While most businesses are now aware of the importance of focusing their marketing efforts on online advertising, many still struggle to effectively target their audience and convert online users to loyal customers. Nowadays, one of the main challenges faced by businesses is achieving sustainable growth and making profit in the long run while meeting the constantly changing demands of customers. Taking into consideration the psychology of consumer behaviour, the marketing strategies implemented, and the external factors that influence individuals, a comprehensive understanding of all those factors combined is necessary to plan and execute well-defined strategies for marketing professionals to follow. For that reason, a conceptual framework was designed to display all elements that contribute to increasing sales and achieving sustainable business growth by utilizing social media and technology strategically. Those factors were grouped into four main themes that cover effective marketing strategies, good customer relationships, personalization, and data collection.
TopGeneral Overview
With 4-5 billion people viewing others’ content on their phones most of the day, we can expect to see the extent to which their behaviour, thoughts and actions are influenced by social media. Online reviews and ratings, brand products and services, e-commerce stores and others are all accessible to the public. When it comes to regular users, a new opportunity of connecting with others and exchanging information on any topic has been created. Businesses, on the other hand, benefit from collecting data and analysing algorithms to improve their presence, selling their products, and engaging more efficiently with their customers and building long-lasting relationships. Many themes such as customer satisfaction, value creation, customer relationships, brand awareness and acquiring new customers are taking a new shape in the presence of social media (Dwivedi et al., 2021). So, measuring those criteria is important to get a clearer understanding on how social media functions and ways to benefit from it. For instance, measuring the growth of followers on the long term, the increase in brand mentions within a specific timeframe, and the change in engagement rate on different content types are some of many metrics used by marketing professionals (Infante & Mardikaningsih, 2022). With so much information available on it, social media has become a very “useful” tool for both parties involved in the buying and selling of products, which has made it a key factor that determines businesses’ overall performance (Chatterjee et al., 2021).
Ideally, from a business perspective, businesses plan to leverage data collected from social media to understand and accordingly modify the purchase behaviour of consumers – now and in the future. Keeping in mind that a main driving force that shapes a consumer’s opinion is the external environment: including social pressures and technological advancements, businesses aim to be one of the influencing factors triggering favourable behaviour from customers. As Mark Twain says: “The average man is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbour's opinion is and slavishly adopt it.” For that purpose and to achieve sustainable growth, businesses must take advantage of various media channels to build their brands, improve consumer knowledge about their products, improve their practices, and invest in media literacy programs to encourage informed purchases (Chatterjee et al., 2021; Cai, 2020). Not only that, they should also do this continuously, in a studied and well-planned manner to ensure consistency, efficiency, and long-term viability. By collecting current data on demographics, search history, and brand interests/dislikes on a large audience, they can expect patterns of purchase in the future and plan on how to influence accordingly.
Based on the theory of Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the more relevant a message is to a potential customer receiving it, the more likely they are to exert thoughtful effort in considering it. Therefore, it is important that businesses use the data available to meet those expectations by tailoring advertisements to fit their personal preferences. By doing so, they create a sense of familiarity and relevance with the customer which can possibly lead to a stronger bond that lasts longer. In media analytics terms, the more personalized the messages are, the higher the click-through rates, profile visits, followers, and online total purchases. Considering numbers were not promising from the start, having a marketing strategy that is customer-centric in place will still hold more value as it guides professionals and helps them point out necessary modifications (Constantinescu et al., 2019). Regularly reflecting on social media processes is very important on the long-term to guarantee satisfied customers, profit generation, and business continuity in the market. With no doubt, this is made easier with the advent of technological advancements, the ease of access to resources and skilled personnel, and the sharing of knowledge. However, companies’ understanding of the importance of social media is still missing the know-how to effectively leveraging it to achieve sustainable business models (Constantinescu et al., 2019).