Digital Marketing Through Social Media Best Practices: A Case Study of HEIs in the GCC Region

1. Introduction And Background Of The Study

The shift from traditional marketing to digital marketing has unleashed unprecedented opportunities to the marketers all over the world (Langan et al., 2019; Saleem et al., 2022). It has resulted in exploring new avenues and interesting possibilities which were unheard in the past, leading to greater customization and customer satisfaction (Khan et al., 2020; Khan et al.,2021). The use of social media in particular, has grown exponentially and organizations are effectively influencing their intended audiences on a regular basis by creating relevant and useful online content (Langan et al., 2019; Hollebeek & Macky,2019). Digital marketing, which was once considered the domain of business organizations only, is gradually shifting to various kinds of organizations functioning in the society and educational institutions are no exception. It is now very common for not-for-profit organizations to have a strong online presence and effective social media presence.

Online courses offered by education Institutions along with the availability of digital textbooks provide concrete examples that educational institutions all over the world are incorporating the digital media tools effectively (Langan et al., 2019; Khan & Magd,2021; Magd & Khan,2022b) . Covid-19 in particular, created an environment where the use of digital technology in educational institutions grew at a phenomenal rate (Bocar et al., 2022; Magd & Khan,2022a). The current study aims at finding out the best practices followed by the top higher education institutions in GCC region, focusing on how they are tapping the vast potential of their online presence, through social media best practices (Magd et al.,2022; Saleem et al., 2022).