Pepsi Refresh Project-Viral Marketing Pepsi Refresh Project

Evaluate the reasons Social Media Marketing has become exceedingly popular among businesses of all sizes.

Social media marketing has gained exceptional popularity among businesses of all size. The major reason behind this strategic shift in marketing management is related to an ability to gain access to large customer communities through internet. Since the users that companies target spend lot of time on the internet, the companies engage these users by employing different tactics. Secondly, the cost vs. benefits analysis of social media marketing indicates that by spending a few thousand dollars online to market the company, the returns are high. Television and print media advertisements are highly expensive as compared to social media. Specifically, if the large companies target their ads to be placed in prime time, it even costs them more. Most of the target population of consumer goods products, specifically those of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are present on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The reach and connectivity of social media is also much more than the traditional media. People use these social networking and blogging sites in their offices during break times and students access these sites from anywhere they connect to internet (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Smartphones have also played a major role in increasing the reach of social media websites. The sense of personalization that is target customers get from social media is not typical of traditional media. Thus, reasons such as considerably low cost, increased reach, and personalization of company message to each target customer group has led companies of all sizes to embrace social media marketing.

2. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media Marketing for business entrepreneurs.

One of the main advantages of social media marketing is that it provides the utility of web-analytics. Thorough web-analytics tools, the companies can plan targeted marketing rather than placing ads on all the social media user pages. By web analytics, users of social media websites can be grouped according to their likes,...

The companies are able to market their products only to people that are interested in such categories of products. This saves the companies significant waste of advertising budgets on people that will never buy those products offered through marketing. The ads and offers are then placed to people only having the relevant interest as promoted in the marketing message.
Communication threads and forums on the social media websites allow the companies to directly communicate with the potential customers and in real time. This personalization lets brand awareness to increase within the target group. The companies are able to create virtual communities to enhance favorable brand perception. On the other hand, some advantages of social media marketing can be stated as a potential disadvantage as well. The speed with which information is shared and spread across the virtual communities can also be detrimental to the businesses if any bad news or incident is being reported about the business. Since the virtual interaction and communication cannot be controlled, the companies are unable to restrict the negative impact of any bad news reported about the company. Value creation communities that are established online, through the use of social media, can turn into counter-communities as well. There are instances in corporate world where ex-employees of the company or loyal customers, having known much about the target company, have started negative marketing of the company products using the same social media channels. Violation of privacy is also a potential threat that businesses face when marketing their products online. Rival companies can get the social media pages, used by target company for marketing purpose, to flood with negative comments. Thus, lack of control is a major impediment for all businesses that market online. Most of the consumers do not mind being sent targeted ads, there are many customers that consider it a breach of their privacy since their likes and dislikes are used for business purposes (Whitla, 2009).

3. Assess how Social Media Marketing is helping Pepsi gain more customer insight than it…