea, finding family roots, finding a lost
friend, gaming, entertainment applications and so on. In fact the usage of social networking
sites has been so diverse that many people use it for more than just entertainment. Mena et al
(2012) studied the readiness of health students to use Facebook as a platform for training
professional habits particularly in the case of influenza vaccination. This clearly shows social
networking sites serve as a creative solution to many business problems.
Marketing is of core importance to any kind of business. It can range from promotions and
advertisements on a large scale to one to one word of mouth marketing. Marketing forms the
essence of a business by which the brand name is reached to the intended audience. The cost
associated with traditional marketing techniques including print and visual media is
increasing at a fast pace. The cost of a full page colour advertisement in ‘Time of India’ is
around₹200,000, if not more. Thus it is important to look out for new and more creative
methods of marketing. Online marketing especially social media marketing is a sensible
alternative.
This report tries to analyse how effective is marketing via social media. The report also
compares and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing with
traditional advertising like print and visual media. Today’s youngsters are aspirers. They
dream big and want to be their own boss. Most of them aspire to be entrepreneurs and the
success stories of entrepreneurs are a huge encouragement for them. A major problem that
these entrepreneurs face while starting a new business is the cost associated with the brand
building and marketing. In this era, though the young population is all set to take over the
world with extended technological advancements, many of them fail due to lack of financial
resources for brand building. It is in this scenario that this report analyses how well social
media marketing can help new businesses.
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Therefore the objectives of this report are as follows:
To study the effectiveness and implementation of social media marketing for different
businesses
To study how social media can be useful for small businesses and new business start-
ups.
To compare and contrast social media marketing to traditional marketing
1.2 METHOD
This report uses academic journals, magazine articles, live survey and newspaper articles
which gives an idea about the relevance of social media as a marketing tool. These were
accessed via the library of Amity University. The search keys given were ‘social media’,
‘marketing through Facebook’, ’Start-ups and social media’ ‘Facebook marketing’ ‘Twitter
marketing’, ‘LinkedIn marketing’ ‘social media marketing’ and so on. Various social
networking websites were also visited to get insights on how marketing can be done through
them. Also, in order to get ideas on how new business start-ups are using social media for
marketing success stories of some entrepreneurs who recently started their business were
read.
The structure of this project report is as follows. Chapter 2 does a literature review on the
topics social media as a marketing tool for B2B markets, social media as a marketing tool for
B2C markets and using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for marketing. Chapter 3 is a critical
evaluation of these literatures studied and discusses pros and cones of social media marketing
as compared to traditional marketing. It also includes the findings which came to light as a
result of the interaction with the Marketing manager of Kwalitybazaar.com. Chapter 4
concludes the report by stating the effectiveness of social media for marketing. It also gives
recommendations to owners of new start-up businesses on how to manage their social media
accounts to generate more profits from their businesses.
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CHAPTER - 2
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of marketing, advertising,
brand building, promotions social media is the most sought after method adopted by
entrepreneurs’ young and old. The word social media brings to mind the most used
networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In though there are other social media
websites such as MySpace, Flicker and YouTube. Social media is widely used in various
businesses like small business, banking, retail marketing, B2B marketing, travel and tourism
marketing, financial institutions marketing and so on. This chapter aims to throw light on the
way in which social marketing can be used effectively for business development. The initial
part of this chapter will give an overview of how social media as a whole can help promote
businesses and further down the report, specific cases pertaining to a particular social
networking website used for developing a particular business unit will be examined.
Marie Swift (2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the print media is not the best
solution for brand promotion. The problem with traditional mass advertising according to
Marie is that, these media appeal to a wide range of people who may not even be interested to
know who we are. On the other hand, promotions and brand building must be done with
people whom we think are potential customers for our business. This can be achieved by
channelizing a greater part of promotion and advertising budget for activities such as
networking, volunteering, hosting events and so on. Out of these methods, networking is the
best that suits the need of the time (Marie Swift, 2006). With the technological advancements
in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected with the outside world with the help of
social networking sites. Peer networking is an important way of advertising and this is all set
to take over the world of marketing in the near future. The biggest advantage of social media
marketing is that it can be used for any kind of business regardless of whether it is B2B or
B2C. Also the relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional advertising.
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2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING
Although the idea of integrating business into personal life doesn’t seem to be a right choice,
Facebook being a larger community than all countries of this world expect India and China
can help develop B2B business (Handley, 2013). For this the company must have a business
page as opposed to the normal individual profile page. The following things need to be kept
in mind while promoting business through Facebook:
(1) The utmost important thing is to get as many people to ‘like’ the official company page.
Also contents must be added frequently so that users constantly get the news of the company
through the news feed on their home page. This will keep them updated about what is going
on in the company.
(2) Secondly communicate to the customers visually as opposed to text only communication.
Facebook uses an algorithm which gives more priority to videos and photos than text and
increases visibility of news item proportional to the number of people commenting or liking
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on it. In simple terms, if a news item is liked and commented by a few people in the initial
phase, there is more chance that it will be seen by more people.
(3) The number of times updates are added and the time of the day when the posts are added
is equally important. Choose a time which is most likely to hit maximum number of clicks
and limit the number of posts to one or two per day.
Similar to the usage of social media in B2B markets as mentioned above, social media also
aids B2C marketing. The following part of this report analyses how various B2C clients are
benefitted from social media usage.
Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to increase sales. This includes
business markets such as travel and tourism, banks, retail outlets and so on.
Various industries within the travel industry are focusing on social media marketing along
with the traditional marketing techniques. The airline industry is one which heavily relies on
social media for promotions and advertisements. Hvass & Munar (2012) studied the
effectiveness of the airline industry using social media for promoting their travel and tourism
packages. Initially a total of 29 full service carriers and 20 low cost carriers were selected for
this study and afterwards three airlines were chosen from this set. These airlines had an
account in Facebook or Twitter or both. The study proves that most airlines use an official
tone/language while posting their updates thereby reducing the interactive nature of the post
(Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al 2011). Followers would like the content of these pages to be
more informal but authentic. In fact many airlines have more than one official page which
can cause both confusion and clarity. It causes confusion because fans or followers may be
reluctant to join more than one page for the same company as it would be difficult to
distinguish between original official page and duplicate page. On the other hand maintaining
more than one official page on the social media can help to clearly distinguish between
various functionalities of the company. For instance, content pertaining to employees need
not be made public to the customers and so two pages can be maintained which caters to
employees and customers. In any case, the result proves that maintaining a social media
account helps increase customer base for the travel and tourism industry and as mentioned
above many companies in the tourism industry are already into it
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2.3.1.1 TWITTER FOR THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
Saltzman (2009) conducted a real life case study on usage of Twitter by various travel
operators. It is interesting to note that different travel agents use different strategies for
marketing through twitter. While Southwest airlines do not address most of customer service
issues through twitter, it responds to all other queries including latest fares, promotions offers
and so on. As for Marriot International which started with relatively less number of followers,
the main agenda was to implement the feedback provided by the followers. The main success
factor of Marriot’s page is that they don’t limit their tweets to company specific deals and
offers. Interesting fun facts are also given due importance. Though Marriot also doesn’t
encourage customer service issues through Twitter as it may damage the reputation of the
company, any issues posted on Twitter are dealt with. For pleasant holidays, the major reason
they use Twitter is to communicate last minute deals to its customers and other travel agents.
Carnival Cruise Lines address customer queries most effectively so that Twitter is more of a
communication medium between the company and the customers. Thus different strategies
are adopted by different travel operators for marketing through twitter. This strategy has
proved successful for all the travel agents because their growth in terms of number of
followers is whooping. All of them have grown to either three digit or four digit numbers in a
short span of five years and this proves that marketing through twitter is successful. Though
the real success factor lies in the amount of revenue generated through usage of social media,
the gain in popularity of these sites can’t be ignored. Table 1 shows the growth of various
travel operators in terms of number of followers.
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Another area of wide usage of social media for B2C marketing is in financial institutions
especially in the banking segment. The next part of this report concentrates on how financial
institutions utilize social media for their marketing strategies.
Many studies have been conducted to analyse the importance of social media marketing in
the financial institution segment. The use of Linked In which is referred to as ‘professional
Facebook’ is a very effective platform to build business. “LinkedIn provides a prime
opportunity to showcase your business and its employees as experts in their field”
(Hershberger, 2013). An important fact about LinkedIn is that it has the highest average
income of all social sites. This means that LinkedIn is more to do with business than
entertainment. These days business validation is done by searching for the company in most
popular social media. If financial institutions do not have a profile, it is most likely that the
company will not be regarded as authentic. The advantages of managing a profile on
LinkedIn are as follows:
The company website, other social media presence like Facebook and Twitter can be
integrated with the LinkedIn page.
Products and Services tab on the LinkedIn page can be customised to suit the
company’s requirements.
Icons, Banners, Photos and videos pertaining to brand building of the company can be
included on the LinkedIn page to increase viewership of the page.
Several real life case studies have been written about how banks in particular use other social
media sites such as Facebook and twitter for marketing. The next part focusses on banks
using Facebook as a marketing tool
According to Price (2011), customers who interact with a company through social media are
not discount shoppers. Financial institutions like banks use Facebook as a tool to deepen
existing potential customers. Evidently Facebook is a place where people like to spent time
in. When a company’s presence is felt on a place where you want to be, there are more
chances that the company’s brand building boosts up as a by-product of the liking for the
social media website as a whole. Bank Atlantic is an example which has 2217 likes as on 26
September 2012. The following is the strategy implemented by Bank Atlantic:
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Use Facebook to create experiences, services and values unique to Facebook users.
This can be surveys, games and so on
Place interactive contents like videos and photos which will drive the customers
towards the bank’s official pages
Encourage users who are active on the page by promoting their content like blogs.
Just as different tour operators have different marketing strategies on twitter, different banks
have different marketing strategy on Facebook as well. Albro (2012) reports the strategies
used by various banks in the United States of America to increase their sales through
Facebook marketing. For First National Bank operating mainly in Virginia, Facebook is an
important way of keeping in touch with the customers. The posts on the bank’s page are
planned well in advance so that the bank is prepared to counter any queries from customers
regarding the posts. The bank dedicates a person for responding to customer queries on the
page. Similarly Bath Savings Institution believes in a two way synchronisation between the
banks official website and the official Facebook page. While updates are posted on both the
website and on the Facebook page, the bank aims at creating an interaction with the
customers through the Facebook page. An important aspect of Bath Savings Institution is that
it does not discuss products or services of the bank through Facebook. The bank believes that
details of products or services are not what customers want. Just as banks use Facebook for
marketing, Twitter is also widely used by many banks to promote their brand. The next part
of the report throws light on Twitter marketing by banks.
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and approved for posting. Avidia bank has outsourced its marketing operations through
Twitter since the bank has only a small number of marketing staff. Avidia bank aims at
creating new customers and strengthening its brand name through Twitter. Interestingly
North Jersey Community Bank has about a dozen twitter accounts. The bank uses one as its
official twitter page while the others are for communication between employees and the
bank’s clients. Thus various banks are utilizing social media for its marketing.
Apart from financial institutions and travel and tourism industries, retailers are also on the
lookout for utilising social media presence for marketing. The next part of this report gives an
idea of how retailers use social media for marketing.
The August (2009) issue of Market Watch: Technology suggests that usage of Twitter if
monitored well can help in increasing sales revenue beyond expectations. Many retailers are
already reaping the benefits of being on Twitter. For instance ‘Dell Retail Outlet’ had
704,000 followers on twitter in 2009 and an accumulated turnover of $2 million through
twitter since the inception of its twitter page in 2007. Today it has 1,506,824 followers which
record a 214% growth in terms of number of followers in a short span of 3 years. Fashion
retailer ASOS is also actively tweeting their offers, promotions and discounts through twitter.
Similarly Fresh and Easy which is the US subsidiary of Tesco launched a new family meal
pack as suggested by its customers through Twitter. A leading furniture retailer in the UK –
Habitat – cautions that twitter usage, particularly the use of hashtags for promotions must be
done with extreme care. The company faced a bad reputation when it used non relevant
hashtags to improve viewership. Thus usage of twitter for retailers is also found useful.
Though the above study proves that social media usage aids in developing both B2C and B2B
businesses, Handley Ann (2012) suggests that using Facebook for business needs may create
a negative impact on the person trying to promote the business. She suggests that Facebook is
something personal and people don’t expect business deals through Facebook. It is supposed
to be a social networking site meant for making friends and keeping in touch with existing
friends.
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CHAPTER - 3
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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
It is clear from the literature review that usage of social media for marketing has been
embraced by businesses of all kinds. It is proved that business to business marketing and
business to consumer marketing is possible and highly effective through the usage of social
media especially Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The next part of the report concentrates on
how social media presence can be increased for business firms and how is it better than or
worse than traditional advertising techniques. It also focusses on how social media usage can
enhance small businesses. Merely implementation of social media may not be useful for
businesses but there should be a way to measure the impact of using social media for
marketing. Thus discussion on how to measure the return on investment in social media will
also be covered. In addition to this the general thumb rules of using social media sites for
marketing will be discussed.
Usage of social media helps to create a feeling for the customers that they have a direct and
immediate access to the company (Rodriguez et al, 2012). It is more of a pull strategy rather
than a push strategy for business development as proposed by Lager (2009). An important
aspect of social media marketing is that the results of social media marketing will be known
only after some time of implementation. Merely setting up a page on any social networking
site such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is not enough to generate sales. The most
important part of implementation is that it should regularly and frequently be updated.
Twitter in particular which is more of real time status updates, requires frequent updating and
feedback to queries. At the same time, too many posts should not be posted since it will
damage the reputation of the brand and over populate the customer home page. There are
different tactics for implementing pages on different social media sites as follows:
There are several things to keep in mind before plunging into the world of Facebook
marketing. Facebook is not the ideal place for marketing all kinds of businesses. A firm’s
objectives should be laid down and it should completely match with the Facebook marketing
style (Maxwell 2012). This means that Facebook marketing should completely fit with the
brand being marketed. Keeping in mind the fact that average age of people using Facebook
rose from 33 to 38 in 2011 (Maxwell 2012), a brand which caters to audience in their late
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thirties can easily be marketed using Facebook. Once the brand is recognised to be good
enough for Facebook marketing, the next hurdle is to urge people to ‘like’ your page. For this
interactive and interesting content should be shared on a regular basis. The next step is to
engage the people who have liked your page by providing them unique deals through
Facebook. Having done this, integrating the company official website, other social media
pages such as Twitter and LinkedIn pages with the company’s official Facebook page is the
next important thing. These icons must be placed promptly, in a place which is visible to all
visitors easily and there should be easy navigation between these pages (Maxwell 2012).
Status updates, videos, photos, creative games and so on must be updated at steady pace of
intervals so that viewers never think that the company’s page is not maintained well. On the
other hand, do not overload the customers with too many posts. One post everyday will be
most rewarding as people won’t get bored seeing the firm’s page. There should be someone
responsible for keeping the page live and active throughout the year, every year. There are
various methods for this. The easiest is to delegate the work for the marketing department.
But another solution to decrease workload and to increase creativity of the posts is to
circulate the responsibility of posting with the various departments such as HR, Finance and
accounts department. This can be done since Facebook is very popular and does not require
any technical expertise to update posts. Another method is outsourcing and there are many
companies which outsource social media marketing. Collecting feedback from the customers
and implementing them in the business is very important since they are invaluable
suggestions from people who want your brand to grow. A legal media policy for data
protection should also be implemented so that the company’s legal side is also taken care of.
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3.1.2 IMPLEMENTING TWITTER
As opposed to Facebook, Twitter requires more real time tweets and hence it is more
demanding. There should be a person in charge of ‘tweeting’ the relevant information at the
right time (Marketing Magazine, 2012). There are several points to be kept in mind while
tweeting:
Consistently tweet at the peak hour of the day and respond to queries directly and
promptly. Do not tweet too many times in a day.
Plan in advance regarding what to post and when to post. Keep the posts short and
interesting.
Sharing unique content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the company’s website
will urge users to follow the company’s page on all the social media websites.
Find people who are sharing information related with your business and engage them
in your social media marketing.
It is important to keep in mind that in order to draw attention from Facebook or
Twitter users who are already busy, engaged and entertained, the company needs to
post something even more interesting which will increase the company’s sales
revenue indirectly
The person who is designated to send tweets must know about the company well and
he/she must be very much aware of the business language of the firm. Either content
should be reviewed before posting or someone experienced should be given the task
of social media marketing.
A specific amount of time at regular intervals like morning, midday and evening
should be spent for responding to twitter queries if any.
Do not just promote the business but promote interesting content such as funny
videos, useful information and so on. All the content shared should have some
relevance with regard to the firm itself.
Use simple language which can be understood by a common man. Take special care
not to include jargons in tweets.
Maintain a positive attitude in the tweets and do not get too personal (Gunelius ,
2011)
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Having studied how to implement a twitter page and a Facebook page, the next important
thing is to measure the outcome of these efforts. Hence calculating the return on investment
from social media is equally important.
When a CFO of a firm looks at cutting down costs, the ones most likely to get cut are the
ones whose ROI is not known. Hence, investment on social media marketing is likely to get
cut and thereby the firm will suffer bad consequences (Price 2011). Thus it is very important
to calculate the ROI for social media marketing. Follow the steps for the same.
Track the initial numbers- revenue, average customer spending, website user traffic, new
customers and so on. Make a note of the expenses related to maintaining and updating the
social media page and track the amount of revenue generated from the social media.
Subtracting the expense from the revenue and dividing it with the initial investment will yield
the ROI. The challenge here is that the expense here will be a measure of time whereas the
revenue generated will be in pounds. This time can be converted to currency by multiplying
the time with the hourly wage and adding the computer and internet cost to it. After posting
regular updates on the page for a month or so, calculate the increased revenue (Price 2011).
Apart from this various tools are available to track users who visit a page on Facebook just
like Google Analytics is used to track people visiting a website. The tools available in the
market are as follows:
Similarly, it is important to measure the impact of using Facebook for bank marketing. This
can be done by monitoring the change in visitors’ number when a promotion has been
updated on its Facebook page and by measuring customer satisfaction levels from time to
time (Price, 2011). Since the implementation of social media and measuring the impact of
social media is done, the next question is whether social media marketing is viable for small
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businesses and new start-ups. The next part of the report focuses on viability on social media
marketing for small businesses start-ups.
Ankeny (2011) finds out how is it possible for small business start-ups to utilize Facebook as
their marketing tool. There are numerous small business start-ups which use Facebook as an
effective tool for marketing. The biggest advantage of small business start-ups in using
Facebook for marketing is the massive expense cut. Initial phase of a company is the time
when the brand needs to be built through strong PR events. With about a billion population
and around half of them logging in everyday, there is no cheaper medium of promotion as
Facebook especially for small business start-ups. By encouraging people to interact on
Facebook by providing unique promotions, business opportunities and so on, people get more
acquainted with the brand itself. By providing discounts and other offers to Facebook
customers alone, the need for reviewing the page again and again becomes a necessity.
Hence, the page gets clicked many more times and thus the brand building takes place
without much hassle. When Facebook page of a new start-up company is being designed, it
must be designed in such a way that it engages more customers. Thus by increasing the
amount of time spent on the Facebook page of the company, the brand name gets more
deeply engraved into the customers mind (Ankeny 2011).
The success of a small business start-up by Anna Strahs proves that Facebook marketing
works really well for new business start-ups (Ankeny, 2011). She started her own bakery
which baked alternative food which was corn free, nut free and diary free. She started a
Facebook page as soon as she started the company and regularly updated photos and videos
of her progress. Facebook managed her market research, feedback collection and promotions.
While she managed to know what the customers want through Facebook using customer
feedback, she did her promotions by updating posts and photos through Facebook. By
understanding the true potential of Facebook, she invested in Facebook advertisements as
well and the response was truly rewarding. From what started as a business to cater to the
necessity of people with dietary restrictions, the company has grown far and wide and ships
its products across the United States of America. This was possible with a mere $300 spent
for advertisements. This is the true potential of social media for new start-ups. At a time
when financial resources are very limited and brand building is of high priority, social media
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advertisements can eliminate the huge amount of money spent on advertisements and at the
same time create a brand image in a relatively shorter span of time
Having studied the way in which social media can be exploited for small businesses start-ups,
the next important thing is to compare and contrast between traditional advertisements and
social media promotions and conclude which is better and why.
Traditional advertising media includes print media, radio and visual media. In fact, only the
print media was considered to be traditional media but in this context of discussing the
impact of social media advertising and its comparison with other media advertisements, all
other existing media except the social media is considered as traditional media, at least for the
sake of this report. Though social media is gaining importance and acceptance, 45% of
advertisement revenue is still paid for advertisements in the print media Hampel (2012). This
figure can be debated to be a result of the inexpensive social media advertisements as
mentioned earlier. Though the investment for advertising in social media is very less, the
mass appeal is much higher and hence more returns can be expected. Hampel (2012)
identifies that “consumers are becoming increasingly resistant to traditional advertising”
(Pieters and Wedel, 2007). Precise targeting of consumers is not possible in mass media such
as print and television. Whereas by using the Internet as a source of advertisements, people
who are interested in a particular product can be drawn towards the company more easily. As
mentioned before, this is called as a pull strategy as opposed to a push strategy. Even within
the traditional media of advertising, premium print advertisements which are far more
expensive than normal advertisements are being widely used. “More prestigious perception of
an advertising stimulus converges with the advertised brand, thereby leading premium-print
advertisements to be perceived more prestigiously” (Hampel, 2012).
According to Hill & Moran (2012) the interactive nature of social media is the factor which
draws a large number of people towards it as compared to the traditional media such as TV,
radio and print media. Social media is more customisable as compared to traditional media.
In social media, it is easy to find what a consumer needs. Contrastingly, in case of traditional
media, the consumer is forced to enjoy whatever is broadcasted by someone else. Social
media makes it easier to search for relevant information thereby cutting down the time,
energy and money required to search for it. Above all man being a social animal is on the
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constant outlook towards interacting with other people around him. Traditional media does
not give an opportunity for this whereas social media was actually built for this purpose in the
first place. Though there are some downsides to social media marketing such as privacy
concern, legal concern and over exposure towards public, these limitations can be overcome
if social media is used promptly, wisely and effectively. Thus social media is by any chance
better than traditional media in terms of expense, wider appeal and lesser indirect costs
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SURVEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
BACKGROUND
This report presents selected results from the Social Media Management Survey for the
Kwalitybazaar.com. The survey collected perception towards the social media marketing
from a representative sample of management students studying in different departments of
Amity University, Uttar Pradesh. Survey methods included online questionnaire to collect
student’s perception towards the social media marketing. All data collection activities
conformed to standard procedures for conducting online marketing surveys. The sampling,
survey design, and reporting methodologies are recognized by marketing manager of
Kwalitybazaar.com.
SURVEY OBJECTIVE
Social media marketing survey objective was to provide consumer behaviour data for
Kwalitybazaar.com. The resulting databases will be used to update and expand the marketing
activities on social media by the organisation. In order to achieve the desired results, the
social media marketing survey had the following goals:
Capture random students from the management courses within the Amity University,
Uttar Pradesh.
Collect perception of all persons towards marketing through social media.
Collect data on which social networking site is more suitable for marketing.
27 | P a g e
RESPONSES
1. Do you think social media is the most sought after method adopted by
entrepreneurs’ young and old in the field of marketing, advertising, brand
building, promotions?
No
10%
Yes
90%
Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of marketing, advertising,
brand building, promotions social media is the most sought after method adopted by
entrepreneurs’ young and old. 90% people agree with it but 10% of them still believe in the
traditional way of marketing.
28 | P a g e
Print Media
27%
Social media
73%
Marie Swift (2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the print media is not the best
solution for brand promotion. The problem with traditional mass advertising according to
Marie is that, these media appeal to a wide range of people who may not even be interested to
know who we are. 73% of the people agree with it while rest is still thinking print media has
its own significances. Someone said “print media is the only media which has the highest
reach as it is read by the old and young population.”
29 | P a g e
3. Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find their potential
customers?
Maybe
20%
No
10%
Yes
70%
Promotions and brand building must be done with people whom we think are potential
customers for our business. This can be achieved by channelizing a greater part of promotion
and advertising budget for activities such as networking, volunteering, hosting events and so
on. Out of these methods, networking is the best that suits the need of the time (Marie Swift,
2006). With the technological advancements in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected
with the outside world with the help of social networking sites. Yes, most of the people agree
with it.
30 | P a g e
4. Which social networking site are you most familiar with?
LinkedIn
Youtube
41%
10%
Facebook
17%
Twitter
14%
My Space
2%
In today’s world there are many social networking sites which are helpful for the mass
marketing. The objective of this question was to find the website which is the most popular
one. Most of the people are familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn then YouTube. Many of them
are familiar with most of the social networking sites.
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5. Do you think the relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional
advertising?
Depends
17%
yes
No 56%
27%
More than 50% people think relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional
advertising while more less than 30% think it is not. The studies say that the relative cost is
lesser as compared the social media marketing with traditional advertising.
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6. Is social media helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales/clients?
Depends how
reputed the firm is
20%
No
17%
Yes
63%
Social media helpful for both B2B and B2C firms in generating new sales/clients. 63% of the
people agree with it. While others think in B2B everything is taken place in a formal way so
it’s not possible to generate new sales through the social media.
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7. “Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to increase sales.”
Do you agree?
Partially
20%
No
10%
Yes
70%
70% of the people agree with this because most of the people are familiar with social
networking sites and they frequently visit these sites.
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8. Which one do you think is the most effective social networking site for online
marketing?
LinkedIn
10%
Twitter
23%
Facebook
67%
It shows that most of the people are familiar with Facebook in comparison with other sites
like Twitter and LinkedIn. Cab providers like Ola Cabs and Taxi For Sure are more active in
Twitter than facebook. So it depends on different industries.
35 | P a g e
9. Do you follow your favourite brands on social networking sites like Facebook,
twitter and LinkedIn?
No
26%
Yes
74%
Most of the people do follow their favourite brands in Facebook and twitter to know about
their offerings and all.
36 | P a g e
To know how well
they are in
marketing
17% Just because you
like those brands
27%
27% of people follow their favourite brands just because you like those brands. 57% are very
keen to know about their new offerings while 17% follow to know how well they are in
marketing.
37 | P a g e
Spread Sheet
Do you think social Which is the most Do you think social Which social Do you think the Is social media “Social media can be Which one do you Do you follow your If yes, why do you
Yes Social media Yes Most of the above Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Maybe Twitter Depends It depends how Yes Twitter Yes To know how good
Yes Print media Yes Facebook Yes Yes Yes Twitter Yes Just because you like
Yes Social media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes No Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Print media Maybe Facebook No It depends how Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Most of the above Depends Yes Yes Facebook Yes To know how good
No Print media Maybe Youtube No It depends how Partially LinkedIn No Just because you like
Yes Social media Yes Youtube Yes Yes Yes LinkedIn Yes You are very keen to
Yes Print media Yes Most of the above No It depends how Partially Facebook No Just because you like
Yes Social media Yes Facebook Depends Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
No Print media No Most of the above No No Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Facebook Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes My space Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes Just because you like
Yes Social media Yes Youtube Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Facebook Yes Yes Partially Facebook Yes To know how good
Yes Social media Yes Facebook No Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Youtube Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Youtube Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Maybe Twitter Depends It depends how Partially Twitter Yes To know how good
Yes Social media Yes Most of the above Yes No Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Facebook Yes Yes Yes Facebook Yes You are very keen to
Yes Print media Maybe Most of the above Depends It depends how Partially Facebook Yes Just because you like
No Print media No Facebook No No No Facebook No Just because you like
Yes Social media Maybe Most of the above No No Partially Facebook Yes Just because you like
Yes Social media No Most of the above No No No Facebook No To know how good
Yes Social media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes Yes LinkedIn Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes Yes Twitter Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes Yes Twitter Yes You are very keen to
Yes Social media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes Yes Twitter Yes Just because you like
Yes Print media Yes Linkedin Yes Yes Yes Twitter Yes You are very keen to
38 | P a g e
3.6 STP AND SWOT ANALYSIS
kwalitybazaar.com
Brand: GREENO
SWOT
Strength
Weakness
Opportunity
39 | P a g e
Adding more products through diversification.
To penetrate the market with affordable price and promotional offers.
Opening offline stores. (OSTs).
Treats
COMPETITORS
Buysubzi.com
Freshsubzi.com
Freshone.com
Freshveggy.com
Shope.naturebasket.co.in (by Godrej)
Myeazylife.com
Tolbazaar.com
Mangoshopper.com and many.
40 | P a g e
CHAPTER - 4
41 | P a g e
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
4.1 CONCLUSIONS
Social media is working more as a search engine these days because people trust people
rather trusting companies. Also people think that it would be cheaper to buy from the people
directly rather than going to the company website. Hence, an area of interest is searched on a
social media and concerned people are found and communicated with. Social media
marketing creates a positive effect on many business markets such as financial institutions,
travel and tourism businesses, retail businesses, knowledge businesses, entertainment
industry, and so on. Since the process of social media marketing saves money, time and is
highly engaging and interesting social media marketing seems to be the next big thing to hit
the world as a whole.
One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing as opposed to traditional advertising
is that potential customers can be precisely targeted. For example, in Facebook, if a person
species that his area of interest is interior designing; his home page would have
advertisements of interior designers on it. Thus, it doesn’t seem to be a hassle for the
customer because they would definitely want to see those advertisements. As for the business
owner, he/she needs to pay only if a person clicks on his/her advertisements. Thus it is a win-
win situation for both the business owner and the customer.
Similarly small business start-ups should utilize the endless opportunities provided by social
media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The biggest advantage for small
business start-ups is that the amount of money to be spent on advertisements can be
massively cut down and brand building can be done effectively. As in LinkedIn which is
customisable, more than one products being sold by the same company can also be marketed.
This works perfectly for B2B clients who cater to more than one product from the same
verticals.
In fact social media sites themselves are changing at a fast pace to keep up with the
marketing trend that is present today. Though LinkedIn was started for professional
networking, it has added much functionality recently which makes it an attractive platform
for business development. Likewise although Facebook is considered as a medium for
personal space, it is changing at a rapid pace to cater to the needs of businesses as well. More
companies are trying to market their products through Facebook. Twitter is least preferred
42 | P a g e
social networking website used for business development. The main reason for this is that
Twitter is more demanding in terms of frequent tweets and more time should be spent on it to
respond to customer queries. However, Twitter is also changing to cater to business
development needs. Marketing Week (2012) reports that Twitter now provides various tools
for gauging the impact of promoted tweets. Now brands who want to advertise on Twitter can
customise their advertisements on the basis of what is working for them. Thus all popular
sites are into marketing and it can be seen as a good sign of opening the horizons for a new
way of marketing which cheaper, greener and more effective.
4.2 RECOMMENDATIONS
From this report it can be concluded that social media presence is inevitable in the coming
years. Not only that social media is useful as a marketing tool, it has become the order of the
day to be present in social media. Therefore this report recommends all kind of businesses-
small scale, large scale, business to business clients, business to consumer clients,
manufacturing industries and so on to be actively present in the social media. An important
fact to be kept in mind in this context is that most social networking sites have a cyclic
growth. It starts from minimum, attains a maximum and goes down to a minimum again.
Thus, this is the perfect time to invest time and resource in popular social media sites such as
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Owing to the relatively small amount of investment, it is not
a high risk investment as the usage of social media will come to a minimum only gradually.
43 | P a g e
advertising their clothes for people of the age group 15-50 whereas they still have to depend
upon traditional advertisements like TV, radio and print media for the rest of the age group
population. Thus effective combination of social media adverts and traditional adverts will
result in better results.
The online presence of firms must be frequently updated and it must be linked with each
other and with the company website. It must be maintained well and only relevant posts must
be updated. Small businesses should embrace this wonderful technology and reap the benefits
of being on the social media for marketing.
44 | P a g e
CHAPTER - 5
45 | P a g e
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ANNEXURE
QUESTIONAIRE
1. Do you think social media is the most sought after method adopted by entrepreneurs’
young and old in the field of marketing, advertising, brand building, promotions?
# Yes
# No
2. Which is the most effective solution for brand promotion?
# Social Media
# Print Media
3. Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find their potential
customers?
# Yes
# No
# Maybe
4. Which social networking site are you most familiar with?
# LinkedIn
# Twitter
# My space
# Facebook
# YouTube
# Most of the above
5. Do you think the relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional advertising?
# Yes
# No
# Depends
6. Is social media helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales/clients?
# Yes
# No
# It depends how reputed the firm is.
7. “Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to increase sales.” Do
you agree?
# Yes
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# No
# Partially
8. Which one do you think is the most effective social networking site for online
marketing?
# Twitter
# Facebook
# LinkedIn
9. Do you follow your favourite brands on social networking sites like Facebook, twitter
and LinkedIn?
# Yes
# No
10. If yes, why do you follow them?
# Just because you like that brands
# You are very keen to know about their new offerings
# To know how good they are in marketing
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