Masaryk University Faculty of Economics and Administration

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Masaryk University

Faculty of Economics and Administration Field of study: Business Management (Eng.)

Social Media Marketing Master’s Thesis

Supervisor: Author:

Ing. Dušan Mladenović Ishtiaq Ahmad DANISH

Brno, 2019

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Name and surname of the author: Ishtiaq Ahmad Danish Master‟s thesis title: Social Media Marketing

Department: Department of Corporate Economy

Master‟s thesis supervisor: Ing. Dušan Mladenović

Master‟s thesis date: 2019

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Abstract

The goal of the submitted thesis: “Social Media Marketing” is to analyse how the social media marketing strategies focused specifically on the Pinterest platform works for a real e-commerce website. The first part is concentrated on reviewing the existing literature of social media for marketing strategies. The second part of the thesis focuses on the practical part of the social media marketing, analysing the metrics and results of real social media campaigns on Pinterest and their impact on a real e-commerce business.

Keywords

Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Drop shipping, E-commerce,

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Declaration

I certify that I have written the master‟s Thesis Social Media Marketing by myself under the supervision of Ing. Dušan Mladenovićand I have listed all the literary and other specialist sources in accordance with legal regulations, Masaryk University internal regulations, and the internal procedural deeds of Masaryk University and the Faculty of Economics and Administration.“

Brno,

Author’s signature

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Acknowledgement

I hereby would like to offer sincere thanks to my supervisor , Ing. Dušan Mladenović, for his supervision and suggestions on how to make the thesis better. I want to thank my family for their support. I would also like to thank my classmates for agreeing to read drafts of the document and offering comments and suggestions.

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INTRODUCTION

In the old days, advertising was done by conventional, non-targeted, and traditional ways through magazines, television, radio, and direct email. These methods were not very effective as it was hard to target specific buyers (Scott, 2010).

The advent of the internet and social media has changed the conventional marketing for good. Social media has changed the strategies and tools for communicating with customers. It has become one of the essential factors in influencing consumer behavior. Companies have always fought for seeking consumer attention, and the advent of social media has provided a new ground for it. The high competition has forced both companies and marketers to explore new ways to reach their customers leading to the development of social media marketing. Social media has become an integral part of our lives, and it has a significant factor in influencing different aspects of our behaviors regarding purchases, opinions, evaluation, etc. Also, the ease and low cost of internet marketing, as compared to the conventional ones, has enabled businesses of all kinds to reach their target audiences more efficiently.

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. have changed the course of internet marketing. The number of active monthly users on just Pinterest is over 250 million (Pinterest, 2018). This number tells us how useful Pinterest and other social media platforms can be for companies to promote their brand, products, and services. Social media also gives its users the freedom and ability to review products and services that they use. This thing helps in influencing other potential customers and also helps the company in getting useful feedback about their product or service. It ultimately leads to improvement of products/services and better customer experience.

The objective of the Thesis

The main objective of the thesis is to obtain knowledge and find best practices for doing social media marketing focusing mainly on Pinterest. The issues concerning the targeted audience, how to use the right tools, keyword selection, ad strategies and tactics, etc. are also discussed. The theoretical part consists of literature review and detailed information about Social media marketing. The second part will mostly deal with the practical application of the knowledge and the experience of the author.

Pinterest has been selected as the social media marketing platform for the thesis.

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One of the major reasons for selecting Pinterest is its interesting and novice concept (Kohler, 2019). While there is a large amount of writing about Pinterest in the popular trade and marketing press, there has been little scholarly work so far. So, there is a need for more scholarly work and research on Pinterest, as it is one of the fastest growing social media with a lot of potential (Pew Research Center, 2012). This work will help marketers in planning and implementing Pinterest marketing campaigns successfully. We will discuss Pinterest in more detail in the first section of our thesis.

The marketing plan consists of Pinterest advertising campaigns for an e- commerce website. The idea is to use the knowledge and best practices for Pinterest marketing and Pinterest ads and find out how they can be profitable for an e- commerce website. Another important part of the study is the niche of the website.

The niche of the e-commerce website used for the study is women clothing and accessories. With this niche website we got a more precise understanding of the Pinterest audience as 81 percent of the users on Pinterest are women (Pinterest, 2018). The responses of customers were monitored closely depending upon the type of ads, keywords used, demography and the audience selected. This information collected was then used to find the best practices for making maximum profit and get a higher return on investment, that was the main goal of the website.

Methodology

Both primary and secondary data has been used in this thesis. The main difference between a primary and secondary data is how, where and when it was collected. Secondary data is the data that already exists and can be used in the investigation process to get more knowledge about the study. The primary data is collected by the person doing the investigation. This data is used for answering any research questions and to resolve any problems related to the study.

The first part of our thesis is comprised of data collected through secondary sources including scientific articles, research papers, books, journals and the Pinterest website.

The second part of the thesis comprises of both primary and secondary data.

Primary data is collected from the ad campaigns, performance of the website, customer base, etc. The primary data includes number of saves, clicks, account follows, page views, conversion rate, etc. These data will be collected directly from the e-commerce website used for this study. These data are acquired by using

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different target audience that were separated according the demographics, interests, etc.

The website gonchas.com is an e-commerce website build on WordPress and uses the “WooCommerce” plugin that allows to sell merchandise online. The main idea of the website is to outsource less-expensive, good quality and viral items from Chinese site Aliexpress.com and sell it on gonchas.com for a profit. The supply chain management method used is known as Drop shipping. In this method the distributor ships individual orders directly to the customer on the behalf of the online shop (Tarn et al., 2003). Detailed information about drop shipping will be provided in the last part of the Literature review.

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1. SOCIAL MEDIA:

The aim of this chapter is to define social media and the role of different social media platforms. The first part deals with defining the Web 2.0, social media and a brief overview of how consumers adopt to new technologies and how different social media platforms emerge. In the second part different types of social media, also referred as social networking sites – SNS (Alloway & Alloway, 2012) will be introduced.

1.1 Web 2.0 and social media:

There are multiple ways to define media because of their complex nature and structure (Grossberg L., 1998). Media has been described as broadcasting, cinema, encompassing press and technology (Scannell P., 2002). Media can provide the target audiences with required information, different views, monitor and critique those wielding power in a society, which creates the opportunity for publicity (Grossberg L., 1998). It also makes profit for its owners and meet the demands of its stakeholders such as marketers (Scannell P., 2002).

The origin of the term “Web 2.0” goes to „O‟Reilly Media Web 2.0‟ conference of 2004, during this conference Tim O‟Reilly described the Web 2.0 phenomenon as business embracing the Web as a platform and using its strengths for global audience (John R. Graham, 2005). Tim O„Reilly (2007), states that a website need to fulfill 3 conditions in order to be seen as a part of web 2.0.

- The user shall be able contribute to the sites content by her/himself.

- The user shall have control over her/his information.

- The websites design shall be interactive and useful.

Constantinides and Fountain (2008) took a different point of view and defined Web 2.0 as: “a collection of open-source, interactive and user-controlled online applications expanding the experiences, knowledge and market power of the users as participants in business and social processes. Web 2.0 applications support the creation of informal users’ networks, facilitating the ow of ideas and knowledge by allowing efficient generation, dissemination, sharing and editing of the informational content.”

Web 2.0 gives businesses new opportunities to reach and stay in touch with their consumers, learning their needs and opinions and also interacting with them

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directly in a personalized way. According to another definition Web 2.0 is a platform whereby content and application are no longer created by individual users, rather continuously modified by all the users in a participatory and collaborative fashion (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Some of the most important technical functionalities like Adobe Flash, RSS and AJAX allowed this change to happen. So, it can easily be said that Web 2.0 is all about cooperation. Also, to some extent, Web 2.0 technologies are the platforms on which the social media and user-generated content have developed into a mass- market phenomenon (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

The form of media that involves interactive participation is known as Social media (Manning J. 2014). According to another definition, “websites and applications used for social networking are known as social media” (Oxford Dictionaries 2012).

Social media comprises of social networks, as well as content-oriented networks (Euromonitor International 2010). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as, ‟a group of Internet-based applications that are built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content‟. The development of media has been divided into two separate ages, the broadcast age, and the interactive age. Media was almost exclusively centralized in the broadcast age. During this age, a single entity, e.g., a newspaper or television station, or a movie production studio would distribute a message to the masses. The feedback process was often indirect, slow, and impersonal. Mediated interaction between people usually took place on a much smaller level, often through personal letters, telephone calls, etc. These definitions explore two central concepts in the present study: the possibility to participate and the ability to share user-generated content, UGC, and these are considered the essential characteristics of social media (Miel and Faris, 2008).

„Web 2.0‟ and „social media‟ are closely related and interdependent. As a consequence, they are often used imprecisely and interchangeably however they are still different because of their different meanings and different strategic implications (Berthon, 2012). An overview of Web 2.0, social media and consumers can be seen in the following figure. It uses two delineating dimensions of focus. The figure shows that Web 2.0 can be thought of as a technical infrastructure that enables the social phenomenon of collective media and facilitates user-generated content.

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Figure 1: Web 2.0, Social media and Creative consumers

Source: (Berthon, 2012)

The advent of digital and mobile technologies has revolutionized the way people interact. The interaction among individuals has become a lot easier than before. This revolution in the media led to the birth of a new media age, where interactivity was placed at the center of all media functions. Now a single individual could speak to many and get instant feedback. Before the advent of interactive media, citizens and consumers did not had a voice, and now they could share their opinions with many. All types of social media involve some digital platform that can either be mobile or stationary. They all have two common characteristics that define them. Firstly, every kind of social media allows some form of participation for its users. Although some social media sites like Facebook allow passive viewing of posts from other users but the person must have a profile created to be able to view posts from other people. The second important characteristic of social media is its participatory nature; it involves interaction. The interaction can vary depending on the person you interact with. It can be established friends, family, acquaintances, or new people who share common interests or common social circle (Manning, J. 2014).

Social media is comparatively inexpensive and accessible to make any individual publish or access information compared to traditional industrial media, which generally require a lot of effort both in time and cost. This has made it possible for a global audience to be able to share and publish information and share opinions.

Information can be published directly without the need for printing it, which makes it a

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swift communication tool. Social media and social networks were actively used under the Arab revolts in 2011 to communicate fast and spread updates efficiently to a large mass of people (Kirkpatrick, 2011).

1.2 Social-networking sites:

The rise of social media gave birth to social networking sites (Tuten &

Solomon, 2014). The online communities that allow people to socialize and interact with each other are known as social-networking sites (Dennis, 2010). These sites allow users to connect with other users by creating personal-information profiles, inviting friends and family to gain access to those profiles, sending messages and comments, etc. (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The personal profiles can include various type of information about the users. It includes their names, date of birth, photos, videos, audio files and blogs. In short, social networks emerge from the ability of users to represent themselves and their interests and to network with other like- minded users. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, VK, and Myspace are few of the best-known social networking sites. Usage of social media networks produces outcomes such as community building, content sharing and collaboration enhancement (Spencer S., 2014).

Due to their popularity, the social-networking sites have made a significant impact on modes of social communication (Hollenbeck, 2012). The number of people using social networking sites is increasing very rapidly and at the time of writing this research more than 2.62 billion people use social-networking sites (Statistica, 2019).

Several researchers e.g. Kaplan suggests that these social-networking sites have changed the social lives of many individuals, especially the younger generation of internet users (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Accepting this huge potential, many companies are using these networking sites to support their brands and increase their customer base (Muniz, 2007).

Facebook – Facebook is the largest social-networking site. It has over 2.32 billion monthly active users worldwide (Statista, 2019). It was initially created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 for the purpose of staying in touch with his fellow students at Harvard University. Facebook is a free social-networking site that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and videos, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues (Spencer S., 2014). The average Facebook user spends almost one hour per day and the potential of having successful

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marketing campaign is immense. Facebook has developed an advertising platform that enables very accurate targeting. Depending on the personal information of the user, marketers can choose which users that will see the ad on Facebook. It can be divided by gender, geographic area, age, interests, education, birthday, workplace, relationship status, language and connections (i.e. to specific pages and groups).

From a marketing perspective, Facebook offers a wide range of benefits for marketers. Few of the most prominent benefits includes; Massive exposure on global scale, Low marketing costs, sophisticated targeting tools, etc. (Spencer S., 2014).

Twitter – Twitter is a microblogging social networking site (short messages) which encourages communication between users and their followers (Spencer S., 2014).

Twitter only allows users to “tweet” messages of 140 characters or less to their contacts. The contact is known as followers. It is a unique way of communication that allows users to share ideas, news, and hyperlinks to reach a wider audience. It also helps professionals to broadcast a link to their blogs and send their tweets automatically to their other social media applications (Fischer, 2011). In terms of marketing and business, Twitter is one of the biggest marketing phenomena of the online business world. As a marketing platform, it offers many benefits to a business Few of the core benefits of marketing on twitter are: increased customer satisfaction with better customer service, more effective communication with customers, increased traffic to the company website, ability to follow trends and watch competitors closely, etc. (Fischer, 2011).

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is an employment and professional networking site that allows its users to build their business and professional contacts into an online network. At the time of writing this research, over 485 million registered users are on LinkedIn to exchange information, maintain contacts and to share ideas (LinkedIn.com). LinkedIn is often used for different purposes than a social networking site, if we see it from a consumer‟s perspective (Wagner, 2014). People use it to build their professional networks, search for jobs and other information related to their career. For brands and marketers, it‟s a place to advertise jobs, events and white papers. In terms of marketing, LinkedIn is a powerful platform to help any business in making quality connections. Some of the benefits of LinkedIn as a marketing tool are: Lead generation, Networking with high notch professionals, Increased exposure, Filtered results of professionals, etc. (Wagner, 2014).

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Pinterest – Pinterest is one of the most popular social-networking sites, especially among women. It has been described as “digital crack for women” (Dvorak, 2012);

(Phillips, 2014). It is one of the fastest growing websites in history (Pew Research Center, 2012). Within a few years of its launch it was able to get over 11 million users. Also, the average visits to Pinterest lasts approximately 97.8 minutes, that allowed Pinterest to be ranked higher than most of the other social networking sites in terms of user engagement (Statistica, 2014). Due to this high engagement rate and rapid growth, it attracted many users and brands. Pinterest is a marketing force to be reckoned with, evolving on a steady basis to help brands deliver more engaging content and reach the right customers (Weinroth, 2015). Few of the most important benefits, Pinterest marketing offers, are: Increased awareness, high website traffic, high user engagement, lead generation, etc.

Instagram – Instagram is a social networking site used for photo sharing from mobile devices (Scott, 2013). There were approximately more than 77.6 million active Instagram users in the United States in 2015. This number is projected to cross 111 million in 2019. It is most popular among teens and young millennials. Globally speaking, 41 percent of the users are 24 years or younger. Because of the visual nature of Instagram, it is a very valuable social media marketing tool. 98 percent of fashion brands had an Instagram profile as of March 2016 (Statista, 2019). All these numbers show that Instagram is a great tool for marketing, and it offers a wide range of benefits to companies, in terms of marketing. Some of these benefits include:

better targeting of audience, as Instagram also uses the data from Facebook, Instagram ads are non-intrusive and less likely to annoy the targeted audience, Instagram has a higher engagement rate than most of the other social media platform, etc. (Safko, 2012)

The number of social media users has shown a rapid growth in the last few years and is projected to increase steadily. There are 3.175 billion active internet users in the world, out of which, 2.206 billion are active social media users (Statista, 2019). In 2017, 71% of the total internet users were social network users and this percentage is projected to increase. The most popular activity among internet users is social networking and it has a high user engagement rate. With social media penetration of over 66%, North America ranks first among regions where social media is most popular (Statista, 2019). More than 81% of US population had a social

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Figure 2: Number of social media users from 2010 to 2021

Source: (Statista, 2019)

Another important thing to consider, while discussing social networking sites, are the platforms on which these social networking sites are used. Mobile and smartphones have become the most popular devices for using social networking sites. The most popular purpose of smartphone app usage other than gaming is using social media to connect with other people (Jeff, 2014). A report from comScore shows that both Facebook and Twitter users spend more time using those networks on mobile devices than they do on traditional computers or laptops, also, it was noted that the apps drive the majority of engagement on mobile devices- 4 out of every 5 minutes consuming media on mobile devices are via apps (Comscore, Inc. , 2012).

An average Facebook mobile user spends more than 7 hours per month while the 25.6 million twitter mobile users had an average engagement of nearly 2 hours per month, in comparison the people visiting twitter on their computers spent just 20.4 minutes (Forbes, 2019). As seen in the below figure, the number of mobile phone users worldwide is steadily increasing and is projected to reach 4.78 billion by 2020.

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Figure 3: Number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020 (in billions)

Source: (Statista, 2019)

1.3 Pinterest:

The rise of visual content sharing sites has brought many changes in the social-media landscape (Pew Research Center, 2012). The importance of visual content sharing in social media can be realized from the explosive growth of the latest visual-content sharing sites such as Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat – especially in an industry like fashion where the main focus in on aesthetics and visual representations (Workman, 2007). In the current landscape of social-media, many fashion brands are experimenting with the power of visual content, using images and videos to build brand awareness and engaging consumers (Wasserman T, 2012).

Pinterest has some unique terms that needs to be defined for a full understanding of the platform and its working. The most common and important terms used are: Pin, Re-pin, and Board. The Pin is the basic unit of Pinterest. It consists of an image or video with some information about the source (either uploaded or taken from a website) and an indication who saved it. The act of saving a „Pin‟ is called Pinning. Pinning can be done by clicking the “+” button on the top right menu bar of Pinterest account. Clicking the “+” button will give you options for adding a pin from a website, uploading a pin or creating a new board. Pinning can also be done directly from a website by using the “Pin it” (or bookmarklet) button. The

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“Pin it" button can be installed on a browser‟s bookmarks or favorites bar. The term

“Re-pin” is very easy to understand once you grasp what a pin is. Repining is done by clicking the save button that appears when hovering over a pin. For organizing pins, a user can make “Boards” in their account. Boards are defined by a title and a category. A user can have either a public or a secret board. A public board allows any user on Pinterest to access the pins inside it while a secret board is visible only to the creator. Boards are by default public to all users on Pinterest. Secret boards can be made public at any time; however, public boards cannot be changed to secret boards once they have been made visible. There is also the option to make collaborative boards. This can be done by inviting other users to contribute to a board from the edit board menu (Wishpond, 2019).

As a part of this visual content sharing trend, Pinterest is growing faster than any other website reaching 100 million users in September 2015 (Pew Research Center, 2012). Pinterest is basically a bookmarking site that was launched in 2009, allowing users to „pin‟ sites and content and „repin‟ it to their boards (Pinterest.com, 2019). or Users can either upload content from their personal computer or other devices or save something directly from a website. Women make the majority of the site with more than 81 percent registered female users (Omnicoreagency, 2019). For marketers, Pinterest can be a destination for users to discover and evaluate different brands.

Pinterest can be defined as “a social networking site where any web image or personal digital image can be posted („pinned‟) to a digital scrapbook, where it can then be viewed by the public” (Phillips, 2014). During the initial phase of its launch, Pinterest was invitation-only, and it became the fastest site in history to reach high user engagement with 10 million unique monthly visitors (Pinterest - Statistics &

Facts, 2019). It has since become the third most visited social network after Facebook and Twitter. Within a few years of its launch, it became the third most visited social network with approximately 53 million users. Pinterest is ranked higher than most of other social network sites in terms of user engagement (Pinterest - Statistics & Facts, 2019). The average time a visitor spends per month on Pinterest is approximately 97.8 minutes (Pinterest - Statistics & Facts, 2019). Pinterest is most popular among women who make 81 percent of the total users (Omnicoreagency, 2019). These figures highlight the intense engagement likely to be experienced by

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female users. Also, the highest share of Pinterest users was observed to be between 18 to 34 years (Pinterest - Statistics & Facts, 2019).

Pinterest is primarily a visual content sharing platform unlike most of the other social media networks where people typically share text-based content. Pinterest views itself as a virtual pin board where people can share visual things of interest like photos, bookmark images, comment on photos and generate conversations around a visual centerpiece (Jacques A, 2012). “Repining” is the action taken to repost some image you like on Pinterest, it is compared to the action of someone re-tweeting on Twitter or sharing a post on Facebook. A lot of brand advertisers, online retailers, bloggers and website owners have embraced Pinterest because the images or content posted on Pinterest tend to have a longer shelf-life. This means that the products or the posts shared on Pinterest steer consumers to the product or website for a longer time than any other social media. Pictures pinned on Pinterest stays there driving traffic to the website until it is removed by the owner (Phillips, 2014).

Pinterest can be called the leader in the area of social and E-commerce due to its high user engagement and high conversion rates (Phillips, 2014). Some of the famous topics on Pinterest are Fashion, Home, Garden and do-it-yourself segment (DIY).

1.4 Pinterest for business

Pinterest offers a special type of account for businesses and companies.

These accounts are known as Pinterest business account. They enable a company or business to get access to a wide range of tools for promoting their brand and getting insights about their performances. Pinterest for business is a free service that aims to help companies and businesses expand their customer base and to keep existing ones. The business accounts come with analytics tools that give valuable information about the audience they interact with. This information includes the interest, demographics, devices used, etc.

Another important feature of „Pinterest for business‟ is the ability of account holder to do paid promotion. This feature is known as “Promoted Pin”. Promoted pin involves paying Pinterest for reaching a target audience. It has been discussed in the coming section. Pinterest proves to be a very helpful platform for businesses even without using the paid services. According to an American research, Pinterest is one of the best channels to increase the number of visitors to a website and the users of

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Pinterest buy more than the users of any other social media platforms (Niñofranco, 2018). These options will be used the practical part of the study, so it is important to explain them in more detail. Some of the most notable promotional options Pinterest offers are: Buyable Pins and Promoted Pins. The have been discussed below.

1.5 Buyable Pins

Pinterest has introduced „Buyable Pins‟ for its users in USA. „Buyable pins‟ are basically products that you can purchase directly from Pinterest without getting redirected to the merchant‟s website. The „Buyable Pins‟ have a „Buy it‟ button next to the image. This service is only available in USA and Pinterest only works with a few big brands (Pinterest, 2019). However, there are more than 2 million products on Pinterest that you can buy by going on the vendors website (Mangalindan. JP, 2015).

One of the biggest benefits of „Buyable Pins‟ is the fact that people feel more safe shopping from Pinterest than from some website they don‟t know. Registering and setting up “Buyable Pins‟ is completely free for companies. Only the payment goes through Pinterest, the rest of the things, like shipping, customer service and other things related to the delivery of the item are the responsibility of the vendor.

Customers can use their Apple Pay or credit cards for doing the purchase securely (Pinterest, 2019).

1.6 Promoted Pins:

If a company wants to reach a wider audience, they can do it by paying Pinterest to promote their pins. These promoted images are known as Promoted pins. They look exactly the same as normal pins. For promoting, Pinterest gives the option of creating advertising campaigns for the business accounts. The company or the business needs to start by defining the campaign goals, set daily budget and the total budget. Once these are decided, an image or pin needs to be selected for promotion. Next step involves selecting the targeted audience. There are many options available to target the audience e.g. keywords, demography, device, gender, language, etc. Once all these steps are followed the pin is ready for promotion. The campaign runs until the daily budget is reached. Promoted Pins are available in 7 countries for now. They include United States, Unite Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.

According to a study made by Ahalogy about consumer attitudes towards Promoted pins, the awareness of the advertisements has increased by 12 percent

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compared to last year, but most of the users have not seen any advertisements.

Those who have seen the advertisements have been neutral towards them. Pinterest users do not consider the ads as annoying as the ads perfectly mix with the normal pins and hence does not harm the user experience, rather users called it more relevant content (Ahalogy, 2015). Half of the active users have clicked on the Promoted pins to retrieve more information about the product and about 40 percent of them have made a purchase (Ahalogy, 2015). The most popular categories for shopping are fashion and clothing, arts and crafts. Also, the study found that man is more likely to click on promoted pins and make a purchase (Ahalogy, 2015).

1.7 Pinterest Analytics for business accounts

All the business accounts get access to Pinterest analytics. Pinterest analytics is a tool that enables the account holder to analyze the reach of their account and gives valuable insights about the users the account interacts with. The information includes the location, interests, devices used, age and gender. It also allows the user to track the number of visitors to the account and to the websites. This information can be utilized to find out the type of content visitors are more interested in. It also gives information about other interests of the visitors, that the company might not know. This can help the company in increasing the overall engagement by diversifying the content according to the interest of its users.

Figure 4: Average monthly engaged Average monthly users

Source: (Pinterest.com, 2019)

The above figure gives insights about the audience interacting with the author‟s account. The average monthly viewers mean the number of viewers who have seen any of the content share on author‟s account (Shivar, 2018). The average monthly engaged means the number of viewers who got engaged with any of the

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shared content on author‟s account. The engagement can vary from mere liking, sharing to click the image and going to the target website (Shivar, 2018).

The below figure shows the audience insights. It is a new feature added by Pinterest recently. The first part of the figure shows the location of the audience. It is showing the percentage of users residing in a specific country, for instance, 49% of the users interacting with the author‟s account resides in the USA. This information can be used for deciding what products should be promoted depending on the user‟s location. The second part of this figure shows the devices used by this audience. For the given audience mobile devices are being used more than desktops. This is also very useful information for the marketer as it helps in deciding what type of website or content should be promoted to suit this audience, for instance, if a website has to be promoted on this account it should be responsive, to make it more mobile friendly.

Figure 5: Location and Devices used by GonChas‟s audience

The below figure shows the age and gender distribution of the audience. The chart shows that more than 80 percent of the audience is female. So, this information can also be used by the account holder to focus more on content related to women, women products and services.

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Figure 6: Age and Gender of GonChas‟s audience

The below figure gives information about the most popular categories and related interests of the audience. This is one of the most important information as it tells what your audience is interested in or what content do, they like or share.

Figure 7: Categories and Interests of GonChas‟s audience

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2. MARKETING:

What is marketing? Most of us think that marketing is only about selling and advertising, but it is more than that. We see a lot of television commercials, promotional messages, advertisements, sales calls and online advertisements on the websites we browse. These are all part of marketing, but they are just the marketing iceberg (Philip Kotler, 2015). In this chapter the author will define marketing and highlight its importance for a business.

Figure 8: The Marketing Iceberg

Source: (Hart, 2016)

2.1 Marketing Definition:

Marketing has several definitions but the one widely accepted and approved by the American Marketing Association in 2013 defines marketing as: “The activity set of institutions, and processes for creating communication, delivery, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” (American Marketing Association, 2013). The function of a business that deals with customers is Marketing. It aims at creating value and satisfaction. Hence marketing can also be defined as managing profitable customer relationship (Philip Kotler, 2015). The two basic goals of marketing are to attract new customers and to keep and grow the current customers by delivering value and satisfaction. It is very critical for the success of any business. Successful companies know that if they take a good care of their customers, profits and market share will follow. Management guru Peter Drucker (1954) emphasized on the importance of marketing by saying:

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“Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all.

It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise . . . Marketing is the distinguishing, the unique function of the business.”

Another definition proposed by two major professional marketing bodies, focused more on the process of marketing, is: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large (Approved October 2007 AMA Board of Directors).

On contrary, Chartered institute of Marketing, sees Marketing as a management process, they define Marketing as: “Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” (Chartered Institute of Marketing).

We can see marketing in the advertisements that plays on our televisions, radios, magazines, letterbox, online websites, etc. (Philip Kotler, 2015). Simply put, we can say marketing is managing profitable customer relationship and its aim to create value for customer and capture value from customer (Gary Armstrong, 2015).

In the recent years, businesses have adopted a host of new marketing approaches, from imaginative websites to social networks to smartphone apps. These methods have been very successful as they approach each customer directly and personally.

The businesses today want to be a part of your life and want to make their brand a part of your life (Gary Armstrong, 2015).

In 1960, Jerome McCarthy introduced the world his unique idea of marketing mix – widely known as the 4 Ps; Product, Price, Place and Promotion. This idea is still valid and plays an important role in formulating and implementing marketing strategies. The idea of 4 Ps was later extended and developed into 7 Ps with the addition of People, Process and Physical evidence (Booms and Bitner, 1981).

2.2 Marketing Process:

According to Philip Kotler marketing comprises of five steps (Philip Kotler, 2015). The first four steps comprise of the process of understanding customer needs and wants, designing a marketing strategy, constructing marketing programs for communicating and delivering value, and building strong customer relationship. The

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last step comprises of taking value from customers and making profit. So, in short, the business creates value for the customer and in return takes value from the customer in the form of sales, profits and long-term customer equity (Philip Kotler, 2015).

Figure 9: Marketing process

Source: (Philip Kotler, 2015)

Human need is the most basic concept underlying Marketing. These needs include physical needs for food, clothing, warmth and safety; individual need for knowledge and expression; social need for belonging and affection (Gary Armstrong, 2015). When any of these needs is not satisfied a person will either try to reduce the desire or look for something that will fulfil it. The way people behave in such situation depends on their society. In a less developed society people might try to reduce their desire while in an industrial society people might try to develop or find objects that can satisfy their needs (Philip Kotler, 2015).

The needs and demands of people are satisfied by products or services. The products or services comes as a combination of goods, experiences and services that can be offered to satisfy the need or want of a market. The word product usually suggests a physical object such as a house, car, iPhone, soap or a chocolate bar.

But the concept of product is not limited to only physical goods; anything that can satisfy any need of a person can be called a product. So, the ultimate goal of buying a product does not lie in just owning them rather it lies in the benefit and value they provide. People buy food to satisfy their hunger. We buy a car not to admire its utility, but because it transports us from one place to another (Gary Armstrong, 2015).

Marketing is a collective process where individuals or groups can exchange goods and services based on their needs and wants (Philip Kotler, 2015). The act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return is called Exchange (Gary Armstrong, 2015). It is the core concept of marketing, whereas

Understand the marketplace

and customers needs and

wants

Design a customer- driven marketing

strategy

Construct and integrated marketing program that

delivers supperior

value

Build profitable relationship

Capture value from customer to create profits

and customer

quality

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transaction is the marketing unit of measurement. Transaction basically involved the exchange of values between two parties. There have to be two or more parties where one party gives X to another party and gets Y in return (Gary Armstrong, 2015).

Marketing involves bringing about profitable customer relationship by managing markets. Creating these relationships takes time and hard work. Business have to find their target customers, identify their needs, make good market offerings, decide reasonable prices, advertise them and deliver them. The core marketing activities can be summed up as consumer research, product development, communication, distribution, pricing and service (Philip Kotler, 2015).

2.3 Digital Marketing:

The concept of Digital marketing has expanded and brought more opportunities for companies to reach their current and potential customers. Digital marketing shouldn‟t be mixed up with internet marketing. Digital marketing is a broader term as it is beyond internet marketing. In addition to channels like social media, search engines, display, etc. it also includes other digital media like mobile phones, television and radio (Lexicon, 2017). Digital marketing has been defined as marketing that is done through platforms such as websites, email, apps, and social networks, that are accessible with electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. (Singh O, 2017). (Smith K, 2012) defines digital marketing as a way of promoting products and services through digital channels by computers, smartphones, mobiles and digital devices. The aim of these platforms is to reach e- commerce transactions and to build a strong customer relationship while retaining current customers and acquiring new ones (Smith K, 2012). Digital marketing is very essential for any company these days as it‟s the fastest way to spread any message to any corner of the world with internet access. It‟s a two-way communication between a company and its customers, as you not only convey a message or product to your customer, you also can get a direct feedback from them (Leeflang P., 2014).

Moreover, the digital channels used frequently by companies are their website, email and social media account (Leeflang P., 2014).

Based on the understanding of marketing, Internet marketing can be defined as the marketing of products and services via internet. Ward defines internet marketing from an application perspective: “Internet marketing refers to the strategies that are used to market a product or service online, marketing strategies that include

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encourages site visitors to take action, web design strategies, online promotions, reciprocal linking, and email marketing” (Ward, 2000). It is used as a communication channel for doing direct marketing. Since its invention, it has proved to be a very useful and effective marketing tool. In the beginning it was used just a channel to communicate with customers through emailing and getting response from them, but it has evolved from those days. It has helped businesses target their potential customers on a more personal level (Kotler, 2003). Another definition says, „The online marketing is a way of leveraging the internet by conveying a message in order to move people to take some action‟ (Shama & Brogan, 2012). It is also a means for determining potential product and price structures and this process is understood as internet marketing research. According to (Fishkin, 2017) the most widely used online communication channels are as below:

 Online websites

 Social Media platforms

 E-mails

 Search Engine Marketing – including pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO)

 Display Advertising

 Online Public Relations

 Affiliate Marketing

Inside the field of Internet Marketing there are several other terms that are used as synonyms to describe related concepts. For instance, E-commerce involves the concept of sales and purchase taking place using the internet or through electronic means (Abhijit Chaudhury, 2002). It means the term E-commerce describes more the transactional technical aspect of the business while internet marketing focuses on all managerial and technical activities that leads to the transaction. Internet marketing mostly focuses on the paid, public and non-personal representation or announcement of a message by a firm or sponsor to the existing or potential future customers (Dreze X. & Hussherr, 2003). Internet has provided a lot of possibilities for the marketers, before the arrival of internet, companies had to spend a lot on advertising to attract potential customers (Scott, 2009). Internet has a very high influence on the lives of people, it has shaped the way people make decisions, the way they interact with each other and the way they do business (Sharma, 2011). The

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traditional rules of marketing do not comply anymore. Customers have moved online, so the marketers have to do the same in order to reach them (Scott, 2009). This shift from traditional marketing to internet marketing can be understood in the perspective of old media and new media because the traditional marketing in done mostly through old media and internet marketing uses the new media. Old media are the form of ways people tried to communicate, advertise, and influence each other, mostly during the 19^th and 20^th century e.g. newspapers, radio and television (Saltzman, 1999). While the new media includes internet websites, videogames, virtual reality and other (Manovich, 2003). (Shama & Brogan, 2012) has mentioned three main difference that separates old media from the new media:

The old media channels were one-way: The advertisements in the old media were one way. It was not possible to react or share opinion about them.

Simple targeting: The target audience selected use to be more homogenous, it included a wide audience with various interests, purchasing habits and opinions.

Dominance of main stream media: It was not easy to access information for general public, so the main source of information was the mainstream media and people trusted mainstream media outlets.

The shift to digital marketing from traditional marketing is very significant and it changes the focus of entire advertising industry. In the graphs below, a visible downwards trend can be seen in consumer media consumption share of old media (Television, Radio and Print).

Figure 10: US consumer media consumption share

Source: (DOLLIVER, 2014)

As seen in the above figure, there is a clear shift in the trend from old media to digital media. The old media, television and radio, consumption is showing a decline

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from the year 2009 onwards while the digital media consumption is showing a steady increase. Also, the print media consumption has shown a steep decline. The shift in the consumption of media has opened new gateways for digital marketers. Because of these changes the world has transitioned into a digital environment and for every business, it is imperative to have a website and use web as a means to interact with their customers. There are some successful traditional marketing strategies, especially if you are reaching a largely local audience, but it is very important to take advantage of digital marketing so as to keep up in today‟s world. This information is very useful for any marketers to decide which media platform to focus depending upon the targeted audience and evolution of the media consumption trends.

Figure 11: Media consumption for US consumer

Source: (DOLLIVER, 2014)

Other important thing to consider, while discussing the media consumption, is the way people access media. As seen in the graph above, the digital segment of media has been divided into Desktop and Mobile. This division clearly shows that there is downward trend for desktop consumption and a sharp increase in the mobile consumption. This gives valuable information for the marketers to plan and optimize their marketing campaigns and advertisements according to the type of devices used. Also, it helps companies to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and media consumption preferences of their consumers.

These rapid changes in terms of the media usage and the new technology in the industry, puts pressure on the marketing professionals. 76% of the marketers believe that the industry has changed more in the past two years as compared to the past 50 years. The traditional marketing methods does not work as it used to before, therefore the marketers need to adapt and broaden their portfolio of skills by

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including digital marketing (JURAN, 2017). In short, digital marketing is the 21^st century tool of marketing. It has many benefits over the traditional marketing, for instance, it is more interactive for reaching both local and global audience, the data is available immediately and results are much easier to measure, social media enable companies to communicate directly with consumers and build a good relationship with them, it allows 24/7 marketing and captures the most energetic crowd, etc.

(Santanu & Dr. Gouri, 2016). So, all these benefits make digital marketing a very attractive and important part of marketing for any company.

2.4 Social Media Marketing

There has been a shift in the way people use social media (Schaffer, 2013).

Nowadays, social media is being used by people and businesses to communicate and seek information for their professional and private uses (Schaffer, 2013). This shift in the usage of social media is a big opportunity for business to learn about the needs of users and influence them to make “purchase decisions” (Rad, 2011).

Businesses can actually analyze the growing amount of data that is available to everyone publicly in different social media platforms, the “big data” and learn from it (Schaffer, 2013). This data can give the business very useful information about their customers, markets, partners, costs, competition and operation (Russom, 2011).

Social media networking has emerged and expanded over the years and it has provoked marketers and managers to use this networking as a part of their marketing communication (Kim & Wang , 2017). Some researchers have described social media as way to connect or interact with current and potential customers with the main aim of maintaining or building a relationship (Felix R., 2017). There are many benefits of using social media as a marketing tool as opposed to using traditional marketing tools. One of the benefits is the ability to find your target potential customers and reach them in a personalized way. This is done by targeting buyer‟s niche directly with specific information that meets their needs (Scott, 2013). So, in short, the term “social media marketing” is defined as the marketing technique that involves usage of the social media network and social media website to market some products or services. Social media marketing can also be defined as the use of the platform that makes connection between the brand and the consumers while at the same time providing channel for user-centered networking and interaction (Chi, 2011). Social media marketing provides the companies multiple ways to reach out to a large audience where they are capable of attracting new potential customers and

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interact with the existing ones (Harrysson, 2012). For reaching their target audience and potential customers, businesses use a wide range of marketing strategies and tactics. These strategies and tactics allow them to reach their potential customers in a more personalized way (Hays, 2013). Through social media marketing companies are able to interact with their audience by choosing the demographics, geography and other personal information that allows them to reach the audience with specific characteristics. Also, by practicing segmentation of the obtained data, the company can make sure they have reached their target audience (Hays, 2013).

Social media marketing is one of the most powerful type of marketing on the internet at the moment (Gruber, 2014). One of the many reasons for a business to be marketing through social media is that your customers are spending time on these channels. According to Statista, 77% of US population has at least one social media profile (Statista, 2019). With so many consumers using social media every day, this presents a great opportunity for small businesses who want to reach their online audience. Another reason why consumers may be more receptive to your brand message on social media is because social media allows a two-way communication and show a different side of your brand. On social media, you are able to make authentic connections with your leads and customers, rather than just delivering direct marketing messages. (Gruber, 2014). Social media is a great tool to influence, attract and engage customers efficiently. Engagement is the most important part of social media marketing as it turns strangers into friends (Eid and El-Gohary, 2013).

The term “engagement” is very beneficial for marketing as the customers do not just click to read a message, rather they react by commenting, sharing and liking those messages (Agresta, 2010). Marketers should understand that it is very important to make a virtual community where the consumers have freedom to give feedback, spread our information, marketing messages and promotional advertisements rather than just reading and listening passively without the ability to give some input (Agresta, 2010). Social media is based on the modern concept of “social interactions”, that means the community is built on multiway conversations; between brand and customers and significantly between customers and customers. This

“social interaction” concept has proved to be more productive than the traditional concept of “word of mouth” (Bock, 2016). Mass communication has also been replaced by “person-to-person” communication as people tend to hear and believe whom they know well (Agresta, 2010). Some of most important components of social

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media marketing as mentioned above are the use of social media platforms for encouraging users to spread social media marketing content via social media marketing activities such as interaction, personalization, sharing, etc. (Rahman, 2017). Social media marketing is an effective process by which companies build a strong relationship with customers, communicate with them and deliver online marketing offering via social media platforms (Rahman, 2017). Another unique thing about social media marketing is that it focuses on people, not product (Diamond, 2008). Products or services can be presented with many qualitative features and promotional tools but what really matters are the comments and appreciations left by the customers about the product or service, and this is the reason social media marketing is so different and challenging for marketers. It is not the marketers or the company that controls the marketing, it‟s the customers and users who do it through social media. Both negative and positive word of mouth can be spread across the globe in just a matter of minutes through social media. That is why marketers needs to recognize the power of the critical nature of the conversations being hold by consumers using social media. As a consequence, the ability of influencing the crowd effectively is what is required from the marketers in the current era (Evans, 2008).

A company can benefit from social media marketing in a lot of ways. By arranging marketing campaigns, a company can reach a bulk audience. The bulk audience is not limited to customers only, rather it can include stakeholders, employees, bloggers and potential customers (Shaik, 2012). Another benefit of social media marketing is the wider reach. The resources on social media channels are larger and wider as compared to offline sources. Social media also brings transparency in the company. The company associated with social media marketing is forced to be transparent as the social media attracts a huge audience that is directly or indirectly linked or associated with the company (Sánchez Abril , 2012).

Also, the people associated with the company wants to know each and everything about the company (Lacoste, 2016). Another important thing about social media marketing is the marketers can listen, track and measure what is being shared on social media sites and use this data for improving the product or services and tuning everything according to customer‟s needs. Using the social media analytics and metrics, the impact of social media on a company‟s marketing strategy, can be measured relatively easily.

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Another important type of social media marketing is Influencer marketing.

Influencer is not a new phenomenon, people are being influenced by other people since the beginning of humanity. Whether it has been for religious, political or way of life, there have always been leaders that directed and affected the decisions, way of thinking and opinions of others. Katz and Lazarsfeld stated within their two-step flow communication theory, that these are the people who have the ability to spread information to others and thus gives more meaning and value to the information (Katz. E., 2005). Therefore, influencers are „people who possess greater than average potential to influence others due to attributes as frequency of communication, personal persuasiveness or size of a social network (Non Business Advisor, 2015). Keller and Berry define influencers according to the number of followers and their reach. For them „influencers are well connected (and) have a significantly larger number of groups than the average‟ (Jonathan & Edward, 2003).

De Veirman defines social media influencers as „content creators‟, which involves them sharing personal information, opinions, experiences and inviting others into their everyday life through online communities (De Veirman, et al., 2017).

Many studies show that the purchase decisions of people are more affected by their closest surroundings and their living environment than by any classic marketing approach (Kempe, et al., 2003). People trust their friends and their recommendations for making a purchase. The Word-of-Mouth marketing association revealed that „13 percent of all consumer sales are the result of word-of-mouth sharing‟. Influencers have got the same power of persuasion as they are followed by a huge audience and trusted by them. In terms of the social media, Social media influencers are known as individuals that others view as a valid source to what to purchase (Tuten & Solomon, 2015). Influencer marketing has become essential within brands marketing strategies as customers are relying more on the opinion of others when it comes to purchase something (Veirman, et al., 2017). Also, influencer marketing, enables brands to reach a wider and targeted audience in a faster and less expensive way as compared to other forms of advertising (Evans, et al., 2017).

85 percent of the U.S. companies are implementing influencer marketing in their marketing strategy (Roy. A, 2016). According to eMarketer the most effective marketing strategy is sponsored social messages transmitted through a person with a great online audience: an influencer (Inc. C.em. and Reserved, 2015).