Has Social Media’s ability to reach a wider audience transformed Marketing and Advertising for Businesses today? Lucy Coates
Abstract This project discusses whether social media’s ability to reach a wider audience has transformed marketing and advertising for businesses today. The world is undoubtedly turning into a very digital environment, and businesses are becoming increasingly aware of this. In order to continue to communicate with consumers successfully, organisations are realising that they must have a presence online in order to promote their products or services. This project portrays that the ability social media has in reaching large numbers of people has, in fact, transformed marketing and advertising for companies today – of which is presented through six main sections using websites, books and articles in order to portray my research and findings.
Introduction The fundamental aim of this Extended Project Qualification is to explore the ways in which Social Media has transformed marketing and advertising for businesses today, and how its ability to reach a wider audience can impact this also. I chose this particular topic as it is a subject I take great interest in, and is also not included in detail within my A Level Business course – therefore I felt enthusiastic about the opportunity of doing more research. I will answer my question through six main sections, which will explore a variety of different subject areas that relate to social media marketing and its impacts. It cannot be denied that social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates; sites to meet new people and connect old friends. It is apparent that there is a social networking site to meet the needs of virtually every special interest out there (webdesignerdepot.com:2009). If we take the words "social media" at their basic level, it is media that allows people to connect with each other (The Telegraph: 2017). At a more advanced level, however, it can be described as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (Oxford Dictionary: 2017). Marketing is a critical business activity which links an organisation to its customers. Many people think of marketing as just selling and advertising, however more recently it has become apparent that marketing revolves around satisfying customer needs (P Kotler: 2002). Effective marketing enables a firm to identify and anticipate customers’ needs and wants, and provide a product or service that satisfies consumers (I Swift: 2000). The growth of social media has created a need for businesses to evolve with consumer demands, meaning marketing and advertising strategies have had to change. This has therefore resulted in the invention of 'Social Media Marketing' – described by T Tuten (2014) as the utilization of social media technologies, channels and software to create, communicate, deliver and exchange offerings that have value for a firm’s stakeholders.
A Background to Social Media and Marketing. The History of Social Media Being connected to the world around us has never been so easy and accessible than it is today. But it did not start this way. The Internet has been hailed as the technology behind a new model for doing