The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media Marketing

The popularization of social media such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok has

transformed customer behavior and become a customer-driven platform for marketing

(Dwivedi, 2021). With an increasing number of active users, social media has been essential

to effective marketing strategies. This article will give an overview of the current state,

existing flaws and coping strategies of social media marketing.

In the changing marketing context, traditional mass-marketing tactics are less effective,

and it’s necessary to re-define marketing approaches (Thomas, 2007). The mass-marketing

strategies incur large expenses, and reach out to numerous customers who are not necessarily

potential customers. However, social media have developed a role of customer empowerment

agents and rapidly expand the market share. The social media App market was valued at

$49.09 billion in 2022, and 77% of businesses use social media as their marketing channel

(Wong, 2023).

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms for creating marketing

contents and establishing the interactive relationship with potential customers, in order to

promote products or ideas. Working as a marketing tool, social media is the source of users'

voice and also the platform to run a branding campaign (Constantinides, 2014) .

Figure 1

social media marketing has introduced a sustainably effective social feedback cycle for

marketing, as is shown in Figure 1 (Evans & Mckee, 2010), and there are many advantages to

this operating mode. Firstly, running the cycle of social media marketing is at a relatively low

cost, comparing with mass-marketing tactics (Ajina, 2019). Secondly, the use of social media
marketing increases traffic (Elby, 2020), since the users’ feedback can influence potential

users in turn. Thirdly, if the cycle sustains effectiveness, the brand awareness will continue to

increase and brand loyalty will be strengthened from the bottom up. A research conducted by

Kim and Ko (2010) also suggests that social media marketing has prominent impact on brand

reputations, which exert a significant influence on consumers’ purchase decisions. As an

effective and economical strategy, social media marketing is universally available and

increasingly important for businesses of all sizes.

However, due to the constantly-evolving nature of social media, it is important to

acknowledge the challenge of fierce market competition while adopting social media

marketing. One of the biggest challenges is the constantly evolving social media landscape.

As new platforms emerge, it can be challenging for businesses to keep up with the latest

trends and updates. Moreover, social media algorithms change frequently, making it difficult

for businesses to maintain their visibility and reach.

On the one hand, for well-developed platforms, the organic reach is decreasing because

of algorithm mechanism and increasing amount of contents competing for space on users’

feeds (Newberry, 2023). On the other hand, new platforms and new features are emerging

constantly, which brings both challenges and opportunities. A good example of this is,

Lemon8, a new social media platform launched in February 2023, reached Top10 most

downloaded app in the US App Store within just one month (Chen, 2023).

Another challenge of social media market competition is the generation of engaging

content that resonates with the audience. The attention span of social media users is limited,

and businesses need to produce content that captures their attention and motivates them to

engage with it. Additionally, measuring the success of social media campaigns can be

problematic, because, unlike traditional marketing techniques, the ROI of social media

campaigns is not always easy to quantify.

To cope with the fierce market competition, marketers should adhere to the interactive

nature of social media marketing, and turn to the social media marketing strategy that can

reach higher customer engagement. Because by applying the strategy with higher degree of

engagement, social media’s role as customer agents, customers’ social media use motivation

driven by incentives (Muntinga et al. 2011) and the interactive nature of social media
marketing can be consistent and cohesive, that is, to reach a consensus on empowering the

customers.

Figure 2

Based on the study of Li et. al.(2020), social customer relationship management (CRM)

strategy is expected to have the highest customer engagement among the four common

strategies, as illustrated in the Figure 2. The social CRM strategy emphasizes customer

engagement and innovation.

A prominent opportunity in the current context is the ability to leverage user-generated

content (UGC) to promote the business. UGC can include reviews, testimonials, and

customer-generated photos and videos that can be shared on the company's social media

pages. This form of social proof can significantly enhance the credibility of a business and

improve the chances of customer conversion. Customer participation brings creative resources

for value co-creation with the enterprise, and in turn benefits the brand loyalty.

In conclusion, social media marketing presents several challenges and opportunities for

businesses. The adoption of social media strategy encourages organizations to achieve their

marketing objectives with a greater emphasis on the interaction and engagement with

potential customers. Faced with the ever-changing environment of social media, marketers

should adhere to customer engagement strategy in order to boost traffic and strengthen brand

loyalty, and ultimately enhance competitive advantages and business performance.

Companies that can successfully navigate the ever-changing social media landscape, create

engaging content, and measure the success of their campaigns can greatly benefit from the
potential of social media marketing.

References

Ajina, A. S. (2019). The perceived value of social media marketing: An empirical study of

online word-of-mouth in Saudi Arabian context. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

Issues, 6(3), 1512–1527. https://doi.org/10.9770/jesi.2019.6.3(32)

Belle Wong, J. D. (2023, May 18). Top social media statistics and trends of 2023. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-statistics/

Chen, C. (2023, July 18). TikTok follow-up Lemon8 is flopping in the U.S. Rest of World.

https://restofworld.org/2023/lemon8-app-bytedance-user-decline/

Constantinides, E. (2014). Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences, 148, 40–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.07.016

Dwivedi, Y. K., Ismagilova, E., Hughes, D. L., Carlson, J., Filieri, R., Jacobson, J., Jain, V.,

Karjaluoto, H., Kefi, H., Krishen, A. S., Kumar, V., Rahman, M. M., Raman, R.,

Rauschnabel, P. A., Rowley, J., Salo, J., Tran, G. A., & Wang, Y. (2021). Setting the

future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and Research

Propositions. International Journal of Information Management, 59, 102168.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102168

Evans, D., & Mckee, J. (2011). Social Media and Customer Engagement. In Social Media

Marketing: The next generation of business engagement (pp. 4–5). essay, Wiley

Technology Pub.

Kim, A. J.-Y., & Ko, E.-J. (2010). The impact of design characteristics on brand attitude and

purchase intention - focus on luxury fashion brands -. Journal of the Korean Society of

Clothing and Textiles, 34(2), 252–265. https://doi.org/10.5850/jksct.2010.34.2.252

Kindle Edition. (2020). What is Social Media Marketing and WHY IMPORTANT? In Social

Media Marketing Ultimate instructions for upgrading your Business Through social

media marketing efforts in 2020 (pp. 11–18). essay.

Li, F., Larimo, J., & Leonidou, L. C. (2020). Social media marketing strategy: Definition,

conceptualization, taxonomy, validation, and future agenda. Journal of the Academy of

Marketing Science, 49(1), 51–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-020-00733-3

Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M., & Smit, E. G. (2011). Introducing cobras. International

Journal of Advertising, 30(1), 13–46. https://doi.org/10.2501/ija-30-1-013-046

Newberry, C. (2023, July 6). 2023 social media benchmarks + how to use them in marketing.

Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-benchmarks/

Thomas, A. R. (2007). The end of mass marketing: Or, why all successful marketing is now

direct marketing. Direct Marketing: An International Journal, 1(1), 6–16.

https://doi.org/10.1108/17505930710734107
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