Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Management Research and Economic Development

DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/23/20230353

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Xiruo Fan1,a,*
1
Eleanor Roosevelt College, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, United
States
a. [email protected]
*corresponding author

Abstract: Social media marketing strategies contribute to increasing the brand awareness of
businesses. However, they have not always fully exploited the creativity and innovative
capacities of the strategy due to unawareness of the best tools to utilize in modern technology.
Notably, some organizations also fail to recognize the benefits of social networks. The
internet has exposed numerous opportunities, such as online marketing that utilizes
advertisement mechanisms like the podcast, blogs, and social media to reach their target
audiences. However, the internet allows users to interact and create communities, facilitating
the exchange and discussion of knowledge. Famous social media networks include youtube,
Facebook, and Twitter. However, the advancing social media development has contributed
to the emergence of new platforms such as Tiktok. Analysts measure their popularity based
on the level of activities the platform offers its users. As a result, modern social networks
facilitate more effective than traditional networks since they promote global interactions by
overcoming geographical barriers. Currently, only a few organizations use social networking
in various sectors, but this literature identifies numerous strategies that every organization
should utilize to promote its brand. This article intends to discuss the best social media
marketing strategies, their benefits, and challenges and provide insights about the emerging
trends and application of modern technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbots
in marketing. The first part of the review introduces the topic, while the subsequent sections
address the marketing strategies such as image appeal and content. The challenges section
addresses the problems that accompany the strategies. The emerging technology and trends
cover the modern aspects that dominate online marketing, such as chatbots, artificial
intelligence, and short videos. The discussion relies on numerous relevant literature articles
exploring the aforementioned social media marketing issues.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, chatbots, strategies, social media

1. Introduction
The modern world has seen businesses come up with several measures in order to remain relevant in
an ever increasingly competitive market. One of these measures is the use of social media marketing,
which involves tapping into the power of popular social media platforms to achieve the marketing
goals set by a business [1]. Almost every business today has some form of social media marketing
due to the huge number of people using social media platforms. It is a common occurrence to come
across advertisements as one scrolls through social media sites, with these ads being one of just the
© 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/23/20230353

many ways social media has been used for marketing [2]. The emergence of digital marketing
prompted business brands to shift from the traditional method by implementing new strategies. These
digital marketing strategies increase consumer communication and provide numerous business
opportunities. As a result, companies opted for these strategies to remain competitive in the modern
era [3]. Therefore, online marketing campaigns have influenced content marketing as a crucial tool
for digital marketing. These concerns raise the need to review numerous articles and explore social
media marketing strategies, their benefits and challenges, the use of technology in marketing, and the
emerging social media marketing trends.
1.1. Social Media Marketing Strategies
Businesses have devised several strategies to ensure that their social media marketing is at a high
level. One of the strategies used by marketers to promote their products on social media is using
celebrities to endorse these products [4]. These endorsements come through social media sites such
as Instagram, twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. These celebrities are viewed to have a high social value
hence they attract a larger number of customers to products [5]. Celebrity influencers are powerful
tools for advertisement in marketing because they can easily grab costumers’ attentions and have the
potential to reach more people than other traditional advertising methods, which can boost the brand
awareness and enhance the brand credibility [6]. Nowadays, it is common for social media accounts
that attract huge numbers of followers to be approached by businesses so that they can advertise the
business’s products to these followers. Part of these advertisements involve these celebrities going
live on their social media platforms [4]. Previous research suggests that as many as 25% of all
television commercials and 10% of advertising budgets involve celebrity endorsements [7]. And there
is a direct relationship between the use of celebrities in advertisements and improvement in company
profits because celebrities help companies create unique position and positive brand image in the
marketplace [8,9].
Another strategy used in social media advertising is corporate advertising, which aims at
enhancing the image of a business instead of just promoting its goods and services [1]. There is a rise
in advertisements that just aim at informing the public of the existence of a business, which in turn
makes the audience curious to find out what the business is all about. These strategies have made
social media marketing highly effective. Image appeals constitute the most effective social media
marketing strategy. Johansson and Hiltula assert that image appeal encompasses the aspects of
cognitive and orientation reactions to consumers' perceptions [3]. Cognitive engagement involves
problem-oriented situations, while orientation reaction involves the consumer's emotions. Using
image appeals enhances consumers' knowledge, increasing their emotional attachments. As a result,
this strategy effectively promotes valuable and expressive products for the target audience. Business
organizations incorporate image appeals into social media platforms to promote their brands. For
example, The First Media's "Blossom" garnered the highest number of views in history after posting
an advertisement image of a woman with undergarments. The post had over 280 million Facebook
views and 12 million shares [10]. The features influencing those statistics include visual appeals that
stimulate consumers' emotions. Content marketing also tops the list of effective marketing strategies.
Weerasinghe alludes to the fact that content marketing strategy involves distributing and creating
relevant, consistent, and valuable brand content to attract audiences to make profits through clear
objectives [11]. The content can appear as infographics, eBooks, videos, and blogs. A random sample
survey demonstrates that 61.4% of consumers assess content on social media compared to 38.6% on
the internet [11]. This statistic affirms the effectiveness of content marketing in impressing social
media consumers. Business brands should maintain quality content, frequency and properly
scheduled posts to enhance target reach. They can achieve this impression through activities such as
creating hashtags. For instance, GoPro attaches the hashtag #GoPro to all their highly engaging

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DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/23/20230353

content [10]. Therefore, GoPro has become the most influential camera brand due to its approach to
promoting innovative products.
1.2. Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing comes with several benefits to businesses and consumers. First, it offers an
opportunity for businesses to promote their brands and the goods and services that they offer [12]. Si
agrees with this claim by identifying the benefit of social media in eliminating middlemen and linking
companies directly with their consumers [13]. According to Arca, 2012, social media marketing
enables businesses to reach their intended traffic, generate leads, gain insights on the market and
competitors, improve public relations and human resources, save on costs, and get customer feedback
and increase brand exposure and awareness [14]. Social media marketing also can target audiences
and consumers based on users’ personal interests and feedback from their sites. Through this way,
companies can effectively reach the people who are most interested in what they have to offer and
boost their word of mouth [15]. An added advantage of social media marketing is its ability to provide
businesses with an opportunity to offer personalized products to customers hence increased customer
satisfaction [16]. Ibrahim & Ganeshbabu identify the added advantage of social media having
analytics tools to help businesses monitor the progress of advertisement campaigns and identify
strategies to make these campaigns even better [2]. Dwivedi et al. identify benefits of social media in
the healthcare and wellbeing industry such as direct interaction between healthcare providers and
their clients, and improved patient outcomes. Social media marketing also contributes to
improvement in the education sector, as well as rapid growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
[17]. These benefits explain the increased interest in social media marketing.
Behera and Balaji note that social media marketing assists marketing managers in assessing brand
intelligence [18]. Coordination boasts the benefits of conducting brand intelligence on social media.
As a result, business brands can find extensive traffic generated on social networks. Previously,
people believed that social media only impressed the younger generation. However, the emerging
online advertisement has shifted the notion to other groups, such as employees. This observation
aligns with the data from Weerasinghe, which shows that 28.6% of employees contributed more to
the highest content viewers than 15.7% of students. According to the statistics, social media
marketing can equip managers with essential information such as customer feedback, loyalty
management, customer segmentation, and product development [11]. Social media marketing also
increases brand awareness for business organizations. Behera and Balaji affirm that social media
marketing creates the most effective technique for syndicating content that increases business reach.
The strategies increase brand recognition due to their high level of engagement with consumers.
Marketing managers can increase awareness by recruiting employees, sponsors, and business partners
to conduct "like" and "share" campaigns. Associating with people enables them to interact with the
content, increasing brand awareness and developing a reputable business image. For instance, the
constant sharing of a brand's posts increases consumer reach since the process forms a chain that
attracts the attention of both potential and present consumers. Research shows that 91% of marketers
believe social media marketing exposes their products significantly [18]. These observations confirm
the effectiveness of social media marketing.
1.3. Challenges
Despite these benefits, social media marketing has resulted in several difficulties. To begin with, there
is the elimination of interpersonal forms of communication as they are replaced by the use of
computers. Businesses, therefore, cannot get direct information from customers regarding their
products. The absence of interpersonal interaction between businesses and customers makes it

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DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/23/20230353

difficult for businesses to understand specific needs of customers, which increases the risk of influx
of products that are not in high demand [19]. According to Di Domenico et al., there is the added
challenge of misinformation on social media [20]. Social media provides mischievous people with an
opportunity to spread fake information regarding a company’s products which may ruin a company’s
brand. The use of celebrities to promote products might result in over promotion of these products
hence misleading consumers as to what the best products and features actually are [4]. It is essential
for businesses to ensure they are careful when marketing through social media marketing in order to
overcome these challenges and maintain the good brand of the business.
Social media marketing also exposes business brands to significant challenges. Behera and Balaji
argue that data mining poses a great threat for social media marketing, which encompasses consumer
data collection. However, the majority of consumers are unwilling to disclose their private data. Their
privacy issues pose a significant challenge to accessing clients' private data. Data mining companies
can always use social media marketing to collect consumer information from applications and posts.
For instance, Colligent collects similar information and sells the statistics to record label companies
after mining. Disney's Records advertised the Jonas Brothers album to Latin America through data
gained from Colligent. Social media marketing also operates within laws that govern the frequency
of posts and content. As such, businesses should adhere to numerous media laws to evade account
termination [18]. However, marketing managers can overcome these challenges through various
measures. For instance, they should avoid content that directly prompts consumers to share their
details. They should also post content that adheres to different platforms' guidelines that prohibit
activities such as nudity.
2. Emerging Technologies
Business brands have also incorporated chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) into their marketing
strategies. Sadiku et al. elaborate that businesses apply AI-powered chatbots to reply to customers
quickly. The tools also assist businesses in giving automated responses through user-interactive AI
chatbots. These tools offer personalized consumer support, improving the customer experience at
higher levels. The AI also promotes marketing through AI-powered ads, enabling marketers to curate
content, identify customers, and advertise better [21]. These observations predict an excellent future
use of AI and AI chatbots in social media marketing. The incorporation of AI and AI chatbots also
accompanies numerous challenges. Sadiku et al. emphasize that these applications encompass privacy
risks that expose sensitive information, such as tax, financial, and health records, to cyber criminals.
These scenarios will interfere with the privacy of consumers. Therefore, business brands should
differentiate between intuitive and intrusive promotions to protect consumers from the risk associated
with AI-powered marketing strategies. Sadiku et al. also note that the market experiences inadequate
AI professionals to integrate the tool with social media marketing [21]. These challenges arise due to
insufficiently experienced and highly qualified AI professionals. Therefore, businesses should equip
their technology experts with modern AI skills by sponsoring their training.
The act of marketing using social media has undergone several stages, especially during the 21st
century. Husain et al. identify the exponential growth that social media has witnessed in the new
millennium [22]. This claim is in line with Leeflang et al., who identify the increased usage of the
internet in the 21st century which has led to rapid rise in digital marketing [23]. It is now common
for a large portion of the population to have access to smartphones and computers which enable them
to view many business products online [12]. Companies are now spending more than ever on social
media advertisements as more people are online. Nyagadza states that over 77% of the North
American and European population is frequently online [24]. This figure stands at 61% in Oceania
and Australasia. African countries, which make up a large portion of the least developed countries
globally, have also witnessed rapid rise in the use of social media, with businesses now aiming to tap

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into this market [23]. The increased use of social media has attracted the interest of scholars with
increased number of journals being published to discuss the use of social media in marketing [25].
These journals provide adequate information on the best ways to market products using social media
hence guiding businesses effectively. These trends are expected to evolve more rapidly as time
progresses with social media marketing expected to be more rampant. The modern trends in social
media marketing also include the use of short videos and social commerce. A study indicates that
Tiktok dominates the short video strategy, attracting 67.6% of a sample size daily [26]. The data
suggest that most social media users prefer Tiktok due to its bite-sized, entertaining, and engaging
content. Therefore, business brands utilize these advantages to create short contents that align with
their goals. Social media commerce also tops the list of trends. The post-COVID-19 period has
influenced social commerce, where consumers prefer to order products from different online brands.
A study predicts a 2024 projection by suggesting that mobile commerce will generate about $620.97
billion [27]. The statistics predict that business brands should keep pace with emerging marketing
trends to increase the efficacy of their target reach.
3. Conclusion
Social media marketing is a trend that is here to stay. It is therefore essential for businesses to adapt
to this trend so that they can compete adequately in order to achieve their goals. Strategies
implemented in this trend include the use of celebrity endorsements and corporate advertisements.
These strategies have resulted in benefits such as promotion of business brands, goods and services,
provision of personalized goods to customers, customer satisfaction and improvement of several
sectors of the economy. Despite the benefits, there are challenges such as misinformation and
elimination of interpersonal communication. The trends in social media marketing suggest that there
will be rapid increase in this form of marketing in the near future. Businesses therefore need to be
fully equipped to handle the trend.
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