Paper Sample - Navigating Social Media Marketing: Strategies, Challenges, and Insights from Secondary Data

Introduction

Marketing with commercials or even radio advertising is becoming less effective. People are fast-forwarding through commercials on their DVRs. They are also using streaming apps like Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc. On these services, people can pay for their music to be uninterrupted or no commercials.

Social media has become more and more popular in recent years. In the last ten years, social media ad spending for businesses has increased from around 3.5% to 11.9% CITATION Luk20 \l 1033 (Brynley-Jones, 2020). Nowadays, companies and people use social media for marketing themselves, their products, and their services. This creates a problem for some businesses that have not adjusted their marketing plans. They may not get as much business as they once did in the pre-social media era.

Every company needs to know how to use social media platforms properly to help their business grow. Social media platforms could be used to develop a business. Still, suppose they don't use the platforms properly. They could also destroy the company, which explains why many companies have a separate department that concentrates on social media platforms.

Research Objectives

Does spending 12% of a marketing budget get a high enough return on investment for most companies? Should companies allocate more funds to their social media budget? Are social media ads effective enough to influence the buying behavior of consumers? Research objectives will take the above questions into consideration. The questions will allow a company to decide if social media influences buying behavior and if they should increase, decrease, or eliminate their social media marketing budgets.

Research Design

Different research designs will be used to reach a decision.

Exploratory research will help the group learn about social media advertising, use, and effectiveness. We will also learn more about any problems or issues companies face with social media spending. This information will mostly be collected via the Internet.

Descriptive research will also be used to gather information from consumers on different buying behaviors and habits. This research will mostly be gathered through surveys and interviews.

Every business should conduct proper marketing research to monitor its sales capacity and improvements. Notably, some successful organizations use secondary sources of data to perform this research. However, most companies find it challenging to identify a type of secondary data to deal with. Some of these sources include internal data of the organization's marketing records, governmental analysis on demography, such as census, and professional journals. Below is the discussion about types of secondary data sources for organizations during marketing research.

A company's internal records about marketing history may provide important information and direction to the marketing researchers. For instance, the compiled information in a database plays an essential role in ensuring data accuracy and durability CITATION Cas01 \l 1033 (Castleberry, 2001). Besides, social media platforms such as Facebook may also keep records concerning the business's historical success to be considered during the research.

Subsequently, the government and other NGOs may record valuable records concerning business that may assist during marketing research. To illustrate, the US Census Bureau provided information about demographic factors influencing businesses and various regions' economic growth CITATION Cas01 \l 1033 (Castleberry, 2001). Marketing researchers could use this information to improve their sales capacity and solve organizational problems.

Consequently, various industries and professional organizations publish journals concerning marketing. This information may spread efficiently through social media platforms, websites, and magazines CITATION Cas01 \l 1033 (Castleberry, 2001). Additionally, some learning institutions include such journals in their syllabus to enable more marketers to access them easily.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the discussion about secondary sources for marketing research indicated significant sources for study—for example, professional journals, internal records within a company, and government analysis. The information in these sources may implement better procedures researchers may use to improve marketing capacity. Therefore, marketing researchers are recommended to consider these types of sources.

For this research, we could access the data as primary data or secondary data since we are not researching one company in particular. We are doing research about a topic that could benefit multiple companies. It is essential to ensure that we collect secondary data from reputable sources, so we have the appropriate data to find the proper answer to our research.

Secondary data is easy to obtain, but we need to make sure that it is updated and current with the market. The thing about collecting secondary data is that the information needs to be carefully inspected to ensure that it is up to date and that it comes from a source that properly collects data.

Bibliography

Brynley-Jones, L. (2020, September 10). How Much Should Brands Spend on Social Media? Retrieved October 8, 2020, from https://ostmarketing.com/how-much-should-brands-spend-on-social-media/

Castleberry, S. (2001). Secondary Data in Marketing Research: A Project That Melds Web and Off-Web Sources. Journal of Marketing Education, 23(3). Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475301233005

Clement, J. (2020, July 15). Number of social network users worldwide from 2017 to 2025 (in billions). Retrieved October 8, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/#:~:text=Social%20media%20usage%20is%20one,almost%204.41%20billion%20in%202025.&text=Social%20network%20penetration%20is%20constantly,2020%20stood%20at%2049%20percent.