The Assimilation of Social Media in Marketing Management: A Case Review of Taliah’s Strategy

Abstract

Aim: To review and discuss the use of social media platforms as digital marketing tool and promotional strategy by brands. The digital age inevitably brings changes and increased competition in ways businesses target, reach and recruit customers. This phenomena raises the question of which medium or media do businesses adopt in the marketing effort to reach, inform and convert customers; ultimately for survival? This review is an attempt to address this question within the context of the promotional activities of a beauty brand, Taliah.Approach: A review was conducted on the social media marketing activities of Taliah. It discusses different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube which the brand has combined to target, reach, persuade and convert their customers. In addition, the review identified four factors that reasonably affect the social media marketing as time and date; personality, call to action and post type. Consequently, this logical approach towards the subject-matter would help to provide knowledge and facilitate reaching the best-fit decision that can optimize the marketing activities of brands and businesses; considering the increasingly evolving technological era.Findings: The review considers the evolving changes in business as a result of the presence of various digital and interactive platforms and technologies. The study recognizes that the social media platforms provide opportunities for media content; including information on products and services to be processed and distributed to the targets. There is a worry that the market space is increasingly becoming competitive; particularly as consumers are empowered by the digital technologies to make informed choices among different brands and businesses. Arguably, this is one of the major factors that triggered the competition in the market and among brands.Review limitations/implications: The characteristics of the impact of the social media marketing on brands and businesses have recently been widely discussed because of their general applicability. Consequently, it is impossible to review and cover all the important aspects of the subject-matter in this review. This review focuses on the Taliah brand and how it has particularly conducted its social media and digital marketing management. It also examines four factors that reasonably affect the social media marketing; namely, time and date; personality, call to action and post type. The review examines and provides its own views based on content analysis of the social media marketing activities of Taliah brand.Practical implications: The review highlights the activities, benefits and challenges of applying social media as a marketing and promotional strategy. Social media platforms provide the channel through which brands and businesses can develop and disseminate information about their activities to their targets in an easy, less expensive and convenient manner. On the other hand, if brands and business understand the factors affecting the social media marketing; namely, time and date; personality, call to action and post type – they would be better prepared to checkmate these factors; including been able to aptly adapt the strengths of the social media in their marketing activities. This complement would strike the balance and potentially present a practical means through which brands could coordinate their marketing efforts in using various social media platforms. It is also crucial to gain insight into other factors that potentially impacting the activities of social media marketing strategy.Value: The review considers that the increasing changes in the market is itself an opportunity for the brands to rethink strategy on how various digital technologies and networking platforms can be optimized in marketing their activities and information. It is crucial and beneficial to emerging businesses and academics to understand how Taliah brand combined and utilized diverse social media platforms to target, reach out and recruit target customers; ultimately boosting its market shares.

Exploring social media usage as a communication channel among independent food retailer SMEs in South Africa

“…Joining social networks in the community they serve would also help raise their profile. This sentiment is reflected in the results of current literature and customer relationships was also confirmed by several other studies as a social media usage enabling factor (Jagongo & Kinyua, 2013;Omenugha, 2018;Gabbianelli & Pencarelli, 2021;Saleh, 2021;Siti-Nabiha et al, 2021). Additionally, Valos et al (2016) noted the role and benefits of social media as a two-way communication channel that facilitated the growth of relationships.…”

“…"Yes, the Facebook boosting does reach a bigger audience through the process I mentioned earlier…." [R2/6462:6872] Sharing by followers and word of mouth on the social network platforms was regarded as important as this expanded their communication footprint to a much larger audience (Jones et al, 2015;Valos et al, 2016;Omenugha, 2018). The expanded reach potential for new markets and potential new clients is affirmed by Ahmad et al, 2018 andBocconcelli et al, 2017. The former investigated the adoption of social media and its impact amongst small and medium businesses in the UAE whereas the latter found that struggling machinery suppliers were able to expand their market and grow sales due to social media activity.…”

“…Customer-driven word of mouth promotion was regarded because of fostering good relationships with customers by some respondents. /1979:2283] Connecting with and developing online customer relationships might be beneficial to the business, while is possible through social media (He et al, 2014;Ainin et al, 2015;Crammond et al, 2018;Omenugha, 2018;Ndiege, 2019;Chatterjee & Kumar Kar, 2020). Joining social networks in the community they serve would also help raise their profile.…”

Digital marketing capability: the mystery of business capabilities

“…Research on digital marketing strategy along with the discussion of the best practices for strategic assimilation of DT has gathered significant attention in the literature over the past year (Busca and Bertrandias, 2020; Omenugha, 2018; Zhang et al. , 2020).…”

“…There has been much research aimed at trying to initially investigate, explore, and propose a conceptual digital marketing framework adoption (i.e. the assimilation model) for businesses (Busca and Bertrandias, 2020;Omenugha, 2018;. Such previous investigations were conducted using inductive research with an implied customer-centric focus.…”