research on social marketing

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1 Introduction to Social Marketing Research

• Published: August 2016
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Social marketing is a process, an approach to behavior change rather than a distinct discipline, which has grown tremendously; there is a need for more research and guidance on best practices. Also, social marketing research is a process with multiple stages. These have been challenges in integrating and translating social marketing practice and research, just as in other fields of health promotion. This chapter explores the specific issues in social marketing and suggests how they can be resolved. The chapter concludes by laying out a continuum of social marketing research activities. Campaign objectives and needs should be considered in recommending which strategies to apply, and the mix of methods should be considered in recommending how to research and evaluate a campaign.

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How to Use Social Media for Market Research

Don’t sleep on social media market research. It can help boost sales, engage followers, and contribute to a winning social media strategy.

Table of Contents

Ask any marketer what they wish their superpower was, and they would tell you: “To read minds.”

To know exactly what people want is a marketer’s dream. After all, understanding your audience’s preferences and needs is the key to business success. Having accurate, insightful information gives you the chance to deliver the best products, write the best messages, and build engagement and customer loyalty.

That’s why marketers regularly conduct market research, investigating industry trends, gathering feedback, and surveying focus groups to try and glean whatever information they can. But in 2023, this research process can be slow and incomplete. This is where social media market research comes in.

By practicing social listening and social media monitoring , marketers can get an accurate, up-to-the-minute understanding of audience attitudes and customer needs.

Basically, with social media market research, you’re as close to being a mind-reader as you’re gonna get. Read on to learn how this superpower can help you boost your business, engage your followers, and implement a winning social media strategy .

Bonus: Download a free guide to learn how to use social media listening to boost sales and conversions today . No tricks or boring tips—just simple, easy-to-follow instructions that really work.

What is social media market research?

Social media market research is collecting data and insights about your target audience via social media platforms. This information can help businesses understand their overall audience demographics and brand sentiment .

Social media market research can offer real-time insights with extreme speed and accuracy—pull an analytics report , and it’ll give you the scoop about what’s happening this very minute.

Social media market research is also far more affordable than traditional focus groups or surveys and offers the potential to study the behavior of a staggering number of users: imagine trying to fit all 4.76 billion social media users into a board room for a chat about your latest ad campaign.

8 ways to use social media for market research

You’re ready to use social media to learn more about your audience. But what exactly are you trying to learn? Here are eight helpful insights you can gather once you start listening in.

Find out what people like about your brand or product

If your fans hang out on social media, they’re probably talking about you there, too.

Stay alert for mentions of your brand or product and keep track of the positive feedback. Watch for users tagging you in posts and Stories, and don’t forget to check your DMS , too, for any fan mail that may be lurking there.

If you use Hootsuite, setting up social listening streams for specific keywords or phrases can be super helpful for catching those not-so-official mentions, too.

For instance, set up streams for misspellings of your brand name or specific product or model names to make sure you never miss a casual-yet-positive tweet like “i swear i run faster in my nikees!”

This genuine feedback from real-life users is extremely helpful for planning future marketing content.

One hot example is the old-school thermos brand Stanley, which started to see an organic uptick in young moms posting about their mugs on Instagram, excited about how it kept their coffee warm while they ran after their toddlers.

So the company started releasing its products in Millennial-cool colors, targeting this new, surprising market of consumers.

@perkinsonparkway Reply to @ajzini I could talk about this all day. #stanleycup #stanleytumbler #stanley40oz #utah #adventurequencher #stanleyadventure #stanley #emotionalsupportwaterbottle #stanley #unboxing #utahcheck ♬ original sound – Krystle Perkins | DIY & Home

Find out what people don’t like about your brand or product

While watching/listening to see what your fans love about your product, you may occasionally get some grumbling from people who aren’t quite as enthusiastic. And that can be helpful, too.

Shake off those hurt feelings and remember that hearing directly from your critics is an opportunity. Genuine complaints or criticism are a chance to do better or address something that you may have missed.

Netflix, for instance, might be interested to see this tweet, which mentions the name Netflix but doesn’t tag the company directly. This subscriber keeps canceling their subscription—and now, Netflix can see why.

I bailed on Netflix 6 months ago as I do every year. I keep a sub about 4 – 5 months then cancel when I've seen everything. — CE Newton (@cnewton_ky) March 21, 2023

If you want to get even more advanced with your social media listening, Hootsuite Insights  takes listening a step further by giving you data from 16 billion new social posts every month.

Boolean search logic can help you find meaningful trends and patterns you might miss by monitoring keywords and hashtags alone. You can then filter your searches by date, demographics, and location to find the conversations most relevant to you.

Insights also makes it easy to track brand sentiment with intuitive word clouds and meters that gauge your sentiment and brand awareness against the competition.

Listen to what people are saying about your competitors

Just like you can use social listening to monitor what people are saying about your brand on social media, you can also keep track of what people are saying about other companies … like, say, your competitors.

Understanding what’s going well (or not-so-well) for your greatest business enemies can offer you an advantage. Fill a gap in the market that they aren’t filling yet. Reach out to an unhappy customer to provide an alternative. Tweak your next marketing campaign to let audiences know you can treat them even better.

If you make yoga pants and you notice that everyone’s raving about the color of Lululemon’s new leggings, maybe it’s time to put your own similar style front and center in your upcoming Instagram grid redesign.

Watch your industry for insights

As you’re setting up all your other social listening streams, you may want to add a few that include industry keywords, too.

Keeping up with what’s happening in your industry is going to help you understand what consumer expectations are for your specific type of product or how healthy the industry is overall. Are you a luxury realtor noticing that others in the real estate industry are flocking to TikTok… and racking up the views?

What can this tell you about what your own followers might like to see?

@markonyc The perfect 1 bedroom! And this building has insane amenities🔝 What do you think? #fyp #foryourpage #nycrealestate #realestate ♬ awkward sped up sza – rem

Use analytics to understand what content resonates

You can guess what your audience will like… or you can just crunch the numbers and know the truth.

Social analytics tools allow you to see exactly what kind of content clicks with your audience. If your celebrity home tours are getting likes and shares, now you know your followers love their interior design content with a side of star power. If your Instagram carousel posts are popping off, maybe it’s time to stop wasting time with Reels.

With Hootsuite Insights, you can even schedule recurring reports that compile your fave key metrics into cool, easy-to-understand infographics.

Study how your audience communicates

Social media marketing research involves putting on your sociologist’s hat and studying the way your audience likes to express itself.

What platforms are they most active on? Do they prefer tagging you in their “get ready with me” TikToks, or are you more likely to receive a private message to gush about your new plus-sized line of pajamas?

By practicing social listening, you’ll also learn what language and tone your target audience is comfortable using. Certain communities embrace specific slang or emoji use. If you’re going to be hanging with this crew online, you’d better study up.

Keeping all your social media monitoring and management in one place makes it easy to spot cross-platform trends. (Features like Hootsuite Inbox make it easy to get a birds-eye view of private messages from all your different accounts at once.)

If you haven’t claimed your free 30-day Hootsuite trial yet , what are you waiting for?

Explore trends that might click with your customer base

Even beyond your own analytics, social media is a place to observe the world. Trends come and go at a rapid-fire pace but watch for long enough, and you’ll start to understand what kind of content really thrives on each platform.

Resources like Hootsuite’s annual Digital Trends Report and Social Trends Reports can give an interesting macro-view of how different demographics use social media and what they love to see and do.

Ask your audience directly

If you really want to know what your audience is thinking, social media allows you a chance to ask them point-blank.

Put up a poll on your Instagram Stories asking followers to pick their favorite new package design, ask your fans to share TikToks of how they style your fanny packs or prompt your Facebook audience to dish about their dream suitcase color.

Fashion Brand Company is the master of this. The avant-garde clothing brand regularly asks followers to vote on what products they’d like to see available for sale next.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Fashion Brand Co Inc Global (@fashionbrandcompany)

Challenges of using social media for market research

Of course, for all of its benefits, social media marketing research can be challenging, too.

Without analytics, it’s meaningless

If you’re just watching the Tweets come in and not crunching the numbers, your data is going to be flawed. To get big-picture data that’s truly useful, you must go beyond anecdotal evidence and individual examples.

Embrace the power of social media analytics, using tools like Hootsuite to create regular reports that can identify growth, trends, and audience behavior with precision.

You need big reach to get an accurate analysis

If only 10 people are seeing your posts (and two of those are your employees), then the insights you get aren’t be that helpful. Make sure your social media content is actually getting in front of your target audience so you can accurately see what type of posts really engage their interest.

Using a scheduling tool like Hootsuite can help you plan your content for when the maximum number of your followers is online. More about scheduling your social posts here.

If you are just starting out on social and have a small audience, consider experimenting with paid ads or boosting your posts to reach more people.

The loudest voices might overwhelm the quieter ones

There’s a danger in social media listening of over-valuing the loudest super-fans (or critics). But just because someone is tagging you in every Facebook Live unboxing video doesn’t mean they represent a whole community.

That’s where streams and alerts (which you can set up in Hootsuite) can be helpful: they’ll grab mentions and references from even the smallest of accounts to make sure that every voice is heard.

Ready to get started with social media marketing research? Step one is setting up your social listening streams in Hootsuite. Start your 30-day free trial here.

Get Started

Do it better with Hootsuite , the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Become a better social marketer.

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Stacey McLachlan is an award-winning writer and editor from Vancouver with more than a decade of experience working for print and digital publications.

She is editor-at-large for Western Living and Vancouver Magazine, author of the National Magazine Award-nominated 'City Informer' column, and a regular contributor to Dwell. Her previous work covers a wide range of topics, from SEO-focused thought-leadership to profiles of mushroom foragers, but her specialties include design, people, social media strategy, and humor.

You can usually find her at the beach, or cleaning sand out of her bag.

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Social media marketing strategy: definition, conceptualization, taxonomy, validation, and future agenda

• Conceptual/Theoretical Paper
• Open access
• Published: 10 June 2020
• Volume 49 , pages 51–70, ( 2021 )

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• Fangfang Li   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4883-1730 1 ,
• Jorma Larimo 1 &
• Leonidas C. Leonidou 2  

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Although social media use is gaining increasing importance as a component of firms’ portfolio of strategies, scant research has systematically consolidated and extended knowledge on social media marketing strategies (SMMSs). To fill this research gap, we first define SMMS, using social media and marketing strategy dimensions. This is followed by a conceptualization of the developmental process of SMMSs, which comprises four major components, namely drivers, inputs, throughputs, and outputs. Next, we propose a taxonomy that classifies SMMSs into four types according to their strategic maturity level: social commerce strategy, social content strategy, social monitoring strategy, and social CRM strategy. We subsequently validate this taxonomy of SMMSs using information derived from prior empirical studies, as well with data collected from in-depth interviews and a quantitive survey among social media marketing managers. Finally, we suggest fruitful directions for future research based on input received from scholars specializing in the field.

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Introduction

The past decade has witnessed the development of complex, multifarious, and intensified interactions between firms and their customers through social media usage. On the one hand, firms are taking advantage of social media platforms to expand geographic reach to buyers (Gao et al. 2018 ), bolster brand evaluations (Naylor et al. 2012 ), and build closer connections with customers (Rapp et al. 2013 ). On the other hand, customers are increasingly empowered by social media and taking control of the marketing communication process, and they are becoming creators, collaborators, and commentators of messages (Hamilton et al. 2016 ). As the role of social media has gradually evolved from a single marketing tool to that of a marketing intelligence source (in which firms can observe, analyze, and predict customer behaviors), it has become increasingly imperative for marketers to strategically use and leverage social media to achieve competitive advantage and superior performance (Lamberton and Stephen 2016 ).

Despite widespread understanding among marketers of the need to engage customers on social media platforms, relatively few firms have properly strategized their social media appearance and involvement (Choi and Thoeni 2016 ; Griffiths and Mclean 2015 ). Rather, for most companies, the ongoing challenge is not to initiate social media campaigns, but to combine social media with their marketing strategy to engage customers in order to build valuable and long-term relationships with them (Lamberton and Stephen 2016 ; Schultz and Peltier 2013 ). However, despite the vast opportunities social media offer to companies, there is no clear definition or comprehensive framework to guide the integration of social media with marketing strategies, to gain a rigorous understanding of the nature and role of social media marketing strategies (SMMSs) (Effing and Spil 2016 ).

Although some reviews focusing on the social media phenomenon are available (e.g., Lamberton and Stephen 2016 ; Salo 2017 ), to date, an integrative evaluation effort focusing on the strategic marketing perspective of social media is missing. This is partly because the social media literature largely derives elements from widely disparate fields, such as marketing, management, consumer psychology, and computer science (Aral et al. 2013 ). Moreover, research on SMMSs mainly covers very specific, isolated, and scattered aspects, which creates confusion and limits understanding of the subject (Lamberton and Stephen 2016 ). Furthermore, research deals only tangentially with a conceptualization, operationalization, and categorization of SMMSs, which limits theory advancement and practice development (Tafesse and Wien 2018 ).

To address these problems, and also to respond to repeated pleas from scholars in the field (e.g., Aral et al. 2013 ; Guesalaga 2016 ; Moorman and Day 2016 ; Schultz and Peltier 2013 to identify appropriate strategies to leverage social media in today’s changing marketing landscape, we aim to systematically consolidate and extend the knowledge accumulated from previous research on SMMSs. Specifically, our objectives are fivefold: (1) to clearly define SMMS by blending issues derived from the social media and marketing strategy literature streams; (2) to conceptualize the process of developing SMMSs and provide a theoretical understanding of its constituent parts; (3) to provide a taxonomy of SMMSs according to their level of strategic maturity; (4) to validate the practical value of this taxonomy using information derived from previous empirical studies, as well as from primary data collection among social media marketing managers; and (5) to develop an agenda for promising areas of future research on the subject.

Our study makes three major contributions to the social media marketing literature. First, it offers a definition and a conceptualization of SMMS that help alleviate definitional deficiency and increase conceptual clarity on the subject. By focusing on the role of social connectedness and interactions in resource integration, we stress the importance of transforming social media interactions and networks into marketing resources to help achieve specific strategic goals for the firm. In this regard, we provide theoretical justification of social media from a strategic marketing perspective. Second, using customer engagement as an overarching theory, we develop a model conceptualizing the SMMS developmental process. Through an analysis of each component of this process, we emphasize the role of insights from both firms and customers to better understand the dynamics of SMMS formulation. We also suggest certain theories to specifically explain the particular role played by each of these components in developing sound SMMSs. Third, we propose a taxonomy of SMMSs based on their level of strategic maturity that can serve as the basis for developing specific marketing strategy concepts and measurement scales within a social media context. We also expect this taxonomy to provide social media marketing practitioners with fruitful insights on why to select and how to use a particular SMMS in order to achieve superior marketing results.

Defining SMMS

Although researchers have often used the term “social media marketing strategy” in their studies (e.g., Choi and Thoeni 2016 ; Kumar et al. 2013 ; Zhang et al. 2017 ), they have yet to propose a clear definition. Despite the introduction of several close terms in the past, including “social media strategy” (Aral et al. 2013 ; Effing and Spil 2016 ), “online marketing strategy” (Micu et al. 2017 ), and “strategic social media marketing” (Felix et al. 2017 ), these either fail to take into consideration the different functions/features of social media or neglect key marketing strategy issues. What is therefore required is an all-encompassing definition of SMMS that will capture two fundamental elements—namely, social media and marketing strategy. Table 1 draws a comparison between social media and marketing strategy on five dimensions (i.e., core, orientation, resource, purpose, and premise) and presents the resulting profile of SMMS.

• Social media

In a marketing context, social media are considered platforms on which people build networks and share information and/or sentiments (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010 ). With their distinctive nature of being “dynamic, interconnected, egalitarian, and interactive organisms” (Peters et al. 2013 , p. 281), social media have generated three fundamental shifts in the marketplace. First, social media enable firms and customers to connect in ways that were not possible in the past. Such connectedness is empowered by various platforms, such as social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), microblogging sites (e.g., Twitter), and content communities (e.g., YouTube), that allow social networks to build from shared interests and values (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010 ). In this regard, “social connectedness” has also been termed as “social ties” (e.g., Muller and Peres 2019 ; Quinton and Wilson 2016 ), and the strength and span of these ties determine whether they are strong or weak (Granovetter 1973 ). Prior studies have shown that tie strength is an important determinant of customer referral behaviors (e.g., Verlegh et al. 2013 ).

Second, social media have transformed the way firms and customers interact and influence each other. Social interaction involves “actions,” whether through communications or passive observations, that influence others’ choices and consumption behaviors (Chen et al. 2011 ). Nair et al. ( 2010 ) labeled such social interactions as “word-of-mouth (WOM) effect” or “contagion effects.” Muller and Peres ( 2019 ) argue that social interactions rely strongly on the social network structure and provide firms with measurable value (also referred to as “social equity”). In social media studies, researchers have long recognized the importance of social influence in affecting consumer decisions, and recent studies have shown that people’s connection patterns and the strength of social ties can signify the intensity of social interactions (e.g., Aral and Walker 2014 ; Katona et al. 2011 ).

Third, the proliferation of social media data has made it increasingly possible for companies to better manage customer relationships and enhance decision making in business (Libai et al. 2010 ). Social media data, together with other digital data, are widely characterized by the 3Vs (i.e., volume, variety, and velocity), which refer to the vast quantity of data, various sources of data, and expansive real-time data (Alharthi et al. 2017 ). A huge amount of social media data derived from different venues (e.g., social networks, blogs, forums) and in various formats (e.g., text, video, image) can now be easily extracted and usefully exploited with the aid of modern information technologies (Moe and Schweidel 2017 ). Thus, social media data can serve as an important source of customer analysis, market research, and crowdsourcing of new ideas, while capturing and creating value through social media data represents the development of a new strategic resource that can improve marketing outcomes (Gnizy 2019 ).

• Marketing strategy

According to Varadarajan ( 2010 ), a marketing strategy consists of an integrated set of decisions that helps the firm make critical choices regarding marketing activities in selected markets and segments, with the aim to create, communicate, and deliver value to customers in exchange for accomplishing its specific financial, market, and other objectives. According to the resource-based view of the firm (Barney 1991 ), organizational resources (e.g., financial, human, physical, informational, relational) help firms enhance their marketing strategies, achieve sustainable competitive advantage, and gain better performance. These resources can be either tangible or intangible and can be transformed into higher-order resources (i.e., competencies and capabilities), enabling the delivery of superior value to targeted buyers (Hunt and Morgan 1995 ; Teece and Pisano 1994 ).

Different marketing strategies can be arranged on a continuum, on which transaction marketing strategy and relationship marketing strategy represent its two ends, while in between are various mixed marketing strategies (Grönroos 1991 ). Webster ( 1992 ) notes that long-standing customer relationships should be at the core of marketing strategy, because customer interaction and engagement can be developed into valuable relational resources (Hunt et al. 2006 ). Morgan and Hunt ( 1999 ) also claim that firms capitalizing on long-term and trustworthy customer relationships can help design value-enhancing marketing strategies that will subsequently generate competitive advantages and lead to superior performance.

From a strategic marketing perspective, social media interaction entails a process that allows not only firms, but also customers to exchange resources. For example, Hollebeek et al. ( 2019 ) assert that customers can devote operant (e.g., knowledge) and operand (e.g., equipment) resources while interacting with firms. Importantly, Gummesson and Mele ( 2010 ) argue that interactions occur not simply in dyads, but also between multiple actors within a network, underscoring the critical role of network interaction in resource integration. Notably, customer-to-customer interactions are also essential, especially for the higher level of engagement behaviors (Fehrer et al. 2018 ).

Thus, social media interconnectedness and interactions (i.e., between firm–customer and between customer–customer) can be considered strategic resources, which can be further converted into marketing capabilities (Morgan and Hunt 1999 ). A case in point is social customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, in which the firm cultivates the competency to use information generated from social media interactions to identify and develop loyal customers (Trainor et al. 2014 ). With the expanding role of social media from a single communication tool to one of gaining customer and market knowledge, marketers can strategically develop distinct resources from social media based on extant organizational resources and capabilities.

Drawing on the previous argumentation, we define SMMS as an organization’s integrated pattern of activities that, based on a careful assessment of customers’ motivations for brand-related social media use and the undertaking of deliberate engagement initiatives, transform social media connectedness (networks) and interactions (influences) into valuable strategic means to achieve desirable marketing outcomes. This definition is parsimonious because it captures the uniqueness of the social media phenomenon, takes into consideration the fundamental premises of marketing strategy, and clearly defines the scope of activities pertaining to SMMS.

Although the underlying roots of traditional marketing strategy and SMMS are similar, the two strategies have three distinctive differences: (1) as opposed to the traditional approach, which pays peripheral attention to the heterogeneity of motivations driving customer engagement, SMMS emphasizes that social media users must be motivated on intellectual, social, cultural, or other grounds to engage with firms (and perhaps more importantly with other customers) (Peters et al. 2013 ; Venkatesan 2017 ); (2) the consequences of SMMS are jointly decided by the firm and its customers (rather than by individual actors’ behaviors), and it is only when the firm and its customers interact and build relationships that social media technological platforms become real resource integrators (Singaraju et al. 2016 ; Stewart and Pavlou 2002 ); and (3) while customer value in traditional marketing strategies is narrowly defined to solely capture purchase behavior through customer lifetime value, in the case of SMMS, this value is expressed through customer engagement, comprising both direct (e.g., customer purchases) and indirect (e.g., product referrals to other customers) contributions to the value of the firm (Kumar and Pansari 2016 ; Venkatesan 2017 ).

Conceptualizing the process of developing SMMSs

The conceptualization of the process of developing SMMSs is anchored on customer engagement theory, which posits that firms need to take deliberate initiatives to motivate and empower customers to maximize their engagement value and yield superior marketing results (Harmeling et al. 2017 ). Kumar et al. ( 2010 ) distinguish between four different dimensions of customer engagement value, namely customer lifetime value, customer referral value, customer influence value, and customer knowledge value. This metric has provided a new approach for customer valuation, which can help marketers to make more effective and efficient strategic decisions that enable long-term value contributions to customers. In a social media context, this customer engagement value enables firms to capitalize on crucial customer resources (i.e., network assets, persuasion capital, knowledge stores, and creativity), of which the leverage can provide firms with a sustainable competitive advantage (Harmeling et al. 2017 ).

Customer engagement theory highlights the importance of understanding customer motivations as a prerequisite for the firm to develop effective SMMSs, because heterogeneous customer motivations resulting from different attitudes and attachments can influence their social media behaviors and inevitably SMMS outcomes (Venkatesan 2017 ). It also stresses the role of inputs from both firm (i.e., social media engagement initiatives) and customers (i.e., social media behaviors), as well as the importance of different degrees of interactivity and interconnectedness in yielding sound marketing outcomes (Harmeling et al. 2017 ). Pansari and Kumar et al. ( 2017 ) argue that firms can benefit from such customer engagement in both tangible (e.g., higher revenues, market share, profits) and intangible (e.g., feedbacks or new ideas that help to product/service development) ways.

Based on consumer engagement theory, we therefore conceive the process of developing an SMMS as consisting of four interlocking parts: (1) drivers , that is, the firm’s social media marketing objectives and the customers’ social media use motivations; (2) inputs , that is, the firm’s social media engagement initiatives and the customers’ social media behaviors; (3) throughputs , that is, the way the firm connects and interacts with customers to exchange resources and satisfy needs; and (4) outputs , that is, the resulting customer engagement outcome. Figure 1 shows this developmental process of SMMS, while Table 2 indicates the specific theoretical underpinnings of each part comprising this process.

A conceptualization of the process of developing social media marketing strategies

Firms’ social media marketing objectives

Though operating in a similar context, SMMSs may differ depending on the firm’s strategic objectives (Varadarajan 2010 ). According to resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978 ), the firm’s social media marketing objectives can be justified by the need to acquire external resources (which do not exist internally) that will help it accommodate the challenges of environmental contingencies. In a social media context, customers can serve as providers of resources, which can take several forms (Harmeling et al. 2017 ). Felix et al. ( 2017 ) distinguish between proactive and reactive social media marketing objectives, which can differ by the type of market targeted (e.g., B2B vs. B2C) and firm size. While for proactive objectives, firms use social media to increase brand awareness, generate online traffic, and stimulate sales, in the case of reactive objectives, the emphasis is on monitoring and analyzing customer activities.

Customers’ social media use motivations

Social media use motivations refer to various incentives that drive people’s selection and use of specific social media (Muntinga et al. 2011 ). The existence of these motivations is theoretically grounded on uses and gratifications theory (Katz et al. 1973 ), which maintains that consumers are actively and selectively involved in media usage to gratify their psychological and social needs. In a social media context, motivations can range from utilitarian and hedonic purposes (e.g., incentives, entertainment) to relational reasons (e.g., identification, brand connection) (Rohm et al. 2013 ). Muntinga et al. ( 2011 ) also categorize consumer–brand social media interactions as motivated primarily by entertainment, information, remuneration, personal identity, social interaction, and empowerment.

Firms’ social media engagement initiatives

Firms take initiatives to motivate and engage customers so that they can make voluntary contributions in return (Harmeling et al. 2017 ; Pansari and Kumar 2017 ). These firm actions can also be theoretically explained by resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978 ), which argues that firms need to take initiatives to encourage customers to interact with them, to generate useful autonomous contributions that will alleviate resource shortages. Harmeling et al. ( 2017 ) identify two primary forms of a firm’s marketing initiatives to engage customers using social media: task-based and experiential. While task-based engagement initiatives encourage customer engagement behaviors with structured tasks (e.g., writing a review) and usually take place in the early stages of the firm’s social media marketing efforts, experiential engagement initiatives employ experiential events (e.g., multisensory events) to intrinsically motivate customer engagement and foster emotional attachment. Thus, firm engagement initiatives can be viewed as a continuum, where at one end, the firm uses monetary rewards to engage customers and, at the other end, the firm proactively works to deliver effective experiential incentives to motivate customer engagement.

Customers’ social media behaviors

The use of social media by customers yields different behavioral manifestations, ranging from passive (e.g., observing) to active (e.g., co-creation) (Maslowska et al. 2016 ). These customer social media behaviors can be either positive (e.g., sharing) or negative (e.g., create negative content), depending on customers’ attitudes and information processes during interactions (Dolan et al. 2016 ). Harmeling et al. ( 2017 ) characterize customers with positive behaviors as “pseudo marketers” because they contribute to firms’ marketing functions using their own resources, while those with negative behaviors may turn firm-created “hashtags” into “bashtags.” Drawing on uses and gratifications theory, Muntinga et al. ( 2011 ) also categorize customers’ brand-related behaviors in social media into three groups: consuming (e.g., reading a brand’s posts), contributing (e.g., rating products), and creating (e.g., publishing brand-related content).

Throughputs

Within the context of social media, both social connectedness and social interaction can be explained by social exchange theory, which proposes that social interactions are exchanges through which two parties acquire benefits (Blau 1964 ). Based on this theory, such a social exchange involves a sequence of interactions between firms and customers that are usually interdependent and contingent on others’ actions, with the goal to generate sound relationships (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005 ). Thus, successful exchanges can advance interpersonal connections (referred to as social exchange relationships) with beneficial effects for the interacting parties (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005 ).

Social connectedness

Social connectedness indicates the number of ties an individual has on social networks (Goldenberg et al. 2009 ), while Kumar et al. ( 2010 ) define connectedness with additional dimensions, including the number of connections, the strength of the connections, and the location in the network. Social media research suggests that connectedness has a significant impact on social influence. For example, Hinz et al. ( 2011 ) show that the use of “hubs” (highly connected people) in viral marketing campaigns can be eight times more successful than strategies using less connected people. Verlegh et al. ( 2013 ) also examine the impact of tie strength on making referrals in social media and confirm that people tend to interpret ambiguous information received from strong ties positively, but negatively when this information comes from weak ties.

Social interaction

Social interaction within a social media context is quite complex, as it represents multidirectional and interconnected information flows, rather than a pure firm monologue (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2013 ). This is because, on the one hand, social media have empowered customers to be equal actors in firm–customer interactions through sharing, gaming, expressing, and networking, while, on the other hand, customer–customer interactions have emerged as a growing market force, as customers can influence each other with regard to their attitudinal or behavioral changes (Peters et al. 2013 ). Chen et al. ( 2011 ) identify two types of social interactions—namely, opinion- or preference-based interactions (e.g., WOM) and action- or behavior-based interactions (e.g., observational learning)—with each requiring different strategic actions to be taken. Chahine and Malhotra ( 2018 ) also show that two-way (multiway) interaction strategies that allow reciprocity result in higher market reactions and more positive relationships.

• Customer engagement

The outputs are expressed in terms of customer engagement, which reflects the outcome of firm–customer (as well as customer–customer) connectedness and interaction in social media (Harmeling et al. 2017 ). Footnote 1 It is essentially a reflection of “the intensity of an individual’s participation in and connection with an organization’s offerings and/or organizational activities, which either the customer or the firm initiates” (Vivek et al. 2012 , p. 127). The more customers connect and interact with the firm’s activities, the higher is the level of customer engagement created (Kumar and Pansari 2016 ; Malthouse et al. 2013 ) and the higher the customer’s value addition to the firm (Pansari and Kumar 2017 ). Although the theoretical explanation of the notion of customer engagement has attracted a great deal of debate among scholars in the field, research (e.g., Brodie et al. 2011 ; Hollebeek et al. 2019 ; Kumar et al. 2019 ) has also begun adopting the service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch 2004 ) because of its emphasis on customers’ interactive and value co-creation experiences in market relationships. Following the service-dominant (S-D) logic, Hollebeek et al. ( 2019 ) stress the role of customer resource integration, customer knowledge sharing, and learning as foundational in the customer engagement process, which can subsequently lead to customer individual/interpersonal operant resource development and co-creation.

Despite its pivotal role in social media marketing, extant literature has not yet attained agreement on the specific measurement of customer engagement. For example, Muntinga et al. ( 2011 ) conceptualize customer engagement in social media as comprising three stages: consuming (e.g., following, viewing content), contributing (e.g., rating, commenting), and creating (e.g., user-generated content). Maslowska et al. ( 2016 ) propose three levels of customer engagement behaviors: observing (e.g., reading content), participating (e.g., commenting on a post), and co-creating (e.g., partaking in product development). Moreover, Kumar et al. ( 2010 ) distinguish between transactional (i.e., buying the product) and non-transactional (i.e., sharing, commenting, referring, influencing) behaviors of customer engagement derived from social media connectedness and interactions.

Taxonomy of SMMSs

The distinctive differences among firms engaged in social media marketing with regard to their strategic objectives, organizational resources and capabilities, and focal industries and market structures, imply that there must also be differences in the SMMSs pursued. In this section, we first explain the criteria classifying SMMSs into different groups and then provide an analysis of their content.

Classification criteria of SMMSs

Drawing from the extant literature, we propose three important criteria that can be used to distinguish SMMSs: the nature of the firm’s strategic social media objectives with regard to using social media, the direction of interactions taking place between the firm and the customers, and the level of customer engagement achieved.

Strategic social media objectives refer to the specific organizational goals to be achieved by implementing SMMSs (Choi and Thoeni 2016 ; Felix et al. 2017 ). These can range from transactional to relational-oriented, depending on the strategist’s mental models of business–customer interactions (Rydén et al. 2015 ). Different mental models have a distinctive impact on managers’ social media sense-making, which is responsible for framing the specific role defined by social media in their marketing activities (Rydén et al. 2015 ). Rydén et al. ( 2015 ) identify four types of social media marketing objectives with four different mental models that can guide SMMSs —namely, to promote and sell (i.e., business-to-customers), to connect and collaborate (i.e., business-with-customers), to listen and learn (i.e., business-from-customers), and to empower and engage (i.e., business-for-customers).

The direction of the social media interactions can take three different forms. These include (1) one-way interaction , that is, traditional one-way communication in which the firm disseminates content (e.g., advertising) on social media and customers passively observe and react (Hoffman and Thomas 1996 ); (2) two-way interaction , that is, reciprocal and interactive communication with exchanges on social media, which can be further distinguished into firm-initiated interaction (in which the firm takes the initiative to begin the conversation) and customer participation (by liking, sharing, or commenting on the content) and customer-initiated interaction (in which the customer is the initiator of conversations by inquiring, giving feedback, or even posting negative comments about the firm, while the firm listens and responds to customer voice) (Van Noort and Willemsen 2012 ); and (3) collaborative interaction, that is, the highest level of interaction that builds on frequent and reciprocal activities in which both the firm and the customer have the power to influence each other (Joshi 2009 ).

With regard to the level of customer engagement, as noted previously, this heavily depends on the strength of connections and the intensity of interactions between the firm and the customers in social media, comprising both transactional and non-transactional elements (Kumar et al. 2010 ). Because customer engagement is the result of a dynamic and iterative process, which makes specifying the exact stage from participating to producing rather difficult (Brodie et al. 2011 ), we adopt the approach proposed by various scholars in the field (e.g., Dolan et al. 2016 ; Malthouse et al. 2013 ) to view this as a continuum, ranging from very low levels of engagement (e.g., “liking” a page) to very high levels of engagement (e.g., co-creation).

Types of SMMSs

With these three classificatory criteria, we can identify four distinct SMMSs, representing increasing levels of strategic maturity: social commerce strategy, social content strategy, social monitoring strategy, and social CRM strategy. Footnote 2 Fig.  2 illustrates this taxonomy for SMMSs, Table 3 shows the differences between these four strategies, while Appendix Table 6 provides real company examples using these strategies. In the following, we analyze each of these SMMSs by explaining their nature and characteristics, the particular role played by social media, and the specific organizational capabilities required for their adoption.

Taxonomy of social media marketing strategies

Social commerce strategy

Social commerce strategy refers to the “exchange-related activities that occur in, or are influenced by, an individual’s social network in computer-mediated social environments, whereby the activities correspond to the need recognition, pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages of a focal exchange” (Yadav et al. 2013 , p. 312). Rydén et al. ( 2015 , p. 6) claim that this way of using social media is not to create conversation and/or engagement; rather, the reasons for “the initial contact and the end purpose are to sell.” Similarly, Malthouse et al. ( 2013 ) argue that social media promotional activities do not actively engage customers because they do not make full use of the interactive role of social media. Thus, social commerce strategy can be considered as the least mature SMMS because it has a mainly transactional nature and is preoccupied with short-term goal-oriented activities (Grönroos 1994 ). It is essentially a one-way communication strategy intended to attract customers in the short run.

In this strategy, social media are claimed to be the new selling tool that has changed the way buyers and sellers interact (Marshall et al. 2012 ). They offer a new opportunity for sellers to obtain customer information and make the initial interaction with the customer more efficient (Rodriguez et al. 2012 ). Meanwhile, firms are also increasingly using social media as promising outlets for promotional/advertising purposes given their global reach (e.g., Dao et al. 2014 ; Zhang and Mao 2016 ), especially to the millennial generation (Confos and Davis 2016 ). However, as firms’ social media activities in this strategy are more transactional-oriented, customers tend to be passive and reactive. Customers contribute transactional value through purchases, but without a higher level of engagement. Therefore, we conclude that, within the context of this strategy, customers exchange their monetary resources (e.g., purchases) with the firm’s promotional offerings.

To better develop this strategy, Guesalaga ( 2016 ) highlights the need to understand the drivers of using social media in the selling process. He further stresses that personal commitment plays a crucial role in using social media as selling tools. Similarly, Järvinen and Taiminen ( 2016 ) urged for an integration of marketing with the sales department in order to gain better insights from social media marketing efforts. The importance of synergistic effects between social media and traditional media (e.g., press mentions, television, in-store promotions) has also been stressed in supporting social commerce activities (e.g., Jayson et al. 2018 ; Kumar et al. 2016 ; Stephen and Galak 2012 ). Thus, selling capabilities are crucial in this strategy, requiring the possession of adequate selling skills and the use of multiple selling channels to synergize social media effects.

Social content strategy

Social content strategy refers to “the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers” (Pulizzi and Barrett 2009 , p. 8). Thus, this type of SMMS aims to create and deliver timely and valuable content based on customer needs, rather than promoting products (Järvinen and Taiminen 2016 ). By attracting audiences with valuable content, the increase in customer engagement may ultimately boost product/service sales (Malthouse et al. 2013 ). Holliman and Rowley ( 2014 , p. 269) also claim that content marketing is a customer-centric strategy and describe the value of content as “being useful, relevant, compelling, and timely.” Therefore, this strategy provides a two-way communication in which firms take the initiative to deliver useful content and customers react positively to this content. The basic premises of this strategy are to create brand awareness and popularity through content virality, stimulate customer interactions, and spread positive WOM (De Vries et al. 2012 ; Swani et al. 2017 ).

Social media in this strategy have been widely used as communication tools for branding and WOM purposes (Holliman and Rowley 2014 ; Libai et al. 2013 ). On the one hand, firms generate content by their own efforts on social media (termed as ‘firm-generated’ or ‘marker-generated’ content) to actively engage consumers. On the other hand, firms encourage customers to generate the content (termed as ‘user-generated’ content) through the power of customer-to-customer interactions, as in the case of exchanging comments and sharing the brand-related content. In this way, firms provide valuable content in exchange for customer-owned resources, such as network assets and persuasion capital, to generate positive WOM and achieve a sustainable trusted brand status.

To pursue a social content strategy, firms build on capabilities focusing on how content is designed and presented (expressed in the form of a social message strategy) and how content is disseminated (expressed in the form of a seeding strategy). Thus, understanding customer engagement motivations and social media interactive characteristics is central to designing valuable content and facilitating customer interactions that would help to stimulate content sharing among customers (Malthouse et al. 2013 ). Designing compelling and valuable content in order to transform passive social media observers into active participants and collaborators is also key capability required by firms adopting this strategy (Holliman and Rowley 2014 ). Empowering customers and letting them speak for the brand is another way to engage customers with brands. Therefore, in this strategy, marketing communication capabilities are important for effective marketing content development and dissemination.

Social monitoring strategy

Social monitoring strategy refers to “a listening and response process through which marketers themselves become engaged” (Barger et al. 2016 , p. 278). In contrast with social content strategy, which is more of a “push” communication approach with content delivered, social monitoring strategy requires the firm’s active involvement in the whole communication process (from content delivery to customer response) (Barger et al. 2016 ). More specifically, social monitoring strategy is not only to observe and analyze the behaviors of customers in social media (Lamberton and Stephen 2016 ), but also to actively search for and respond to customer online needs and complaints (Van Noort and Willemsen 2012 ). A social monitoring strategy is thus characterized by a two-way communication process, in which the initiation comes from customers who comment and behave on social media, while the company takes advantage of customer behavior data to listen, learn, and react to its customers. Thus, the key objective of this strategy is to enhance customer satisfaction and cultivate stronger relationships with customers through ongoing social media listening and responding.

With today’s abundance of attitudinal and behavioral data, firms adopting this strategy use social media platforms as “tools” or “windows” to listen to customer voices and gain important market insights to support their marketing decisions (Moe and Schweidel 2017 ). Moreover, Carlson et al. ( 2018 ) argue that firms can take advantage of social media data to identify innovation opportunities and facilitate the innovation process. Hence, social media monitoring enables firms to assess consumers’ reactions, evaluate the prosperity of social media marketing initiatives, and allocate resources to different types of conversations and customer groups (Homburg et al. 2015 ). In other words, customers in this strategy are expected to be active in social media interactions, providing instantaneous and real-time feedback. This has in a way helped product development and experience improvements with resource inputs from customers’ knowledge stores.

Social monitoring strategy emphasizes the importance of carefully listening and responding to social media activities to have a better understanding of customer needs, gain critical market insights, and build stronger customer relationships (e.g., Timoshenko and Hauser 2019 ). It therefore requires firms to be actively involved in the whole communication process with customers, as customer engagement is not dependent on rewards, but is developed through the ongoing reciprocity between the firm and its customers (Barger et al. 2016 ). Thus, organizational capabilities, such as marketing sensing through effective information acquisition, interpretation and responding, are essential for the successful implementation of this strategy. More specifically, monitoring and text analysis techniques are needed to gather and capture social media data rapidly (Schweidel and Moe 2014 ). Noting the damage caused by electronic negative word of mouth (e-NWOM) on social media, firms adopting this strategy also require special capabilities to appropriately respond to customer online complaints and requests (Kim et al. 2016 ).

Social CRM strategy

Among the four SMMSs identified, social CRM strategy is characterized by the highest degree of strategic maturity, because it reflects “a philosophy and a business strategy supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes, and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment” (Greenberg 2009 , p. 34). The concept of social CRM is designed to combine the benefits derived from both the social media dimension (e.g., customer engagement) and the CRM dimension (e.g., customer retention) (Malthouse et al. 2013 ). In contrast with the traditional CRM approach, which assumes that customers are passive and only contribute to customer life value, social CRM strategy emphasizes the active role of customers who are empowered by social media and can make a contribution to multiple forms of value (Kumar et al. 2010 ). In brief, a social CRM strategy is a form of collaborative interaction, including firm–customer, inter-organizational, and inter-customer interactions, that are intended to engage and empower customers, so as to build mutually beneficial relationships with the firm and lead to superior performance.

Social media have become powerful enablers of CRM (Choudhury and Harrigan 2014 ). For example, Charoensukmongkol and Sasatanun ( 2017 ) argue that the integration of social media and CRM provides a possibility for firms to segment their customers based on similar characteristics, and can customize marketing offerings to the specific preferences of individual customers. With social CRM strategy, firms can enhance the likelihood of customer engagement through one-to-one social media interactions. Customers at this stage are collaborative and interactive in value creation, such as voluntarily providing innovative ideas and collaborating with brands (Jaakkola and Alexander 2014 ). Hence, besides resource like network assets, persuasion capital, and knowledge stores, engaged customers also contribute their creativity resource for value co-creation.

Social CRM capability is “a firm-level capability and refers to a firm’s competency in generating, integrating, and responding to information obtained from customer interactions that are facilitated by social media technologies” (Trainor et al. 2014 , p. 271). Therefore, firms should be extremely creative to combine social media data with its CRM system, as well as to link the massive social media data on customer activities to other data sources (e.g., customer service records) to generate better customer-learning and innovation opportunities (Choudhury and Harrigan 2014 ; Moe and Schweidel 2017 ). Social CRM strategy also emphasizes the significance of reciprocal information sharing and collaborations that are supported by the firm’s culture and commitment, operational resources, and cross-functional cooperation (Malthouse et al. 2013 ; Schultz and Peltier 2013 ). To sum up, social CRM capabilities, organizational learning capabilities connected with relationship management and innovation are essential prerequisites to building an effective social CRM strategy.

Validation of proposed SMMSs

Using the previously developed classification of SMMSs (i.e., social commerce strategy, social content strategy, social monitoring strategy, and social CRM strategy) as a basis, we reviewed the pertinent literature to collate useful knowledge supporting the content of each of these strategies. Table 4 provides a summary of the key empirical insights derived from the extant studies reviewed, together with resulting managerial lessons.

To validate the practical usefulness of our proposed classificatory framework of SMMSs, we first conducted a series of in-depth interviews with 15 social media marketing practitioners, who had their own firm/brand accounts on social media platforms, at least one year of social media marketing experience, and at least three years’ experience in their current organization (see Web Appendix 1 ). Interviewees represented companies located in China (8 companies), Finland (5 companies), and Sweden (2 companies) and involved in a variety of industries (e.g., digital tech, tourism, food, sport). All interviews were based on a specially designed guide (which was sent to participants in advance to prepare them for the interview) and were audiotaped and subsequently transcribed verbatim (see Web Appendix 2 ).

The main findings of this qualitative study are the following: (1) social media are mainly used as a key marketing channel to achieve business objectives, which, however, differentiates in terms of product-market type, organization size, and managerial mindset; (2) distinct differences exist across organizations in terms of their social media initiatives to deliver content, generate reactions, and develop social CRM; (3) there are marked variations in customer engagement levels across participant firms, resulting from the adoption of different SMMSs; (4) the firm’s propensity to use a specific SMMSs is enhanced by infrastructures, systems, and technologies that help to actively search, access, and integrate data from different sources, as well as facilitate the sharing and coordination of activities with customers; and (5) the adoption of a specific SMMS does not follow a sequential pattern in terms of strategic maturity development, but rather, depends on the firm’s strategic objectives, its willingness to commit the required resources, and the deployment of appropriate organizational capabilities.

To further confirm the existence of differences in profile characteristics among the four types of SMMSs, we conducted an electronic survey among a sample of 52 U.S. social media marketing managers who were randomly selected. For this purpose, we designed a structured questionnaire incorporating the key parameters related to SMMSs, namely firms’ strategic objectives, firms’ engagement initiatives, customers’ social media behaviors, social media resources and capabilities required, direction of interactions, and customer engagement levels (see Web Appendix 3 ).

Specifically, we found that: (1) each of the four SMMSs emphasize different types of strategic objectives, ranging from promoting and selling, in the case of social commerce strategy, to empowering and engaging in social CRM strategy; (2) experiential engagement initiatives geared to customer engagement were more evident at the advanced level, as opposed to the lower level strategies; (3) passive customer social media behaviors were more characteristic of the social commerce strategy, while more active customer behaviors were observed in the case of social CRM strategy; (4) the more advanced the maturity of the SMMS employed, the higher the level customer engagement, as well as the higher requirements in terms of organizational resources and specialized capabilities; and (5) one-way interaction was associated more with social commerce strategy, two-way interaction was more evident in the social content strategy and the social monitoring strategy, and collaborative interaction was a dominant feature in the social CRM strategy (see Web Appendix 4 ).

Future research directions

While the extant research offers insightful information and increased knowledge on SMMSs, there is still plenty of room to expand this field of research with other issues, especially given the rapidly changing developments in social media marketing practice. To gain a more accurate picture about the future of research on the subject, we sought the opinions of academic experts in the field through an electronically conducted survey among authors of academic journal articles written on the subject. We specifically asked them: (1) to suggest the three most important areas that research on SMMSs should focus on in the future; (2) within each of the areas suggested, to indicate three specific topics that need to be addressed more; and (3) within each topic, to illustrate analytical issues that warrant particular attention (see Web Appendix 5 ). Altogether, we received input from 43 social media marketing scholars who suggested 6 broad areas, 13 specific topics, and 82 focal issues for future research, which are presented in Table 5 .

Among the research issues proposed, finding appropriate metrics to measure performance in SMMSs seems to be an area to which top priority should be given. This is because performance is the ultimate outcome of these strategies, for which there is still little understanding due to the idiosyncratic nature of social media as a marketing tool (e.g., Beckers et al. 2017 ; Trainor et al. 2014 ). In particular, it is important to shed light on both short-term and long-term performance, as well as its effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptiveness aspects (e.g., Barger et al. 2016 ). Another key priority area stressed by experts in the field involves integrating to a greater extent various strategic issues regarding each of the marketing-mix elements in a social media context. This would help achieve better coordination between traditional and online marketing tools (e.g., Kolsarici and Vakratsas 2018 ; Kumar et al. 2017 ).

Respondents in our academic survey also stressed the evolutionary nature of knowledge with regard to each of the four SMMSs and proposed multiple issues for each of them. Particular attention should be paid to how inputs from customers and firms are interrelated in each of these strategies, taking into consideration the central role played by customer engagement behaviors and firm initiatives (e.g., Sheng 2019 ). Respondents also pinpointed the need for more emphasis on social CRM strategy (which is relatively under-researched), while there should also be a closer assessment of new developments in both marketing (e.g., concepts and tools) and social media (e.g., technologies and platforms) that can lead to the emergence of new types of SMMSs (e.g., Ahani et al. 2017 ; Choudhury and Harrigan 2014 ).

Respondents also noted that up to now the preparatory phase for designing SMMSs has been overlooked, and that therefore there is a need to shed more light on this because of its decisive role in achieving positive results. For example, issues relating to market/competitor analysis, macro-environmental scanning, and target marketing should be carefully studied in conjunction with formulating sound SMMSs, to better exploit opportunities and neutralize threats in a social media context (e.g., De Vries et al. 2017 ). By contrast, our survey among scholars in the field stressed the crucial nature of issues relating to SMMS implementation and control, which are of equal, or even greater, importance than those of strategy formulation (e.g., Järvinen and Taiminen 2016 ). The academics also indicated that, by their very nature, social media transcend national boundaries, thus leaving plenty of room to investigate the international ramifications of SMMSs, using cross-cultural research (e.g., Johnston et al. 2018 ).

Implications and conclusions

Theoretical implications.

Given the limited research on SMMSs, this study has several important theoretical implications. First, we are taking a step in this new theoretical direction by providing a workable definition and conceptualization of SMMS that combines both social media and marketing strategy dimensions. The study complements and extends previous research (e.g., Harmeling et al. 2017 ; Singaraju et al. 2016 ) that emphasized the value of social media as resource integrator in exchanging customer-owned resources, which can provide researchers with new angles to address the issue of integrating social media with marketing strategy. Such integrative efforts can have a meaningful long-term impact on building a new theory (or theories) of social media marketing. They also point to a deeper theoretical understanding of the roles played by resource identification, utilization, and reconfiguration in a SMMS context.

We have also extended the idea of “social interaction” and “social connectedness” in a social media context, which is critical because the power of a customer enabled by social media connections and interactions is of paramount importance in explaining the significance of SMMSs (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2013 ). More importantly, our study suggests that firms should take the initiative to motivate and engage customers, which will lead to wider and more extensive interactions. In particular, we show that a firm can leverage its social media usage through the use of different engagement initiatives to enforce customer interactivity and interconnectedness. Such enquiries can provide useful theoretical insights into the strategic marketing role played by social media in today’s highly digitalized and globalized world.

We are also furthering the customer engagement literature by proposing an SMMS developmental process. As firm–customer relationships evolve in a social media era, it is critical to identify those factors that have an impact on customer engagement. Although prior studies (e.g., Harmeling et al. 2017 ; Pansari and Kumar 2017 ) have demonstrated the engagement value contributed by customers and the need for engagement initiatives taken by firms, we are extending this idea to provide a more holistic view by highlighting the role of insights from both firms and customers to better understand the dynamics of SMMS formulation. We also suggest certain theories to specifically explain the role played by each of the components of the process in developing sound SMMSs. We capture the unique characteristics of social media by suggesting that these networks and interactions are tightly interrelated with the outcome of SMMS, which is customer engagement. Our proposed SMMS developmental process may therefore provide critical input for new studies focusing on customer engagement research.

 Finally, we build on various criteria to distinguish among four SMMSs, each representing a different level of strategic maturity. We show that a SMMS is not homogeneous, but needs to be understood in a wider, more nuanced way, as having different strategies relying on different goals and deriving insights from firms and their customers, ultimately leading to different customer engagement levels. In this regard, the identification of the key SMMSs stemming from our analysis can serve as the basis for developing specific marketing strategy constructs and scales within a social media context. We also indicate that different SMMSs can be implemented and yield superior competitive advantage only when the firm is in a position to devote to it the right amount and type of resources and capabilities (e.g., Gao et al. 2018 ; Kumar and Pansari 2016 ).

Managerial implications

Our study also has serious implications for managers. First, our analysis revealed that the ever-changing digital landscape on a global scale calls for a reassessment of the ways to strategically manage brands and customers in a social media context. This requires companies to understand the different goals for using social media and to develop their strategies accordingly. As a starting point, firms could explore customer motivations for using social media and effectively deploy the necessary resources to accommodate these motivations. They should also think carefully about how to engage customers when implementing their marketing strategies, because social media become resource integrators only when customers interact with and provide information on them (Singaraju et al. 2016 ).

Managers need to set objectives at the outset to guide the effective development, implementation, and control of SMMSs. Our study suggests four key SMMSs achieving different business goals. For example, the goal of social commerce strategy is to attract customers with transactional interests, that of social content strategy and social monitoring strategy is to deliver valuable content and service to customers, and that of social CRM strategy is to build mutually beneficial customer relationships by integrating social media data with current organizational processes. Unfortunately, many companies, especially smaller ones, tend to create their social media presence for a single purpose only: to disseminate massive commercial information on their social media web pages in the hope of attracting customers, even though these customers may find commercially intensive content annoying.

This study also suggests that social media investments should focus on the integration of social media platforms with internal company systems to build special social media capabilities (i.e., creating, combining, and reacting to information obtained from customer interactions on social media). Such capabilities are vital in developing a sustainable competitive advantage, superior market and financial performance. However, to achieve this, firms must have the right organizational structural and cultural transformation, as well as substantial management commitment and continuous investment.

Lastly, social media have become powerful tools for CRM, helping to transform it from traditional one-way interaction to collaborative interaction. This implies that customer engagement means not only encouraging customer engagement on social media, but also proactively learning from and collaborating with customers. As Pansari and Kumar et al. ( 2017 ) indicate, customer engagement can contribute both directly (e.g., purchase) and indirectly (e.g., customer knowledge value) to the firm. Therefore, interacting with customers via social media provides tremendous opportunities for firms to learn more about their customers and opens up new possibilities for product/service co-creation.

Conclusions

The exploding use of social media in the past decade has underscored the need for guidance on how to build SMMSs that foster relationships with customers, advance customer engagement, and increase marketing performance. However, a comprehensive definition, conceptualization, and framework to guide the analysis and development of SMMSs are lacking. This can be attributed to the recent introduction of social media as a strategic marketing tool, while both academics and practitioners still lack the necessary knowledge on how to convert social media data into actionable strategic marketing tools (Moe and Schweidel 2017 ). This insufficiency also stems from the fact that the adoption of more advanced SMMSs requires the possession of specific organizational capabilities that can be used to leverage social media, with the support of a culture that encourages breaking free from obsolete mindsets, emphasizing employee skills with intelligence in data and customer analytical insights, and operational excellence in organizational structure and business processes (Malthouse et al. 2013 ).

Our study takes the first step toward addressing this issue and provides useful guidelines for leveraging social media use in strategic marketing. In particular, we provide a systematic consolidation and extension of the extant pertinent SMMS literature to offer a robust definition, conceptualization, taxonomy, and validation of SMMSs. Specifically, we have amply demonstrated that the mere use of social media alone does not generate customer value, which instead is attained through the generation of connections and interactions between the firm and its customers, as well as among customers themselves. These generated social networks and influences can subsequently be used strategically for resource transformation and exchanges between the interacting parties. Our conceptualization of the SMMS developmental process also suggests that firms first need to recognize customers’ motivations to engage in brand-related social media activities and encourage their voluntary contributions.

Although the four SMMSs identified in our study (i.e., social commerce strategy, social content strategy, social monitoring strategy, and social CRM strategy) denote progressing levels of strategic maturity, their adoption does not follow a sequential pattern. As our validation procedures revealed, this will be determined by the firm’s strategic objectives, resources, and capabilities. Moreover, the success of the various SMMSs will depend on the firm’s ability to identify and leverage customer-owned resources, as in the case of transforming customers from passive receivers of the firm’s social media offerings to active value contributors. It will also depend on the firm’s willingness to allocate resources in order to foster collaborative conversations, develop appropriate responses, and enhance customer relationships. These will all ultimately help to build a sustainable competitive advantage and enhance business performance.

Although in our conceptualization of the process of developing SMMSs we treat customer engagement as the output of this process, we fully acknowledge that firms’ ultimate objective to engage in social media marketing activities is to improve their market (e.g., customer equity) and financial (e.g., revenues) performance. In fact, extant social media marketing research (e.g., Kumar et al. 2010 ; Kumar and Pansari 2016 ; Harmeling et al. 2017 ) repeatedly stresses the conducive role of customer engagement in ensuring high performance results.

SMMSs are difficult to operationalize by focusing solely on the elements of the marketing mix (i.e., product, price, distribution, and promotion), mainly because many other important parameters are involved in their conceptualization, such as relationship management, market development, and business innovation issues. However, each SMMS seems to have a different marketing mix focus, with social commerce strategy emphasizing advertising and sales, social content strategy emphasizing branding and communication, social monitoring strategy emphasizing service and product development, and social CRM strategy emphasizing customer management and innovation.

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Li, F., Larimo, J. & Leonidou, L.C. Social media marketing strategy: definition, conceptualization, taxonomy, validation, and future agenda. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 49 , 51–70 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-020-00733-3

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Social marketing: an overview of approach and effects

This paper reviews the applicability of commercial and social marketing to teen driving safety. It draws on a wide range of information, including evaluation studies of specific programs as well as standards of practice within these two professions. Social marketing has been widely applied for more than three decades in the fields of public health, environmental protection, and political marketing with significant success. The paper attempts to distinguish between the practice of commercial marketing, whose goal is profit, and the practice of social marketing, whose goal is societal benefit. Issues of sustainability, segmentation, differences in behavioral characteristics, and cultural competence are discussed with specific examples drawn from the transportation safety literature. The paper suggests that social marketing represents a viable companion to control and education approaches to behavior change to promote teen driving safety.

Social marketing is not a science, but rather a professional craft which relies on multiple scientific disciplines to create programs designed to influence human behavior on a large scale. Commercial marketing targets purchase behaviors, product choice behaviors, and product promotion behaviors. People are asked to buy products, switch brands, and talk favorably about a company's product. Social marketing typically targets complex, often socially controversial behaviors, with delayed and distant benefits to audiences who often do not recognize they have a problem, much less are looking for a solution. Like other professional crafts (that is, clinical medicine) marketing uses science extensively, but it is also learned through experience. It is a flexible framework within which scientists, managers, and artists work together to influence behavior on a massive scale.

Social marketing has been in the marketing literature since the 1960s. Variations of social marketing have been applied to promote traffic safety, tobacco control, drug prevention, childhood immunizations, improved nutrition and diet, and environmental behavior, as well as to reduce infant mortality.

Effects of social marketing programs

The overall percentage of increased seat belt use in the United States was due to the widespread availability of seat belts, publicity from organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and stronger seat belt laws. 1 Click it or ticket , a program that demonstrated the importance of primary seat belt laws combined with effective publicity of enforcement, increased seat belt use in North Carolina from 63% to 80% and went on to become a national model. 2

Zero tolerance means zero chances , a social communication campaign, found awareness of the no tolerance law rose from 61% to 63% over six months. 3

Friends don't let friends drive drunk, a social advertising campaign of the Ad Council, reported an 85% recall of the messages. In addition, 80% of those reported they took action to stop a friend from driving and 25% said they stopped a friend from driving while intoxicated. 4

Social norming programs such as Montana's “2 out of 3” reported a slight reduction in impaired driving by university teens. Other social norming programs showed effects in multiple university settings in reducing alcohol abuse among college age students—Florida State University reported a 15% reduction in high risk drinking among male students and 5% among females; Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York reported a 32% reduction in student athletes drinking more than once per week. 5

Florida's first TRUTH anti‐smoking campaign, which reduced teen smoking in one year by 19%, was also followed by a well funded national campaign. 6

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB campaign, which promoted activity among teens 9–13, reported a 74% national awareness of the campaign after one year. 7

Dozens of HIV/AIDS prevention efforts ranging from the Swiss Stop AIDS Program, which increased condom use in casual partners from 50% to 80%, to programs throughout the developing world in Uganda, Jamaica, Brazil, Thailand, etc, have also shown positive results. 8

PREMI , a program in Ecuador, increased full immunization coverage of the highest risk infants at one year of age from 5% to 28% in 18 months. 9

Mass media and health practices , a program in Honduras, increased correct use of oral rehydration solution from 9.2% to 44.8% in five years. 10

Exclusive breastfeeding rates were increased in Madagascar from 46% to 68%; in Ghana from 68% to 79%; and in Bolivia from 54% to 65%. 11

Dozens of family planning programs throughout the world have increased contraceptive use in resistant rural populations of complex and multicultural backgrounds. 12

Unsuccessful social marketing programs are also well documented. They include high profile programs such as the US National Anti‐Drug Campaign of the late 1990s, the early anti‐smoking campaigns, as well as numerous other programs throughout the world. The US Got milk? campaign demonstrated the difficulties of effecting widespread behavior change. The $110 million ad campaign ran over five years and showed no corresponding increase in milk sales. Changes in milk packaging and flavoring caused a modest increase, but competition from the booming bottled water industry and a price increase for raw milk caused those increases to eventually disappear. Social marketing is a continuous struggle against unpredictable competing forces.

All of the specific evaluation data presented above have been submitted to peer review. Weaknesses in the studies include many of the difficulties associated with measuring large scale behavior change. Some studies have appeared to accelerate secular trends, while others have conflicting causal explanations. However, all of these studies figure as important research in the social marketing, transportation, and public health literature. In addition to these few programs, hundreds of other social marketing and thousands of commercial marketing programs have been analyzed in the professional marketing literature. The findings cited here represent standards of practice for that profession and recognize that marketing is both art and science.

Unintended effects

Because social marketing is a “scaled up” intervention, which often uses mass media to carry messages, unintended effects have been documented. 13 In the Philippines, an HIV/AIDS program designed to debunk the myth that mosquitoes carry HIV had the unintended consequence of reducing empathy for HIV+ individuals. The public reasoning was that “one cannot be blamed for mosquito behavior, but people can be blamed for their own sexual activity”. Unintended effects have only rarely been studied, but represent a legitimate area of concern to social marketers. Hypothetically, the unintended consequences of media ads which teach parents how to talk to teens about driving might also give teens, who see the ads, counterarguments.

Background of social marketing approach

The social marketing definition illustrates five key elements of the approach:

• a program management process (sequenced action steps);
• designed to influence human behavior on a large scale;
• by creating benefits and reducing barriers that matter to specific audiences;
• through consumer oriented decision making (audience behavior is key);
• leading to increased societal benefit (as defined by somebody).

Social marketing is characterized by nine fundamental principles:

1. The Marketing Mix is the primary element that differentiates social marketing from communication and advertising approaches with which it is often confused. When Coca Cola markets a new drink it must first design the product's color, taste, and consistency. It then prices that product to be competitive, places or distributes that product in places where people are most likely to desire it, and then they promote it, using a wide variety of approaches including prizes, events, publicity, advertising, and discounts. In social marketing, however, the product is often the desired behavior itself (“breastfeed your child at work”) and/or some supporting device or policy necessary to make the behavior possible (a breastfeeding room in a modern office complex); price is the embarrassment and time required to breastfeed, while promotion is all the activities the company and coworkers take to reduce the embarrassment and support the behavior.

2. Let's Make a Deal . Perhaps social marketing's principal contribution to social change is the notion that voluntary human behavior is achieved through an exchange of value. It argues that people change not only because they are well informed or forced into action, but also because they get something they value in return. The process of behavior change in social marketing attempts to reduce the cost and increase the benefits of the new behavior.

3. Change conditions before messages . Behavior is tough to change. Don't do it if you don't have to. If you can create a safer air bag, why worry about seat belts? Also, consider conditions that make adoption difficult, such as social justice, barriers due to poverty, discrimination, and poor access to services. A parent oriented program, for example, might have to address the limited time that working Hispanic parents have with teens, or the language barriers which the teen, as the most proficient English speaker in the family, may overcome while his or her parents may struggle. The most powerful marketing question you can answer is: W hat can I do to make it un necessary for my audience to change their behavior and still achieve my social goal?

4. It's about behavior, not awareness . Three characteristics of social marketing behavior are:

• observable action by a specific …
• segment of the population, under specific …

Example: men between the ages of 17 and 20 will buckle up before placing the car in gear when driving a passenger vehicle.

A call to action is the centerpiece of a social marketing campaign. People want to know what to do, not what to think. Social marketing is skeptical of the notion that information leads to behavior change—although we recognize that in the case of a highly salient consequence (infant death), an information campaign on SIDS which promotes a simple but effective behavior (place the infant on his/her back to sleep and avoid Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), there is convincing evidence that information alone can effect large scale behavior.

Figure 1 ​ 1 describes two examples of similar behaviors, performed by different segments, under different conditions. This analysis is helpful in determining interventions that will be effective under various conditions.

Figure 1  Example of analysis of behavior useful in determining effectiveness of interventions under varying conditions.

5. Mine is better than his . People have choices. Therefore, almost all behaviors compete with other behaviors to provide benefit to the individual. Coke competes with Pepsi; condom use among teens competes with the fear of “losing an erection if I use a condom”, and driving safely competes with “I have to take this cell phone call, it's from my date”. Any benefits we offer to “drive carefully” must not only be appealing to the individual teen, but must also compete effectively with benefits offered by alternative behaviors.

6. The audience is always right . Consumer and market research is at the heart of all effective social marketing. In addition to asking why people engage in a specific behavior, market research is focused on the answers to a series of practical questions leading to program design decisions, questions such as:

• How are people different so that we can target their specific wants?
• What benefits do people care about most?
• Where are people most likely to want to go to get our products and services?
• What barriers are the toughest for people to deal with, and how can those barriers be lowered?
• How important is the “price” of a new behavior to different users?
• What messages (language, metaphors, images) break through the clutter of other messages and resonate as authentic for them?

7. What do they have in common? While all people and communities are different from each other, they can be grouped into segments that maximize our ability to influence their behavior. An audience segment is a group of individuals who share a set of common characteristics. These characteristics include:

• Demographics—the same age, income, gender, or ethnic range.
• Risk factors, which differentiate high and low risk audiences (people who refuse to buckle up) .
• How they engage in the risk behavior (they don't buckle up until they reach the first traffic light) .
• Wants—they desire the same basic goal in performing the risk behavior (they want to get a fast start) .
• Perceptions—they share attitudes about the behavior (“fast start makes me feel like a race car driver”) .
• Channels—they share the same channels of communication and look to the same spokespersons as credible (“I'll listen to my kids, but not my wife. She nags about everything”) .
• Readiness to change (“I've been trying to use my seat belt, but I just keep forgetting” versus “I am never going to use that darn thing, it's a nuisance”) .
• Often a segment will be based on a combination of these factors.

There are three aspects of a target segment that make it more viable:

1. Does their behavior contribute to solving the problem?

2. Is the segment large enough to make a measurable difference?

3. Is the segment small enough for us to reach effectively with our resources?

8. Behaviors are different—marketing adjusts to the differences . Some behaviors are simple: place an infant on its back to sleep in order to prevent SIDS. Some behaviors are natural but under strong external attack: breastfeed an infant for a full six months. Some behaviors are politically sensitive (needle exchange to prevent HIV transmission, abortion, sex education in school). Some behaviors are supported by strong enforcement policies (seat belt use, drunk driving, hand gun use). Others are complex and require new skills, such as the management of infant diarrhea in an African village. Some behaviors are well understood, while others are novel and seem curious. Some behaviors have naturally occurring rewards, while others have delayed rewards, or no rewards that an audience cares about. Each of these factors and more are critical points in understanding which marketing strategy is needed (fig 2 ​ 2 ).

Figure 2  Defining differences in behaviors is a useful strategy in choosing an appropriate social marketing strategy.

Figure 2 ​ 2 defines four common dimensions and four specific teen driving variations. Research on the differences between these behaviors is useful in choosing an appropriate marketing strategy.

9. Involvement . This principle considers the importance of the audience's active participation and shared control over the design and execution of specific activities.

Social marketing measurement framework

Figure 3 ​ 3 is a logic framework that illustrates the variables marketers consider important in establishing the success of a social marketing effort.

Figure 3  Logic framework useful in conceptualizing social marketing efforts. The gray boxes list evidence that is most often measured.

In sum, social marketing is a flexible, eclectic practice of large scale social change. It is a way of thinking that places emphasis on an “exchange of value” with the audience rather than social control or education alone.

Special issues in teen driving and social marketing

Lessons from commercial marketing to teens.

In 2004 in the US teens spent $105 billion and influenced another $48 billion. In 1998 US companies spent $200 billion on advertising. Teens are exposed to 3000 ads a day. Eighty three percent of teens reported going online in 2004. 14 Teens are a priority market for commercial marketing in America today, and tens of millions of dollars are invested in teen research. Here are some of the beliefs about teens that emerge from that experience.

• Teens change rapidly, and therefore correct segmentation by age is essential.
• Teen opinions are very strong and they want to be listened to, not talked at.
• Rebellion and independence from authority is a strong motivator.
• Embedding messages in other content is better than straightforward, hard sells.
• Social networks may be more important than generalized “coolness”.
• Brands are important—a brand represents something they come to trust.

Children develop brand loyalty by age 10, and fix brand loyalty by age 15. Their preferred “space” is bedrooms or dens. Teen segments are typically defined by readiness to change: innovators (2–3%), trendsetters (7%), early adopters (10%), and mainstream (80%). It is generally agreed that fads pass down through this segmentation strata. Most marketing data is on younger teens, but maturation changes between 13 and 19 are huge. The key seems to be segmentation based on beliefs specific to age groups. 13

Marketing approaches to teen research

Focus groups are woefully inadequate as a means to understand any audience, but given the rapid changes in teen attitudes and the impact of peer influence, they are particularly inadequate. A wide variety of alternative research tools have emerged, including: ethnographies; small panels during which teens are given assignments and tracked over time; immersion hikes , where research is embedded in day‐long activities; computer assisted telephone focus groups ; and “ up to fives ”, where clients can listen in to telephone interviews with up to five respondents and direct cueing questions to interviewers secretly. Doer/non‐doer studies compare trendsetters and early adopter segments to identify determinants that predict behavior. Room shopping gets permission from teens to search their rooms to identify the variety of items that may be used for motivational purposes. There are a plethora of information and information systems directed at understanding youth. One interesting system is called TRU, Teenage Research Unlimited. They provide an updated subscription service based on a 2000 plus, nationally representative survey of 12–19 year olds in six‐month waves on the behavior and changing motivational attitudes of US teens.

Cultural competence, social marketing, and teen driving

Culture in America is often synonymous with ethnicity, but in marketing there can be a culture of risk takers, a culture of pick‐up truck drivers, a culture of men drivers, and a culture of women drivers. Many of these cultures can be cross referenced, so you should have a culture or segment of female teen drivers who take risks. Justification for the importance of these cultures is reflected in a few statistical facts:

Among adults ages 65 and over, motor vehicle injury rates are twice as high for men than for women. Male high school students are less likely than female students to wear seat belts. 15 African American high school students are less likely than white students to wear seat belts all the time, putting them at increased risk of motor vehicle related injuries. 16 Among Hispanic Americans pedestrian fatalities are nearly twice as high as for whites. The Hispanic population makes 50% more walking trips than non‐Hispanic populations. 17

These behavioral differences are often accounted for by belief systems called cultures, as well as external factors such as car ownership, economic status, or education level. A marketing plan developed by the Louisiana State TIGER program used market research to define the differences between key traffic safety segments. For example, the program reports that community messages rather than individual messages work best with the Hispanic population. Humor is less likely to be effective. In African American communities demonstrating respect for the individual is key. With the Indian population cooperation is highly valued and being quiet and still is a valued behavior. For so‐called Y generation teens honesty, trustworthiness, and sincerity are valued. These generalizations are useful starting points for targeted marketed research with specific population under specific conditions. 18

Sustainability of social marketing programs

Have you ever heard of a product called Coca Cola? If your answer is yes, as it is for billions of people around the world, then why does Coca Cola keep marketing? Why does it continue to change its container, offer price specials, invent new products, and advertise?

There are a few social behaviors, such as using a seat belt, that remain constant over a long period of time, that are easy to execute, and that become part of the driving experience. These can be said to be sustainable, as long as a dramatic new event does not occur. Remember we once thought that breast self‐examination was the best way for women to detect breast cancer early; then our science changed. In social marketing the cost of marketing has to be built into the cost of programs. The level of marketing costs often varies over the lifetime of a behavior or product. Launch and introduction are often the most expensive, maintenance can cost less, and reviving an old idea can cost somewhere in between.

Thinking like a marketer: a hypothetical case study

A social marketing strategy provides both a way to think about a problem and a blueprint for action. The strategy shown in the box at left is totally hypothetical.

Hypothetical social marketing strategy

Problem statement, 1. what is the social problem i want to address?.

Reduce the number and severity of automobile crashes.

Objective: 2.What action do I believe will best address that problem?

Reduce the number of unlicensed teens who are driving a car by 70%.

Audience: 3. Who is being asked to take that action:

• Unlicensed teen drivers
• Their parents
• State legislators
• Traffic enforcement officers

OVERALL STRATEGIC OPTIONS

1. understand the behavior of parents better.

Look for structural differences in families, identify who influences both groups' decision making, and identify perceived barriers and benefits to both behaviors.

2. Re‐frame the problem

Make legislators aware of new data on the large number of unlicensed teens driving automobiles. Change the “framing” of the problem from drunk driving to illegal driving. Pose the question: what are these parents thinking?

3. Identify specific behaviors that will help parents change

Identify specific parent behaviors that could be brought under enforcement control.

4. Energize the police sales force

Use police networks to promote enforcement of existing laws. Look for ways to make the new enforcement compatible with existing Click it or ticket approaches.

5. Create a large scale behavioral media campaign directed at parents, teens, enforcement, and legislators

Publicize the strategy that was selected from among alternatives 1–4.

Concluding remarks

This paper demonstrates the effectiveness and limitation of social materials in addressing large scale behavior change. Traffic safety programs such as Click it or ticket have already used social marketing successfully as an organization model. It suggests that commercial market research on teens could be of value to the safe driving community.

About the author

William A Smith is the Executive Vice President of the Academy for Educational Development (AED). He is also a co‐founder of the Social Marketing Institute, a columnist and editorial board member of Social Marketing Quarterly , the International Journal of Health Communication , and Applied Environmental Education and Communication: An International Journal . He recently received the Alan Andreasen Award for scholarship and practice in Social Marketing and served on the IOM committee on health literacy. Dr Smith has a doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts in non‐formal education with an emphasis on gaming theory and an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University of South Florida. The AED is an independent, non‐profit organization that works to foster large scale social change in education, health, and the environment, and is committed to solving critical social problems and building the capacity of individuals, communities, and institutions to become more self‐sufficient.

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented as part of the first Expert Panel meeting of the Youthful Driver Research Initiative, a collaborative research program between the Center for Injury Research and Prevention ( http://www.chop.edu/injury ) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) ( http://www.chop.edu ) and State Farm Insurance Companies® (State Farm) ( http://www.statefarm.com ). The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily the views of CHOP or State Farm.

• Patient Care

College of Public Health

Quick links, office of research.

The USF Center for Social Marketing uses Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) to design, implement, evaluate, and disseminate evidence-based approaches to disease prevention and health promotion.

Mission Statement

To develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based approaches to strengthen community capacity for sustained disease prevention and health promotion.

We use Community-Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM), a program planning framework using social marketing, to advocate for program, policy, and systems level change. We conduct applied research and provide training and technical assistance to community-based organizations and partners.

Research Focus

Our current research focuses on COVID-19 prevention among minority communities, cancer prevention activities (e.g., screening, immunization), adolescent obesity prevention, workplace health, and more. Social marketing is the common thread in all these diverse areas.

What is Social Marketing?

Social Marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good.  -  International Social Marketing Association

Our goal is voluntary adoption of beneficial behaviors. Social marketing seeks to make the behavior change “fun, easy, and popular,” (as social marketing guru, Bill Smith, says), often new products or services (called ‘offerings”) need to be created, along with ways of promoting their benefits to the community. In marketing, the intended users drive development of offerings and promotional strategies by participating in research or co-design activities. Social marketing has been used to promote public health, environmental sustainability, social justice, diversity, and inclusion, and reduce injuries, illness, and deaths.

Building Skills to Create Change

Dr. Claudia Parvanta, Director of the USF Center for Social Marketing, explains how social marketing coursework builds skills to create change.

Impact of COVID-19 Messaging

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at USF pooled its expertise and resources in order to help influence the effectiveness of public health messaging related to COVID-19.

USF is a World Leader in Social Marketing

USF faculty and students help communities in Florida, across the United States, and around the globe to use social marketing principles to improve their lives. You can join us by:

• Earning a Graduate Certificate in Social Marketing
• Earning a  Master of Public Health  with a Concentration in Social Marketing
• Earning a  Doctorate of Public Health  (students in Community and Family health may focus on Social Marketing with a degree concentration in CFH)
• Collaborating with faculty on cutting-edge social marketing research
• Take part in our biennial  Social Marketing Conference  and Training Academy in Clearwater Beach, Florida
• Take a fully guided on-line course in Community Based Prevention Marketing , designed for learners from community-based organizations to quickly adapt social marketing principles to their own needs

Recognized as a leader in Social Marketing, USF College of Public Health offers academic programs in social marketing

The USF Center for Social Marketing uses Community Based Prevention Marketing for behavior change

Learn how to create change in communities with Social Marketing in Public Health Training Workshops

9 Best Marketing Research Methods to Know Your Buyer Better [+ Examples]

Published: August 08, 2024

One of the most underrated skills you can have as a marketer is marketing research — which is great news for this unapologetic cyber sleuth.

From brand design and product development to buyer personas and competitive analysis, I’ve researched a number of initiatives in my decade-long marketing career.

And let me tell you: having the right marketing research methods in your toolbox is a must.

Market research is the secret to crafting a strategy that will truly help you accomplish your goals. The good news is there is no shortage of options.

How to Choose a Marketing Research Method

Thanks to the Internet, we have more marketing research (or market research) methods at our fingertips than ever, but they’re not all created equal. Let’s quickly go over how to choose the right one.

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1. Identify your objective.

What are you researching? Do you need to understand your audience better? How about your competition? Or maybe you want to know more about your customer’s feelings about a specific product.

Before starting your research, take some time to identify precisely what you’re looking for. This could be a goal you want to reach, a problem you need to solve, or a question you need to answer.

For example, an objective may be as foundational as understanding your ideal customer better to create new buyer personas for your marketing agency (pause for flashbacks to my former life).

Or if you’re an organic sode company, it could be trying to learn what flavors people are craving.

2. Determine what type of data and research you need.

Next, determine what data type will best answer the problems or questions you identified. There are primarily two types: qualitative and quantitative. (Sound familiar, right?)

• Qualitative Data is non-numerical information, like subjective characteristics, opinions, and feelings. It’s pretty open to interpretation and descriptive, but it’s also harder to measure. This type of data can be collected through interviews, observations, and open-ended questions.
• Quantitative Data , on the other hand, is numerical information, such as quantities, sizes, amounts, or percentages. It’s measurable and usually pretty hard to argue with, coming from a reputable source. It can be derived through surveys, experiments, or statistical analysis.

Understanding the differences between qualitative and quantitative data will help you pinpoint which research methods will yield the desired results.

For instance, thinking of our earlier examples, qualitative data would usually be best suited for buyer personas, while quantitative data is more useful for the soda flavors.

However, truth be told, the two really work together.

Qualitative conclusions are usually drawn from quantitative, numerical data. So, you’ll likely need both to get the complete picture of your subject.

For example, if your quantitative data says 70% of people are Team Black and only 30% are Team Green — Shout out to my fellow House of the Dragon fans — your qualitative data will say people support Black more than Green.

(As they should.)

Primary Research vs Secondary Research

You’ll also want to understand the difference between primary and secondary research.

Primary research involves collecting new, original data directly from the source (say, your target market). In other words, it’s information gathered first-hand that wasn’t found elsewhere.

Some examples include conducting experiments, surveys, interviews, observations, or focus groups.

Meanwhile, secondary research is the analysis and interpretation of existing data collected from others. Think of this like what we used to do for school projects: We would read a book, scour the internet, or pull insights from others to work from.

So, which is better?

Personally, I say any research is good research, but if you have the time and resources, primary research is hard to top. With it, you don’t have to worry about your source's credibility or how relevant it is to your specific objective.

You are in full control and best equipped to get the reliable information you need.

3. Put it all together.

Once you know your objective and what kind of data you want, you’re ready to select your marketing research method.

For instance, let’s say you’re a restaurant trying to see how attendees felt about the Speed Dating event you hosted last week.

You shouldn’t run a field experiment or download a third-party report on speed dating events; those would be useless to you. You need to conduct a survey that allows you to ask pointed questions about the event.

This would yield both qualitative and quantitative data you can use to improve and bring together more love birds next time around.

Best Market Research Methods for 2024

Now that you know what you’re looking for in a marketing research method, let’s dive into the best options.

Note: According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing report, understanding customers and their needs is one of the biggest challenges facing marketers today. The options we discuss are great consumer research methodologies , but they can also be used for other areas.

Primary Research

1. interviews.

Interviews are a form of primary research where you ask people specific questions about a topic or theme. They typically deliver qualitative information.

I’ve conducted many interviews for marketing purposes, but I’ve also done many for journalistic purposes, like this profile on comedian Zarna Garg . There’s no better way to gather candid, open-ended insights in my book, but that doesn’t mean they’re a cure-all.

What I like: Real-time conversations allow you to ask different questions if you’re not getting the information you need. They also push interviewees to respond quickly, which can result in more authentic answers.

What I dislike: They can be time-consuming and harder to measure (read: get quantitative data) unless you ask pointed yes or no questions.

Best for: Creating buyer personas or getting feedback on customer experience, a product, or content.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups are similar to conducting interviews but on a larger scale.

In marketing and business, this typically means getting a small group together in a room (or Zoom), asking them questions about various topics you are researching. You record and/or observe their responses to then take action.

They are ideal for collecting long-form, open-ended feedback, and subjective opinions.

One well-known focus group you may remember was run by Domino’s Pizza in 2009 .

After poor ratings and dropping over $100 million in revenue, the brand conducted focus groups with real customers to learn where they could have done better.

It was met with comments like “worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had” and “the crust tastes like cardboard.” But rather than running from the tough love, it took the hit and completely overhauled its recipes.

The team admitted their missteps and returned to the market with better food and a campaign detailing their “Pizza Turn Around.”

The result? The brand won a ton of praise for its willingness to take feedback, efforts to do right by its consumers, and clever campaign. But, most importantly, revenue for Domino’s rose by 14.3% over the previous year.

The brand continues to conduct focus groups and share real footage from them in its promotion:

What I like: Similar to interviewing, you can dig deeper and pivot as needed due to the real-time nature. They’re personal and detailed.

What I dislike: Once again, they can be time-consuming and make it difficult to get quantitative data. There is also a chance some participants may overshadow others.

Best for: Product research or development

Pro tip: Need help planning your focus group? Our free Market Research Kit includes a handy template to start organizing your thoughts in addition to a SWOT Analysis Template, Survey Template, Focus Group Template, Presentation Template, Five Forces Industry Analysis Template, and an instructional guide for all of them. Download yours here now.

3. Surveys or Polls

Surveys are a form of primary research where individuals are asked a collection of questions. It can take many different forms.

They could be in person, over the phone or video call, by email, via an online form, or even on social media. Questions can be also open-ended or closed to deliver qualitative or quantitative information.

A great example of a close-ended survey is HubSpot’s annual State of Marketing .

In the State of Marketing, HubSpot asks marketing professionals from around the world a series of multiple-choice questions to gather data on the state of the marketing industry and to identify trends.

The survey covers various topics related to marketing strategies, tactics, tools, and challenges that marketers face. It aims to provide benchmarks to help you make informed decisions about your marketing.

It also helps us understand where our customers’ heads are so we can better evolve our products to meet their needs.

Apple is no stranger to surveys, either.

In 2011, the tech giant launched Apple Customer Pulse , which it described as “an online community of Apple product users who provide input on a variety of subjects and issues concerning Apple.”

"For example, we did a large voluntary survey of email subscribers and top readers a few years back."

While these readers gave us a long list of topics, formats, or content types they wanted to see, they sometimes engaged more with content types they didn’t select or favor as much on the surveys when we ran follow-up ‘in the wild’ tests, like A/B testing.”  

Pepsi saw similar results when it ran its iconic field experiment, “The Pepsi Challenge” for the first time in 1975.

The beverage brand set up tables at malls, beaches, and other public locations and ran a blindfolded taste test. Shoppers were given two cups of soda, one containing Pepsi, the other Coca-Cola (Pepsi’s biggest competitor). They were then asked to taste both and report which they preferred.

People overwhelmingly preferred Pepsi, and the brand has repeated the experiment multiple times over the years to the same results.

What I like: It yields qualitative and quantitative data and can make for engaging marketing content, especially in the digital age.

What I dislike: It can be very time-consuming. And, if you’re not careful, there is a high risk for scientific error.

Best for: Product testing and competitive analysis

Pro tip:  " Don’t make critical business decisions off of just one data set," advises Pamela Bump. "Use the survey, competitive intelligence, external data, or even a focus group to give you one layer of ideas or a short-list for improvements or solutions to test. Then gather your own fresh data to test in an experiment or trial and better refine your data-backed strategy."

Secondary Research

8. public domain or third-party research.

While original data is always a plus, there are plenty of external resources you can access online and even at a library when you’re limited on time or resources.

Some reputable resources you can use include:

• Pew Research Center
• McKinley Global Institute
• Relevant Global or Government Organizations (i.e United Nations or NASA)

It’s also smart to turn to reputable organizations that are specific to your industry or field. For instance, if you’re a gardening or landscaping company, you may want to pull statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

If you’re a digital marketing agency, you could look to Google Research or HubSpot Research . (Hey, I know them!)

What I like: You can save time on gathering data and spend more time on analyzing. You can also rest assured the data is from a source you trust.

What I dislike: You may not find data specific to your needs.

Best for: Companies under a time or resource crunch, adding factual support to content

Pro tip: Fellow HubSpotter Iskiev suggests using third-party data to inspire your original research. “Sometimes, I use public third-party data for ideas and inspiration. Once I have written my survey and gotten all my ideas out, I read similar reports from other sources and usually end up with useful additions for my own research.”

9. Buy Research

If the data you need isn’t available publicly and you can’t do your own market research, you can also buy some. There are many reputable analytics companies that offer subscriptions to access their data. Statista is one of my favorites, but there’s also Euromonitor , Mintel , and BCC Research .

What I like: Same as public domain research

What I dislike: You may not find data specific to your needs. It also adds to your expenses.

Best for: Companies under a time or resource crunch or adding factual support to content

Which marketing research method should you use?

You’re not going to like my answer, but “it depends.” The best marketing research method for you will depend on your objective and data needs, but also your budget and timeline.

My advice? Aim for a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. If you can do your own original research, awesome. But if not, don’t beat yourself up. Lean into free or low-cost tools . You could do primary research for qualitative data, then tap public sources for quantitative data. Or perhaps the reverse is best for you.

Whatever your marketing research method mix, take the time to think it through and ensure you’re left with information that will truly help you achieve your goals.

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How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

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Exploring LGBTQ+ Marketing Scholarship and Strategies

In this article, Michael Mehmet, Clifford Lewis , and Nina Reynolds reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “A Narrative Review of LGBTQ+ Marketing Scholarship,” found in the Australasian Marketing Journal .

Motivation Behind the Research : The authorship team was motivated to delve into the realm of LGBTQ+ marketing literature out of a fundamental curiosity about the portrayal and engagement of the LGBTQ+ communities within consumer contexts and as portrayed in the marketing literature. Such an examination was timely, given the surge in diversity and inclusion efforts within marketing practice, calling to question notions of authenticity in engagement/inclusion and how the diversity of the LGBTQ+ communities was portrayed. Accordingly, we wanted to provide a potential path forward for those wanting to research in this space.

External Influences on Research Pursuit : LGBTQ+ people are becoming mainstream within marketing campaigns. This representation does not automatically mean they are meaningfully and respectfully included in marketing – but that their influence as a consumer group is being recognized. Concurrently, while Australia has achieved marriage equality, that has not translated into social inclusion as witnessed by various anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns following World Pride in 2023. Given the influence of marketing on social norms, marketing can play a role in LGBTQ+ inclusion – if it is done meaningfully – thus motivating our examination of how the academic literature has contributed to this discourse.

Challenges and Surprising Findings : One of the most challenging aspects of conducting this research was navigating the nuanced intersection of marketing theory and LGBTQ+ identity politics. Unravelling the layers of representation, inclusivity, and stigmatization within a marginalized community presented enlightening revelations. One such revelation being how marketing literature typically drew on heterosexual consumers for their perspective about LGBTQ+ inclusion in marketing practice – almost drawing validity for LGBTQ+ identities from a heterosexual perspective as opposed to a consumer group in and of themselves.

Innovation and Impact : This research sheds light on the intricacies of LGBTQ+ marketing beyond superficial inclusion. By critically examining literature, it aims to propel discussions on social justice in marketing practices, instigate meaningful inclusion, and highlight the role of marketing and marketing scholars in advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. The paper encourages scholars to engage with LGBTQ+ people as consumers themselves rather than in opposition to or contrast with the heterosexual mainstream.

Advice for New Scholars : LGBTQ+ research can be very topical and provide a nuanced perspective to the marketing theory – based on how those with a stigmatized identity are influenced through the various elements of the marketing mix. This research area comes with a responsibility to ensure scholars engage with the LGBTQ+ communities as the subject and (not just) object of the research in a meaningful and respectful way – considering the influence our scholarship can have. It is important to approach the topic with empathy, integrity, and a commitment to amplifying minoritized voices – as opposed to one purely focused on a profit motive.

Michael Mehmet, Clifford Lewis, and Nina Reynolds

Michael Mehmet (pictured) is an associate professor in marketing at the University of Wollongong, Australia, in the School of Business. Michael is a researcher of social listening and has utilized qualitative techniques in the following areas: social marketing, policy development, tourism, business practices, and environmental management. Clifford Lewis is a marketing academic at Charles Strut University in Australia and a research fellow at Tourism Reset. He is a member of ACON's Research Ethics Review Committee and was honored as a Research Hero by the Market Research Society in the UK in 2022. He has research interests in transformative customer experiences and LGBTQI_ inclusion in place and recreational contexts. Nina Reynolds is a professor of marketing in the faculty of business and law at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She has a PhD in international marketing research, an MPhil in questionnaire design, and two bachelor's degrees in American management studies and psychology. She has research interests in research methods and digital research.

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Creating a social-first marketing strategy 14 tips to keep in mind.

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Much of marketing is about meeting customers where they are—figuring out where you can reach them and how. Especially for the last decade or so, that means meeting them on social media. With over 5 billion users worldwide, social media has become a place where users not only go to connect with friends and family but with brands as well, with a growing number of users even shopping directly from social media platforms.

Many brands, therefore, have decided to take a “social-first” strategy to their marketing, creating and planning their content around social media and its users’ behaviors. For those businesses that haven’t yet delved into this strategy, the members of Forbes Communications Council share a few tips to keep in mind.

1. Find Avenues For Authentic Audience Connection

Focus on authentic audience connection by seeking out conversations and participating in relevant discussions. Prioritizing engagement aligns with social media’s shift toward meaningful interactions, valued by both algorithms and users. It’s more than a content push—it’s dialogue that uncovers insights, fuels innovation and strengthens your brand’s digital strategy organically. - Katie Jewett , UPRAISE Marketing + Public Relations

2. Prioritize Mobile Optimization

Most social media users access platforms via mobile devices, so ensuring content is mobile-friendly enhances user experience and engagement. This approach boosts visibility, increases share of voice and engagement rates, and ultimately drives better campaign performance while strengthening the brand's online presence. - Ronak Sheth , 360 ONE WAM Ltd.

3. Use An Influencer Strategy

For effective social-first marketing, use an influencer strategy. Select creators aligned with your brand, provide guidelines and let the creators create. They know what resonates with their audiences. Boost organic posts with paid targeting to reach wider audiences. Remix this content into new videos for paid ads and additional posts. - Kerry Curran , Revenue Based Marketing Advisors

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, 4. focus on engagement over selling.

When crafting a social-first marketing strategy, focus on engagement over selling. Build a community and leverage thought leadership to grow a broad network of followers. People will "raise their hand" if they resonate with your message. - Daniel Raskin , Mperativ

Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

5. Highlight User-Generated Content

Look for user-generated content that reflects the values and narrative of your brand. By interacting with the customers and people who really enjoy your business, you create a natural approach to creating content, and you can go a lot further with someone else talking about why they love your brand than with the promotional content your company creates alone. - Layla Kasha , Grocery Outlet

6. Use Video To Break Through The Noise

When creating a social-first marketing strategy, the medium is just as important, if not more important, than the message. You break through the noise and increase your reach on social media by emotionally resonating—surprise, delight, entertain, inspire. The medium with the most emotional potential is video. - Sara Payne , Inprela Communications

7. Focus On The Platforms Your Audience Loves

Take a look at your highest-performing social platforms in terms of engagement and reach, and start there. When you focus on where your audience is most attentive, you'll build a social strategy that's inherently what it should be: social. - Melissa Kandel , little word studio

8. Make It All About Authenticity

You're speaking to humans, so it must be all about authenticity. While social media is a digital medium, it is a medium where people are looking for information and connection. They want to know you but also believe you and trust you. Therefore, it’s that authenticity that must take the lead because it allows you to connect human beings with your area of expertise in a way that they trust and depend on. - Heather Rosenow , FDH Aero

9. Get Senior Leadership On Board

Senior leadership needs to be on board with a social-first marketing strategy. The company will have to add value, engage and support the audience members, innovate with content and run interesting contests and promotions to help drive sales or trials. With a social strategy, there will be bumps in the road on the way to success, so ideally leadership is supportive and understands the vision. - Tom Treanor , Snipp Interactive

10. Understand And Target Your Audience

Conduct thorough research to identify your target audience’s demographics, preferences and needs. This ensures personalized content, efficient resource use and stronger relationships. The impact is increased engagement, better customer insights and enhanced brand perception. Targeted marketing leads to higher ROI and fosters loyalty by making customers feel valued and understood. - Maria Alonso , Fortune 206

11. Ensure You Have Sharp Messaging

The critical success factor for social-first marketing is "sharp messaging" because social is a direct communication with the audience, so you cannot miss the mark there. It's important to utilize the strength of the social media platform by trying innovative content formats for storytelling and generating audience engagement with polls and “ask me anything” sessions. Plan long-term campaigns with crisp content. - Namita Tiwari , Namita Tiwari

12. Keep Content Concise

Long, drawn-out posts tend to make people swipe past quickly. Focusing on crafting succinct, effective content is perfect for refining your copy and maximizing your impact. Ensure your main point is clear, and use a strategic brand voice to effectively reach your target audience, increasing visibility, engagement and effectiveness. - Victoria Zelefsky , Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation

13. Consider The Social Brands Of Your Execs And Employees

Many social-first marketing strategies focus exclusively on their company's social pages. The personal brands of execs and employees should be considered extensions of their company brands. A robust social strategy that reflects the social engagement behavior of the modern buyer should include a three-pronged activation plan that outlines company, employee and executive social amplification. - Rekha Thomas , Path Forward Marketing LLC

14. Create An Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate marketing increases distribution and social proofs your brand. Create an affiliate marketing program so creators can earn commission for referrals and purchases. This allows you to increase distribution, social proof the brand with the creator’s audience, generate content and boost traffic to your profile and website. This pay-for-performance model can be cost-effective. - Ken Louie , MetroPlusHealth

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Cornell Office of Undergraduate Admissions

Search cornell admissions, my experience studying communication at cornell.

The field of Communication is incredibly vast, covering everything from practical marketing to in-depth social science research. As a new first-year student, this might seem overwhelming. Thankfully, at Cornell, I’ve had the chance to explore so many areas within this field and find my ideal fit in the Department of Communication. 

Finding My Fit Through Internships 

Entering as a first-year student last fall, I began with an open mindset, hoping to explore production, marketing, advertising, and public relations. Despite my initial uncertainty about my concentration, Cornell quickly helped me narrow my focus within this expansive subject. Thanks to the extensive resources and extracurricular opportunities available, I can confidently say I found so many ways to find the path that suits me best. 

Before arriving on the Ithaca campus, I remember scrolling through my new Cornell inbox and discovering emails from the Communication department about a Media Intern position, along with other internship opportunities. I applied for the position and was fortunate enough to receive an offer. As an incoming student who didn’t know any fellow students or professors, this was a fantastic way to familiarize myself with the department and the school. I connected with juniors and seniors in and beyond the Communication field and chatted with professors about their research. 

From there, I continued to participate in publicity and social media roles for other student organizations, like the Cornell Daily Sun . These hands-on experiences really brought the academic side of college to life. They gave me a sneak peek into my future career and helped me build new connections. Now, I am working as an ambassador and student assistant for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where I connect with prospective students and share my experiences. It’s up to you to reach out and see where your journey at Cornell will take you next!  

“Trust the Process” in Classes 

When it comes to the curriculum and choosing classes, don’t be afraid! College classes might seem daunting right out of high school, but they’re often more interdisciplinary and enjoyable than they are difficult. Take courses that genuinely interest you without worrying too much about their difficulty. 

As a first-year student, I took COMM 2310: Writing about Communication, despite some upper class students suggesting I wait. Although it was indeed initially challenging, I became a much more versatile writer in professional, academic, and even social settings. One aspect of the class I enjoyed was revising my own work through metacognition. Eventually, I ended up with several pieces of writing I’m very proud of. Next semester, I’ll be an undergraduate teaching assistant for this course—something my past self would never have believed. 

Since I’m minoring in information science, I also took INFO 3200: Tech, Behavior, and Society. I’ve always loved exploring technology, but didn’t see it as part of my future career. This course changed my mind – we learned to critique the complex information society, understand how new media affects our cultural and economic environment, and engage with contemporary controversies around new media.  

Research Potential 

I never really thought about research before coming to Cornell, but it was the introductory course (COMM 1101: Introduction to Communication) that opened my eyes to these academic possibilities. This theory-based course connected the concepts we learned to various research categories within the department.  

Cornell’s research in Communication spans many different areas, including technology and social media, science and health communication, media studies, and social inequality. The wealth of resources in the department here makes it easy to jump into research. What I found most inspiring was how professors made it clear that research isn’t just for graduate students; undergraduates are welcome to contribute and make a difference. The research-related assignments also help demystify the research process and make those skills accessible to any student. By the end of my first year, I was not only more knowledgeable but also more curious about involving in the many possibilities of communication research. 

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How these Northeastern researchers are rewriting the immigration-crime narrative

People in this story.

Ramiro Martinez

Jacob Stowell

When Ramiro Martinez began his study of Latino crime in the United States 30 years ago, he thought he knew what to expect. “I assumed that places that had more immigrants would have more homicides,” says Martinez, a Northeastern University professor of sociology, criminology and criminal justice. “That was the [common] assumption at that time point in the ’80s and ’90s. “And so when we started looking at that first run of data, I thought there was something wrong.” The data showed that immigrants — legal and illegal — were having a positive effect on their communities. Those findings are collected in his book, “Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community.”

“We found something that was opposite to what we thought,” Martinez says. “We found that more Latinos meant less violence in many communities across the United States.” 

Martinez and his Northeastern colleague Jacob Stowell, who rank among the leading experts in the field, say their research over the past three decades has disproved assertions that immigration exposes American communities to increases in crime. “There aren’t a whole lot of things in my understanding that are the complete opposite of what people believe,” Stowell, a Northeastern associate professor of criminology and criminal justice, says of the immigration debate. “This is one of them.”

Read more on NGN Magazine.

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The University of Chicago The Law School

Center menu, malyi research awards 2024.

Professor Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research examines democracy and dictatorship, inequality and redistribution, property rights, and civil conflict. The Malyi Center has awarded Professor Albertus research funding for his project, Consequences of the Legal Recognition of Ethnic Community Institutions: Evidence from Peru .

This project seeks to advance research on the consequences of the legal recognition of Indigenous community institutions. It does so in Peru, where thousands of indigenous communities gained legal recognition against a backdrop of civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. The project will geolocate communities, identify population centers within these communities, assign administrative data on the timing of community recognition and land titling, and match to communities event-level data from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine how community legal recognition impacted local conflict and contestation during the country’s civil war. The project has important implications for understanding how the process of legal recognition of Indigenous communities and their institutions impacts social inclusion and contestation. It also stands to advance our understanding of conflicts where ethnic identity and legal/institutional recognition claims are at the heart of insurgencies and contested by the state and among communities themselves. 

Pegah Banihashemi is a JSD candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, where she also completed an LLM in 2022. Pegah is currently working on the history of the formation of the Iranian Constitution both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In this project, she explores the problems of implementing the constitution in Iran. Part of Pegah's project is dedicated to the issue of comparing the constitutions of different countries, and she intends to present in her work a suitable format of a constitution for Iran that can be more stable over time.

The Center assisted Pegah with research funds to gain access to materials and resources for her research.

Lingnan He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science. The Malyi Center awarded Lingnan research funding for her project, Nudge through Judges: Judicial Reform as Persuasion .

How do authoritarian leaders credibly alleviate foreign economic actors’ concerns about the local business environment? This project formalizes the idea that policymakers can strategically leverage systematic judicial reforms to persuade outsider investors to act in the regime’s interest. In particular, the foreign actor is concerned about protectionism-induced distortions in the host country. Judicial reforms mobilize judges to make more pro-nonlocal firm decisions. The foreign actor then infers the level of distortions through the ruling outcomes and makes decisions about market entry. In the equilibria, the level of market optimism and the foreign actor’s entry costs across industries jointly impact the effectiveness of judicial reform as a persuasion device. Empirically, combining data from China’s civil lawsuits, tariff changes, and firm locations, the research evaluates how exposure to the trade war shapes policymakers’ incentive to implement judicial reforms and the ruling outcomes. The analysis shows that a raised trade barrier likely drives out productive domestic firms with more overseas connections, which disincentivizes policymakers from pursuing judicial independence.

Professor Jon C. Rogowski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research interests are in American politics, where he studies representation and accountability, political institutions, and American political history. The Malyi Center awarded Professor Rogowski research funding for his project, The Institutionalization of the American Administrative State .

How well does the state serve its constituents? While U.S. politicians, commentators, and citizens express concerns about declining bureaucratic capacity and the politicization of personnel selection, neither these concerns nor the proposed remedies are unique to our contemporary era. On the contrary, some of the most important institutional changes in U.S. governance concern the organizational capacity of the federal bureaucracy and the role of politics in selecting its personnel. This project documents the evolution of the administrative state between the Civil War and the Cold War and examine its consequences for American governance. It examines the composition of bureaucratic positions before civil service reform, studies the consequences of merit-based protections for the selection of personnel, and identifies how changes in organizational capacity affect bureaucratic outputs. This research provides comprehensive evidence about historical changes in the American state while also addressing theoretical questions relevant to contemporary political debates.

Professor Susan Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies, distributive politics, and comparative political behavior. The Malyi Center awarded Professor Stokes research funding for her project, Countering Mistrust of Democratic Institutions .

Political leaders in many countries worldwide have been elected and then undermined their democracies, a phenomenon known as democratic erosion. These leaders use public statements to reduce public confidence in institutions like election administration bodies. How can confidence be restored? The research team has used survey experiments to understand one example of this process: the Mexican president’s rhetorical attacks on a key Mexican institution, the National Electoral Institute. Our experimental findings indicate that presidential criticisms do undermine democratic confidence. But we also show that rebuttals of the president’s statements can restore this confidence.

Shih-An Wang is a JSD candidate at the University of Chicago Law School. Her current research project aims to analyze how judiciaries in countries with geopolitical tensions facilitate dialogues regarding the conflicts between national security and constitutional freedoms, focusing on the Constitutional Courts of South Korea, Taiwan, and Lithuania. Her research interest is in comparative constitutional law and democracy, executive power and regulations, and East Asian comparative law. In addition to her academic work, Shih-An serves as a Project Commissioner and Director of the North American Taiwan Studies Association.

The center awarded Shih-An with research funds to finance her participation in the Law and Society Association 2024 Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. While attending the conference, Shih-An presented her research in a talk titled "Judicial Strategies under Geopolitical Distress: The Constitutional Court of Taiwan." She also served as a moderator and discussant on a panel titled, “ Constitutionalism Outside of Courts: Foundational Norms and Principles from a Comparative Perspective”.