RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

Digital social media marketing for entrepreneurs: boosting brand image… 43
improve the products or adjust the prices according to the customer’s current needs, which
puts the business in a highly competitive position (Perdue, 2010).
Furthermore, DSMM involves word of mouth, which is one of the most efficient mediums
of advertising. Since, the information on digital platforms spreads very fast, positive online
feedback of the customers will lead to a lot more customers being in favour of the brand as
they are likely to trust the opinions of other users of the product. This increases the customer
base of the company, upscale its sales and brings competitive advantage (Singla, 2015).
Social media marketing also encourages innovation in the business. It can be used as a
tool for crowdsourcing in order to gain insights and gather ideas beyond the walls of company’s
research and development department. Using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
can provide a whole new level of idea generation as the users have the opportunity to offer
their own desired features on particular products or offer ideas on development of products
that they would be keen on buying (Mrinal, 2012).
The innovation is also encouraged through different ways in which businesses can advertise
through social media. Be it a Facebook page or a YouTube video, a blog, an Instagram
account etc. businesses must always be creative and find innovative ways to make their digital
ads more eye catching, memorable and worthy of sharing (Chaffet & Chadwick, 2012).
Moreover, innovative ways of teamwork are also encouraged. An example can be Facebook
or LinkedIn pages focusing on particular area of interest of employees. Company can
create a Facebook page of a new project and involve the employees working on that particular
task. This enables them to share ideas, respond to comments, “like” some suggestions
and most importantly have a fast and easy access to all the information and be able to respond
quickly as opposed to other mediums such as writing formal emails (Chu, 2011). One of the
other advantages of social media marketing is that it allows organic targeting which enables
tailored customer focus for the business. Various Social Media platforms such as Facebook
allow the businesses to filter their audience according to gender, age, location relationship
status, interests etc. LinkedIn allows the companies to filter by company size, industry, etc.
which is an amazing tool for B2Bcompanies (Evans, 2011).
On Instagram and Twitter the companies can follow specific people of their interest, use
hash tags, repost same add several times a day etc. in order to catch the attention of their followers.
Even if some users do not follow back, they will still be aware of the brand. Furthermore,
users are able to share information with their online friends, who most likely fall under
the desired target of the company as well, which automatically creates tailored marketing without
any incremental efforts (Chu, 2011).
Using Social Media can drastically decrease the marketing costs of the business. Creating
digital pages to advertise products and spreading it across millions of users is essentially
free, which immensely reduces the advertising costs. It also helps to shorten the time for recruitment
as the potential candidates can be easily found by their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
pages (Sisira, 2011).
Furthermore, it helps to minimize product’s design costs due to the huge amount of feedback
available through user’s responses, which provides a great insight to customer’s wants
and preferences and makes sure that the particular product can satisfy them right from the
first day of its introduction. So the probability of the need for further investments it its development
and packaging is lowered (Arca, 2012).
Additionally, the companies have the ability to see the return on their investment and the
efficiency of their social media marketing through digital campaign tracking. A popular tool