Introduction
The notion of social media in the worldwide context has now gone far beyond plain means and communication and pastime for the youth. In fact, social media is the platform aimed at helping people find various perspectives on leisure, education, and financial well-being. Some of the most widespread marketing strategies known to humankind, along with the new approaches, have now been successfully integrated into the social media context, steadily changing it into a large-scale market (Felix et al., 2017). Thus, it is of paramount importance for business owners to raise their awareness of the matter to remain relevant to both local and global markets.
Main body
When it comes to Saudi Arabia and other states of the Arab world, the overall perception of social media marketing is rather uncertain due to some cultural bias and peculiarities. However, social media, as a marketing framework, has been expanding rapidly as a result of a considerable increase in the number of Saudi Arabian social media users. According to the latest statistical data, more than 72% of the Saudi Arabia population actively uses social media platforms, constituting 25 million people (GMI, 2020). Hence, business owners’ major goal is to allocate enough human and financial resources for the marketing strategies to realize at least half of the social media platforms’ potential.
When it comes to developing social marketing strategies in the market, it is necessary to meticulously examine one’s brand in the context of the latest sociological studies. In fact, many enterprises fail to provide customers with relevant advertisements when focusing on social media trends irrelevant to the field. In terms of the following proposal, the two major strategies for both growing and well-known enterprises will be presented in terms of today’s customers’ expectations.
The first strategy should concern Saudi Arabia businesses that are relatively new to the market and, thus, require a framework that would attract new customers. Considering the facts, one of the most successful methods introduced would be word-of-mouth communication. While such an approach might seem quite outdated in the modern environment, information transmission has always been the core of commercial communication. Hence, marketing experts decided to expand this pattern to the web instead of containing its execution.
The so-called “online word of mouth” stands for online communication within the consumer communities in order to share ideas and perceptions of a given product or service (Ajuna, 2019). With the help of this tool, business owners within the state have the ability to analyze customer satisfaction with the product without putting much effort into funding sociological assessments. Furthermore, the social media marketing tool helps enterprises estimate the perceived value of the service, which is claimed to be one of the major marketing practical aims in the business segment. The overall customer engagement is also of paramount importance when it comes to marketing strategy productivity.
Another important issue to consider when it comes to the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia is the fact of their priority allocation in terms of financial abilities. According to the researchers, most SMEs focus on the businesses’ innovative purpose rather than forming a solid marketing strategy (Hussain, 2018). Therefore, the methods they use in practice often do not correlate with social media marketing theoretical frameworks. Considering the fact that objecting to working patterns is a sign of creativity beneficial for a business, it is rather difficult to summarize the overall marketing tendencies in the growing Saudi Arabian market, leaving this to future empirical researches.
Unlike the previous group, large Saudi Arabian enterprises have more to offer to the potential consumer, asking themselves many questions concerning the potential outcome of their actions. Thus, the primary data analysis of the field should include an extensive list of things to consider in terms of social media marketing, e.g., need recognition, market evaluation, customers’ profiles, and purchase behavior (Khatib, 2016).
In such a way, the business owners will be able to make the most out of the social media users who react to the advertising. Moreover, according to the statistics, half of the social media users tend to follow the accounts of their favorite goods and services (Ajina, 2019). Thus, in order to incorporate a successful social media marketing strategy, these businesses are to define a recognizable advertising culture that would comply with the consumers’ expectations of the product.
Conclusion
Taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that social media marketing has now become part and parcel of business communication and advertisement patterns. Thus, it is of crucial importance to follow the suit of the leading producers across the globe that pay much attention to the aspect, creating a whole new perception of a product due to social media engagement. In the context of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, the very process of social media marketing requires reconsideration in terms of efficiency and relevance to the global market. Thus, both small and large enterprises need to implement working strategies on the shortest notice to obtain a successful and measurable outcome.
References
Ajina, A. S. (2019). The perceived value of social media marketing: an empirical study of online word-of-mouth in the Saudi Arabian context. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(3), 1512-1527.
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media marketing: a holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126.
Global Media Insight (GMI). (2020). Saudi Arabia social media statistics 2020. Web.
Hussain, K. M. (2018). The effectiveness of marketing communication through social media on small to medium-size enterprises in Saudi Arabia. In Proceedings of Multidisciplinary Academic Conference on Management, Marketing, and Economics (MAC-MME 2018), Prague (p. 26).
Khatib, F. (2016). The impact of social media characteristics on purchase decision empirical study of Saudi customers in Aseer Region. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 7(4), 41-50.