Modern University for Technology & Information

Faculty of Management

Research Paper

Student and Course Information

Student Name: Islam Mokhtar Abdel Hafez Atia
Student Code: 83092
Course Code: MIS310en
Course Name: E-Marketing

Research Title
(Social Media & E-Marketing)

Spring 2020

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 Introduction
Social media is today known as one of the most popular and powerful E-marketing tools in
the current time. Social media helps customers to identify and know their interests and needs
as well as affecting their purchasing decisions. Social media is defined as the websites that
connect millions of people from different parts over the world who have same interests,
hobbies, ideas and thoughts. YouTube, Instagram and Facebook are the best examples of
social media platforms that are popular for very large number of consumers.

People today are consuming a lot of social media, spending thousands of hours on social
media apps and websites, this is has made it possible for businesses and sellers to target users,
showing them products that they have interest in to purchase and consume.

Social media is considered now as one of the most modern electronic marketing tools,
which is different from other means of traditional marketing strategies. therefore
marketing through social media nowadays is the most efficient, fastest, affordable, and
effective way for product marketing and selling, where also the targeted consumer can get
options and information of goods and products easily and pay electronically for the service or
product. Social media is having a huge impact on the way people purchase and consume
goods, as companies and business are using different techniques to attract people to buy their
products.

The objective of this research is to demonstrate the big impact of social media as a
marketing tool on consumer’s purchase choices and decisions and how businesses can
benefit from that to market and promote their products. The research will include
evidences why and how the social media are having a huge influence on people’s product
consumption and purchase choses, and why it’s important for traders and businesses to
use the social marketing platforms as a main way and technique to market their products for
consumers and satisfy consumer needs through this tool as it is the most predominant
marketing tool today.

1- The definition of social media

To define social media the term (media) must be explained first. Media is a tool of
communication, like a TV or newspaper, so social media is a social tool of communication
between people. In Web 2.0 terms; this is a website that doesn't provide you information, but
it does interact with you as a user and at the same time it provides you information. This
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interaction is as simple as when you comment or write a post or a status. Social Media sites
are main designed to build user communities

of real people as a form of electronic virtual world so they can connect together and share
different ideas and life issues. The basic concept of Social Media is to establish chat and
conversion lines between two party of users.
In general terms, social media provide users the tool to share information and interact with
each other to create web content and use it. User’ activities, behaviors and browsing happen
through media by sharing information, thoughts, ideas and opinions.

2-The Science of Marketing

Marketing is a science that is an advanced method that is always changing its basics as the
needs and advancements take place in around the world. The Marketing has started to create
the new methods of virtues to come to terms with the new frontiers of business. The role of
marketing in the development of business is that it can give a better idea of the language
customers use to describe their needs and interests. Marketing can create a line of messaging
strategy that uses events, stories, content and messaging through the entire sales process to
find, capture, and supply targets more effectively. Traditional media such as television,
newspapers, radio and magazines are all the same means of the contemporary technologies.
Its now easy for everyone to create and easily share their content through the internet
technology, create their own content. Advertisers can show their ads on publisher’s content
using the advanced ad network system to show the relevant ad to the most targeted customer.
This can be done easily using the digital advertising technology. Publishers and intermediate
hosting social media websites get paid from the advertisers as a fee of the ads they show.

3-Technology of Social Media and its effect on business

The spread of personal computers and tablets, the internet, and e-commerce are having a huge
impact on how businesses work and being promoted. Millions and Millions of users around
the world are spending more and more time on the internet now. This is has been leading to
many researches about and how people behave when they use the social media website and
spend time on their phones. As new technologies are advancing, businesses learn how to use
smart technologies to increase great returns. Some of the best-known examples include
technology-driven companies such, eBay, Microsoft and Google. The huge growth of the
smartphone market and mobile, and Tablets is affecting the, as social media connectivity is
becoming easier and is helping social media to grow even faster.

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4-Importance of Social Media Marketing for Businesses
Social media marketing is one of the most important types of online marketing where
businesses and traders are showing their products/services and Market them. A new
scientific study confirmed the importance of social media networks in marketing products and
services Social media is important because it allows traders and product sellers to reach
people locally, regionally, nationally and even internationally. If you understand the
characteristics of your target audience, you will be able to personalize your messages to get a
reaction from that targeted audience positively. For example, how you try to grab the
attention of baby mother online isn’t the same tune you would use with a teenager. You have
the ability to reach your marketing targets so easily. A new released study by (Yes to
Digital) site specialized in the digital content, made sure that 71% of social media
network users around the world buy products they knew about through these platforms
that attracted hundreds of millions of internet users around the world. The estimated number
of Facebook users in 2013 is almost 1.15 billion users, "YouTube" is used by one billion
visitors monthly, while "Twitter" network estimated users are around half billion users.
This is shows how powerful those platform are for you to get a profitable sales return from
your targeted audience!

Social media marketing can generate more sales and revenue

Social media marketing plays an important role in generating returns and hence increasing
sales and income. A survey by Social media today revealed that 71% of social media users
are more likely to purchase products from brands that they see on social media websites. A
study by HubSpot revealed that social media produces almost double the marketing target
than any other marketing method and lead-to-close rate is 100% higher on social media.

Social media makes a direct customer Engagement

Customers and audience can be attracted directly. Businesses can attract customers by
showing them positive activities, which will bring the user’s attention and increases the
interaction with your product which means you are having contact with customers.

Social media is less costing and more effective

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Social media marketing is very important for small businesses because of it comes
with affordable prices and possibility to reach large number of targeted audiences within less
time which means you are paying or ads to directly and effectively gain real and consumer
customers.

Branding is vital on social media

Social media marketing is the best tool for small businesses for branding. According to Social
media today, 83% of customers prefer to connect to the brand on Facebook and 53% on
Twitter. Social media platforms are having daily active customers who can be targeted
commercially which means direct sales and revenue for you.

Customer acquisition is easy on social media

As more than half of world's population is using different social media platforms, the
possibility of gaining users and customers on social media websites is really high. There are
approximately 1.74 billion social media users according to Emarketer and social media
websites play a crucial role in acquiring customers to the businesses. In 2013, 36% of
marketers acquired customers via Twitter, 52% via Facebook and 43% via LinkedIn.

5-The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

.You can increase the popularity and the recognition of your brand and trade mark through
social media platforms .You can use the social media channel or network as a direct line or
tool to promote and get people to know and understand your brand.
This is important because it makes it easier to gain new customers clients, and makes you
more familiar and flexible with your current customers. For example, a frequent Facebook
user could hear about your company for the first time only after seeing it in the Facebook
newsfeed. A Customer also might like your brand if it is related to something he likes after
seeing your AD many times. Here are some of the benefits of social media marketing:

Improved Brand Loyalty

According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social
media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report concludes Companies
should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with
their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing
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consumers into being brand loyal. Another study published by Convince & Convert found
that 53% of Americans who follow brands on Social Media are more loyal to those brands
that are being shown to them.

More Opportunities to Convert

Every post you make on a social media platform is an opportunity for customers to convert.
When you gain a new follower, you’ll immediately have access to new customers, recent
customers, and old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Every blog post,
image, video, or comment you share is a chance for someone to react, and every reaction
could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion. Of course not every interaction with
your ad will result in a conversion, but every good interaction increases the possibility of an
a conversion. Even if your click-through rates are low, the number of opportunities you have
on social media is significant as more and more visitors keep coming to your website or
watch your ads, which will more likely result in a good conversion.

Higher Brand Popularity

If you are providing a product that makes customers pleased, you are gaining more other
customers, As those whom who like your brand will invite more others to come to you and
buy your product or service. The more people talk about your brand on social media, the
more popular it will become so your fans are increasing. Also if you make sponsorships with
big celebrities on Social Media, you can get much higher traffic for your brand.

Increased incoming Traffic

Your coming traffic is limited to people that already know your brand and users that only
certain search keys to reach you. When you gain an new social media fan to your website or
page. When you produce a high quality content on social media, you’ll generate more traffic
to your website, and of course more traffic means more purchases and more income.

Less Marketing Costs

Through a study made by Hubspot, 84% of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per
week was enough to generate increased traffic. Six hours is not a large investment for a large
as page on social media. If you can allocate one hour a day to improve your content and
publishing strategy, you will see the results of your efforts. Even paid advertising through
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Facebook and Twitter is fairly cheap based on your budget. Make the based on your budget
and you’ll not go over your budget—when this starts to pay back for you, you can go for a
larger ad campaign and increase your budget cost to get more followers and conversions.

 Search Engine Rankings SEO

When you improve your website or page SEO you will get much more search traffic. You
need to make sure that you are using the best titles, tags, and descriptions, and share links that
bring back a traffic to your page or website. Google and other search engines are ranking
search results based on different factors, because of the fact that strong brands always use
social media. When you are active on social media this is an indication that your brand is
legitimate and trustworthy. So if you want to rank your brand for a given set of keywords,
you need to be active on social media.

Richer Customer Experiences

Social media, at its core, is a communication channel like email or phone calls. Every
customer interaction you have on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your
customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. For example, if a
customer complains about your product on Twitter, you can immediately address the
comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it right. Or, if a customer compliments
you, you can thank them and recommend additional products. It’s a personal experience that
lets customers know you care about them.

Improved Customer Insights

Social media also gives the opportunity to gain valuable information about what your
customers are interested in and how they behave. Customer Insights provides a clear idea
about what the customers exactly need. A good Example here is Nike, in the 1980s Nike
unleashed a campaign about the actual role of fitness in day-to-day life. The company and
their agency partner realized exercising wasn’t always this fascinating thing for the average
person. Before this, a lot of Nike’s campaigns spoke to the higher level of elite athlete. But
then, Insights came into play. There was finally an understanding that the majority of Nike’s
customers are everyday people, sometimes exercise and feel like it’s an everyday routine.

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Using this knowledge, they launched “Just Do It” in 1988.And, this campaign transformed
into a catchphrase that has been so effective to audiences ever since. Thus through social
media websites when you go and collect customer’s insights you can improve and behave
they way your customers will be engaged and satisfied with your product or services.

5-The Impact of Social media on Consumer purchase

Purchase decision refers to the final choice or selection on what product the customer buys.
The act of purchase is the last main step, As the consumer deciding on what to buy, where to
buy, and how to pay. Purchase is a function of intentions, environmental influences and
different individual situations. Some of the influences that can affect the purchase action
include the time available for decision-making, information availability and the retail
environment.
The impact of the internet varies on the various stages of decision-making. Initially, the
internet supported only the information search stage (Karimi, 2013), but recent trends in
social media, For online decision-making quality, besides time costs and the cognitive
costs of acquiring and processing information, other influencing factors include perceived
risk, product knowledge and trust. Internet has proved the importance of social media towards
sale generating. The more time of internet used by consumers, the more likely they will
use it for decision-making (Jepsen, 2007). According to Punj (2012), the main
difference in decision quality between offline and online settings can be attributed to the
online technology, including access to the varied sources of information and decision, which
have the potential to help consumers make better quality decisions.

6-Social Media Technology

Social media helps conversations to reach a wider audience leveraging the "long tail"
concept, which means conversations that can be turned into different forums. There are
several communication channels in an organization that include meetings, phone calls, and
emails. These communication channels have their own limitations such as forgetting a
message, missing to take notes during a meeting, and searching for information in a huge list
of emails which can be challenging.

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Use of social media web sites has increased the channels of communication and its
effectiveness in the organization. Now people need not waste their time as it has become easy
for a person to send messages through an instant messenger or a tweet and get the response
really quick. Social media has also improved collaboration between team members in an
organization, which has resulted in a better outcome.
When a team is encouraged to work as a team allowing them to share their workload, the
outcome will be tremendous compared to what an individual could have created. At such
situations, the social media acts as a source to allow people to generate and share their ideas.
Through communication and collaboration, one can increase the overall effectiveness of a
team. Companies must allow their employees to leverage their networks if they have a well-
built social profile. This will result in professional gains as these social media will enable
collaborating without leaders in their respective industries. Moreover, this will help the
employees stay up to date with the latest developments in the industry and also stay
connected with the top leaders.

7-Gaining customers trust.

Social media has a very large influence on people as a modern social technology. Marketers
need to make sure that the message to the audience is credible and reliable. Social media
marketing generates two ways of conversation where the customer is an integral part of the
marketing department. Customer opinions matter and have an and impact on marketing plan,
marketers have to be positive by thinking first about providing the customers what then need
and gain their trust before only thinking about them as commercial targets. When this
happens, businesses are growing their brand creditably and build a customer base.

8-Influence on user purchase choice

As time is changing and technology is constantly improving, companies need to stay in the
game and use any new opportunity to improve sales, marketing and customer loyalty.
Technology gives consumers the power to investigate products to label them and criticize
them equally, and more. There many companies today have pages on social media platforms
to provide information about products. Consumers like to rely on a company after they read
various reviews and comments of the consumers who have already purchased these products.

9- Current consumer attract more customers

Consumers are attracting other buyers through reviews on social media. For example, when a
consumer wants to buy, he starts to read about other buyers opinions on social media

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networks. Social media users believe their friends, family and people who same to be real
customers. Many online buyers believe in social media websites as trustworthy source of
information.

10- Why Social media is more powerful for product marketing?

All companies and brands have their own websites that show their products and services that
show their products and services, but are they as powerful as social media platforms for
marketing and product promoting? of course not! A study on the famous business Forbs
website confirms that in 2012,78% of sales been sold to people using social media compared
to others who did not use social media, which indicate the great power of social media into
bringing more customers and making conversions.

11- Social Media make it easier to get feedback

Social media marketing tools help marketers to get an instant an enriched feedback from their
customers so they could easily work on assessing their services that being provided, improve
the quality their services and products and acknowledge what do customers need and meet
with market demand.

12- Branded social campaigns

Marketing campaigns on social media provide additional touch points to encourage
interaction between the consumer and the brand story throughout the day, which can deepen
consumer to brand relationship, help marketers uncover common themes in consumer
feedback, and persuade consumers to engage with online content (Murdough, 2009).
Thoughts, impression, interest, images, and experiences from these touch points form a set of
associations with the brand in consumer memory (Keller, 2009). Marketers have several
options within the social media system to promote their brand including placing paid display
advertising, participating in social networks as a brand persona, developing branded
engagement opportunities for customer participation within social networks, and publishing
branded content (known as content marketing or social publishing) in social channels (Tuten
& Solomon, 2013). Brands can use social media marketing as an integrated component in a

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marketing campaign, as an ongoing corporate communications channel, and/or as a series of
micro campaigns specifically designed for digital use.

13- Branding with Social Media

A channel can be made by social media for marketing activities including customer
relationship management, , buyer research, sales generation, customer service sales
promotion delivery channel, paid advertising channel, and branding. Though, information
about the brand must be relevant to the consumer if you want the consumer to engage with a
brand in self‐relevant ways (Schmitt, 2012).
As noted, marketers categorize social media basically as a branding channel (Emarketer,
2013).
As a result, branded social media activities can be used to increase brand awareness and
brand liking, promote customer engagement and loyalty, inspire consumer word‐of‐mouth
communication about the brand, and probably deliver a traffic to the brand. These branded
social activities work mainly based on the use social networks and may involve activities
such as ongoing business‐to‐consumer dialogue, socially published branded content (e.g.,
white papers), engagement experiences (e.g., Office Max's Elf Yourself), and the social
presence and participation of a brand persona (e.g., Travelocity's Traveling Gnome).
Marketers must know their customers behavior and set their own strategy to deal with them.
(. In social media, engaged consumers participate and share. Participation may be passive
involving simply consuming the social content or active including such behaviors as
submitting consumer‐generated stories (Hutton & Fosdick, 2011). Social media outlets
provide a context for new kinds of identity performance, and brands are a part of the
performance (Merchant, 2006). Thus, consumers may share their own opinions and/or share
the branded content with their network. Consumer response to social media is typically
measured by noting whether the consumer links, bookmarks, blogs, refers others, clicks,
friends, connects, subscribes, submits an inquiry or idea, and/or buys the brand (Falls, 2010).

14- Social media Experts and scientists opinion about the power
of social media
Multiple studies (Trainor et al., 2014; Wang and Kim, 2017; Greenberg, 2010) have
recognized the increasing role of social media in CRM and a new term arose, namely
‘Social CRM’. Social CRM does not replace traditional CRM, instead it is presented as an
extension of the well-known marketing tool to incorporate social functions, processes and
capabilities that include business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
interactions (Wang and Kim, 2017; Greenberg, 2010). For social CRM, Trainor et al. (2014,

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p. 271) propose the following definition: “a firm’s competency in generating, integrating, and
responding to information obtained from customer interactions that are facilitated by social
media technologies. So from this this study, other studies included in this research and from
other sources, Social media experts have confirmed the importance of social media as a a
marketing tool, in this study by forbs
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2013/05/19/study-78-of-salespeople-using-
social-media-outsell-their-peers/#7f6d4d5ca39e4) Sellers who used social media beaten the
others who do not use social media by 78% sales. Which gives an indication how powerful
the social media are.

15- Risks that associated with social media marketing.

Although Social networks can help companies and brand promote their products fast, it can
also spread a bad reputation fast and just as quickly. Also, if customers want to discharge
their anger on your product or service, they can use your social network account. Managers
need to understand how to handle those situations quickly and effectively. Also, as social
media is not as widely moderated or censored as mainstream media, individuals can say
anything they want about a company or brand, positive or negative. Companies are always
looking to gain access to these conversations and take part in the situation.
However, a potential problem that companies using social media may face is the privacy and
personal security issues. There exists a niche segment that is overly concerned about their
security matters and do not prefer to discuss their vocation and similar plans on social web.
So the success and failure of technologies is geared toward social networking revolve around
user participation, trust, security, and privacy. So users sometimes tend to be hesitant to share
some of their sensitive information with companies. This means, organizational issues
regarding incentives for participation, managing behavior changes, and building effectives
communities have greater influence.
 There is a Lack of Brand Control
Businesses must be careful in the market research and advertising laws not to go over legal
borders. The advertisement in the internet brings danger to product brands. Social networks
are user-generated contents where end users about their experiences with products, services,
and customer service, etc. The contents in such a material can be critical to the product, and
societies have very little control in which end users share in their social network. We must
not forget the most important thing through social marketing there is an opportunity to collect
consumer data; however, these collections of data cannot just be collected and ignored. Social
network users are more cautious about sharing their private data. To have access to the
consumer Information, business must build products and applications which will require that
a user will give permission to access those personal data.
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 Conclusion
As more and more people around the whole world are using the social websites and spend
large periods of time on them, this is having a huge influence on people’s thinking and
behavior, and this has also made those platforms and networks not only for social connection,
but also a proper environment for small and big businesses to promote their products and
market them, increase and raise their sales and income, gather data and feedback from their
customers, offer them facilities to search and find information about what they exactly need
and provide them a variety of the products and services they are searching about, as the
internet has made the online shopping so easy as the internet technology is rapidly
developing to made people’s lives easier.
As the majority of customers are today existing on those social media websites and platforms,
and as people also are looking for the easiest and most comfortable way to shop and search
for their favorite products, which is apparently existing online, so marketers need to be
available online and on those platforms where the customers are.
The marketing experts and researchers are emphasizing the very big importance of social
media networks for businesses as it has been mention by the research.
Overall: The social media today is a basic part of people’s lives, businesses have to use it in a
positive and useful way to generate conversions and sales for their own benefit and at the
same time they have to provide a high quality of services to their customers and seek their
satisfaction. Most of business really need the social media to market their products as the
social media technology provide them with many facilities and tools that make positive
and profitable business returns.

References

Websites:

1-International Journal of Managerial Studies, The Impact of Social Media as a

Marketing Tool on Purchasing Decisions(Case Study on SAMSUNGfor
Electrical
HomeAppliances),https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ba3d/1248347ec79831540d4
e590d62cd7f856556.pdf

2- Minot State University, The History of Social Media and its Impact on
Business, http://www.minot.com/tom/SocialMedia.pdf

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3- Power, What are Customer Insights in Marketing?,
https://powerdigitalmarketing.com/blog/what-are-customer-insights-in-
marketing-2/#gref

4- International Journal of Managing Public Sector Information and

Communication Technologies, Social Network in marketing (Social Media
Marketing) Opportunities and Risks

5- forbes, Study: 78% Of Salespeople Using Social Media Outsell Their Peers,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2013/05/19/study-78-of-
salespeople-using-social-media-outsell-their-peers/#7f6d4d5ca39e

6- Information and Decision Sciences, Impact of social media on consumer

behavior,
https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1504/IJIDS.2019.101994

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