Creating an effective social media campaign for a small business : Case company: Silver LuxuryWorld

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UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies Business School

Creating an Effective Social Media Campaign for a Small Business

Case company Silver LuxuryWorld

Master’s thesis International Business and Sales Management Natalia Tyurlik, 278038 10 April 2019

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ABSTRACT

Faculty

International Business and Sales Management

Department Business School

Author

Natalia Tyurlik

Supervisors

Minna Rollins, Saara Julkunen Title

Creating an Effective Social Media Campaign for a Small Business

Main Subject International Business

Level

Master’s degree

Date

11 April 2019

Number of pages 66

Abstract

The Internet is developing and serves as a major tendency of the modern online environment.

Nowadays, the amount of social media users is enlarging over the time and small businesses have started actively use social media in order to increase customer loyalty, performance of the organization, brand awareness, give business voice, create own strategy of promotion and find new audience by providing online advertisement. In addition, customers have a great opportunity to interact on a more personal level.

However, there are various of social media types and platforms, which have different level of usefulness depending on the business sphere. Current research shows what platform is the most suitable for small business development on the practical example. Thus, the main purpose of the thesis is to understand how to launch an effective promotional campaign and identify which key elements have to be considered.

The project consists of three general parts such as conceptual foundation, methodological part and results. Conceptual foundation includes necessary information which provides basis for the empirical research and it considers concepts of social media, its types and the most popular platforms; Media Richness Theory; the use of social media within small businesses and how to create a promotional campaign. The methodological part represents how conceptual foundations were utilized in the research and new promotional campaign was launched on Facebook’s page of the case company. The final results show the effect of the campaign, comparison with previous campaign, which was launched in 2017 and new promotional campaign of 2018 year, and their reasons of effect differences on the organization. In addition, all key elements which were considered in creating an online advertisement are generalized.

Key words

Social media, Small business, Promotional campaign, Social media marketing, Online advertisement

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1 INTRODUCTION

The Internet is rapidly developing and serves as a major tendency of the modern online environment. According to the official statistics portal, the number of social media users in 2010 was 0.96 billion people, while in 2017 the number is 2.46 billion people, which means that companies has great opportunities to obtain customers using social media sources (Statista 2017). The information proves the obvious users’ growth by around 40% only in 7 years.

Moreover, BBC (2016) states that the population worldwide is over than 7.3 billion, where 52%

of them are internet users (Internet Live Stats 2018) and 34% of population use social media.

At the present, there are thousands of various social media networks and services connected with communication, news, professional skills, graphic, blogs, photos, videos and so on.

Nevertheless, new different projects appear over the time. Social media could be used inside organizations as it is “highly interactive and provides real time communications” (Kaplan &

Haenlein 2010). Businesses actively use social media to increase customer loyalty, performance of the organization, brand awareness, give business voice, create own strategy of promotion and find new audience by posting advertisement online. Finally, customers have a great opportunity to interact with firms on a more personal level (Siddiqui & Singh 2016). However, the obvious fact is that different social media platforms have different levels of usefulness depending on the business field.

Therefore, current research shows how to create an effective promotional campaign suitable for small businesses and certain internet platform as well as considers theoretical foundations, which are essential for this case. Additionally, the study explains how to launch the campaign and evaluate in order to understand if there is an effect on organization.

1.1 The purpose of the research

At the present time, there different researches and publications connected with a social media and small/medium- sized enterprises. There are various research gaps as well discussed. For example, many research gaps were identified in the sphere of “online promotional campaign performance” as well as “adoption in small business enterprises” (El-Gohary 2010); or Cruz &

Fill in their journal have an opinion that only a “little is known and has been agreed on about the nature, characteristics and dimensions of online marketing” (2008).

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There are different articles connected with effects of online advertisement, for instance, Maheshwari, Seth & Gupta in their study mentioned that there is no complex and logical guides about fresh understanding of promotional campaign’s effects on organization (2014).

However, there is no profound theoretical materials about how to create a successful promotional campaign for small and medium-sized enterprises. Thus, the purpose of this work is to study how to create a promotional campaign for small businesses in social media, launch it and evaluate the result.

The main research question: How to create and launch effective promotional campaign?

Which key elements have to be considered in creating promotional campaign?

1.2 Structure

The thesis consists of introduction, conceptual foundations, research methodology, comparison of results, discussion and conclusion. Theoretical part of the project includes social media definitions, where various explanations of social media over the past years are discussed. The next chapter is connected with types of social media such as “collaborative projects”, “blogs and microblogs”, “content communities”, “social networking sites” and “virtual social words”, were the mean of each type is presented. In addition, the most popular platforms with their official statistics in Finland and all over the World are identified.

The next paragraph of conceptual foundation discusses the Theory of Media Richness (MRT) created by Richard Daft and Robert Lengel in 1986. It is a communication theory that explains the relationship between the content of a transmitted message and the means of communication through which the message is transmitted. According to the Media Richness Theory, the relationship is directly proportional, that means – the more important and complex for understanding and interpretation the transmitted message the richer in its capabilities should be the chosen means of communication (Daft & Lengel 1986). In other words, the theory indicates

“the richer the media is (more interactive - better) the richer the communication and better results in consumer-company relations” (Daft, Lengel & Trevino 1987).

Furthermore, conceptual foundation introduces the use of social media within small organizations and discusses why companies use social media in their organizations. Besides, the next part will be concentrated on the marketing communications model called “Hierarchy

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of Effects” created by Elmo Lewis in 1898, which represents the series of steps that “affect the customer’s decision to purchase a product/service”. For this reason, those steps are significant for marketers as “moving through until the end of the last stage”. In order to obtain effective social media advertisement each company has to be prepared for an activity in advance. The chapter also suggests different ways to create an effective promotional campaign in social media, for instanse, “Media planning” by Sissors J. and Baron R. (2010) is presented as one of the useful guides. Different successful campaigns in Facebook and Instagram are presented as an example as well. At the end of the chapter various opportunities to analyze if there is any effect from the promotional campaign on the firm are revealed.

The main research method of the thesis is an action research. This type of thesis research is a study where the main goal is not to gain new knowledge, confirm hypotheses or collect empirical facts, but the idea is to solve practical problems related to improving the situation in a particular organization, school, college and family. (Wadsworth 1998). The research method has to be an action research as the main idea is to create promotional campaign, launch it on Facebook, wait for a result, analyze and compare with previous campaign launched in October 2017.

This study is significant as it explains the nature and background of the social media and provide readers with done definitions. Also, it shows already prepared analysis of the best social media platforms worldwide and in Finland, so that people can understand where they have to launch their pages and campaigns. In additions, the most important data shows how to create advertisement, which key aspects have to be considered and provides examples of successful advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, which motivate people to move further and replace their fears. Besides, there are useful information connected with the analysis of results, through which people can easily analyze their results from the campaign and identify the difference before the campaign and after launching it. Finally, the real example of Silver Beauty will show how promotional campaign works in accordance to the theory presented in the thesis and motivate people to create the same promotions for company’s development.

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2 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION 2.1 Social media definitions

In the modern world, social media is one of the most useful tool for advertising businesses, through which you can increase “brand awareness, share news with customers, find a new audience and achieve customer loyalty” (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010).

The definition of social media is at the stage of growth of its popularity among scientists and researchers. Due to the lack of open and competent information about social media on the Internet, different articles usually a false nature of understanding the term “social media”.

However there many definitions of social media recently presented in journals, web pages and articles.

According to the book Marketing with social media by Linda Coles (2014), the term “social media” could be divided into two words such as “social” - it is a being social and “media”, because it is published on the internet. In other words, it is a simple web platform for conversations which is located online and gives access to communicate with different people at once.

Nowadays, the “new” social media serves as a “general stage” for people all over the world to

“relate with one another” and propose different experiences determined with activities, issues and products (Heinrichs & Lim 2012). Another definition of social media states that these

“internet based applications” are made in accordance to “ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0”, where the exchange and creation of information is acceptable. (Kaplan

& Haenlein 2010). The next author mentioned that “social media is dealing with online resources that people use to share content: video, photos, images, text, ideas, insight, humor, opinion, gossip, news” (Drury 2008). Thus, the authors also confirm that social media is a tool that unite people, make communication and information exchange easier.

Nowadays, the World has become technology-based where social media exists as a market or place for trading companies’ campaigns to a larger amount of consumers. For example, one author of the journal determines social media as a “connection between brands and customers”, which proposes “personal channel and currency” for people using social media platforms (Chi 2011). In addition, Dykeman has underlined that social media simply means to: “publish digital,

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creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via online discussions, commentary and evaluations; and incorporate changes or corrections to the original content” (2008). Therefore, social media could be represented as a marketing tool for businesses, which serves as a place for consumers to observe, research and analyze needed product/service, compare with others and choose the best.

Finally, it is obvious that social media has two important directions inside definitions. The first one is a communication with friends, family and new people. The second one is a business that includes sellers’ goals such as to get reputation, new customers, partners, sell the product or service and buyer’s goals, for instance, to find suitable product with high quality, observe different service and compare them and buy the product or use services.

2.2 Types of social media

There are no professionally established classifications of social media accepted by the international community due to the fact that every year there are more new interactive Internet platforms open unexpected sides of social media, thus the mean and use of social media is changing over time. There are various types of social media existing at the moment, however, the most common and widely used types are published by Kaplan and Haenlein. According to the scientific journal there are six different types of social media such as “collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds”

(2010).

2.2.1 Collaborative projects

Collaborative projects are those websites where users can add additional information, delete unnecessary materials and change texts, media content and social bookmarks. The main example of the collaborative projects is Wikipedia. The idea of such project is to create a content with joint effort of different people in order to get better quality of information (Fama 1970). Companies have to know that collaborative projects strive to be the major source of information for a larger part of consumers. Authors of the article motioned that part of information that has written in Wikipedia does not inspire confidence, however day by the day the amount of people who are using Wikipedia is enlarging. For example, Nokia uses Wikipedia to change the number of employees, because the amount is changing over the time (Kaplan &

Haenlein 2010).

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2.2.2 Blog and Microblogs

Blogs and Microblog are web tools where users “create and publish text-media content”. The most popular platforms are following: Twitter, Medium, Tumblr, Live journal and Blogger.

Kaplan and Haenlein have underlined that this type of the social media is the earliest. The main idea of them is to upload own messages or notes to the page in a chronological order, where the time is presented automatically. Moreover, blogs are represented by various personal diaries describing the life of the author, travels, the writer's experiences and etc. Blogs give an opportunity to communicate with other people and usually managed and controlled by one person. For instance, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems and General Motors have own personal blogs to increase the transparency of their organizations (2010).

2.2.3 Content communities

This type of social media provides people with possibilities for sharing different content such as photos and videos with others. There are popular examples: Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Snapchat, Twitch. The main idea of the community is to exchange different types of media, where text is presented as well. For instance, in “Book Crossing” people from over the World exchange their books; photo exchange is available on Flickr; YouTube serves as a major port of video exchange. There communities are popular due to the ease of use: there is no need to create own profile, or if there is, then only simple information such as date and number of shared videos is requested. By using these platforms people can face several problems due to copyright materials. For instance, if the company upload the video to the YouTube with the song made by Rihanna for background, the account of video provider could be banned and removed from the page because of copyrights. In this case, if the firm wants to use this song exclusively, the person, who uploaded the video, has to buy rights from the Rihanna brand to upload it (Kaplan

& Haenlein 2010).

2.2.4 Social networking sites

Social networks are certain applications that allow users to connect with large amount of friends and family members by creating own profile. One of the most famous social networking site is Facebook. When the profile or account is created, then person is able to invite friends and colleagues to get a permission for own profile observation, send messages, audio files, video, documents as well as e-books. The profile usually includes information about sex, age,

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relationship status, education, work, interests, preferred music, videos, films and so on. At the present time, social networks are the most useful and interesting way to promote service or products as there are presenting a lot of people (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010).

2.2.5 Virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds

The last two types of social media are virtual game worlds and virtual social world. Virtual social world is more similar to the real life because participants are able to choose own behavior in the virtual world. The virtual social world is presented as a three-dimensional social environment, where all different users are interacting with each other’s. Author of the article also underline that there are no rules that are limiting possible interactions that allows unlimited range of self-representation and real life behaviors. The most popular example of virtual social world is a Second life application that is founded by Linden Research Inc. The application not only reflects a real life but also create a content (for instance, create details of furniture, cosmetics and jewelry) and sell the content using Linden Dollars (the virtual currency traded against the US dollar). Therefore, virtual social worlds propose different opportunities for firms engaged in marketing activities as well as human resources and internal processes management according to Kaplan and Heinlein (2010).

2.3 The most popular social media platforms worldwide and in Finland

2.3.1 The most popular SM platforms worldwide

As the services of social media become more and more popular, there are a lot of social networks where people create business connections, collaborate in projects, communicate with new people/colleagues/friends, share own ideas photos videos, review or choose appropriate product or service, use bookmarks, virtual social gaming. Statistics used in the paragraph were taken from the official statistical portal Statista, where information is already uploaded in 2018. Some of the most popular social networking service are presented below.

The general statistics presented below shows the most popular social media platforms worldwide in January 20018, the variable are ranked in accordance of active users, where the users’ amounts are presented in millions euro. Therefore, in accordance to FIGURE 1, the most famous social network worldwide is Facebook, the number of active users is more than 2.1 billion. The second place is going to YouTube as the number of active users is over 1.5 billion.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth places are platforms for message exchanges and calls such as

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WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and QQ, where number of users is varying between 1.3 billions and 843 million. The next place goes to Instagram and there are more than 800 million active users in January 2018.

FIGURE 1. Most famous social network sites worldwide as of January 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions). (Statista 2018)

As WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and QQ are services primarily based on message exchange, we are not take them into account. Thus, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram will be considered as the most popular platforms.

2.3.1.1 Facebook

IMAGE 1. Facebook logo (Facebook 2018)

Facebook is a social media and social networking service that is located in USA. The website was launched in February 4, 2014 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard college students.

The clear definition of Facebook was created by Palmer and Koeing-Lewis, where social media means “a site which gives users opportunity to create their own profile with the additional option of displaying their friends’ personalities as well as sharing documents, pictures” (2009).

Moreover, Coulter and Roggeveen, underline in Management Research Review (2012) that “by

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publishing own information in Facebook, sharing ideas with others and receiving materials about other peoples’ lives, serves as a result of a form of collaboration that generate new content”. Therefore, the main idea of Facebook is exchange of information, where people can create own profiles with photos and information about yourself, invite own friends, meet new people, change status, leave messages on own and others' walls, upload photos and videos, create various groups (for instance, different communities of interest).

In recent years, Facebook has acquired additional value for society. Thus, Facebook is an advertising tool through which companies promote own product or service: a lot of people have a Facebook account in order to do a business, easily get to the people by spreading messages, creating contacts with consumers and building new connection (Lutze 2010). Therefore, Facebook also serves as a business tool, due to the large amount of people using this service, good quality service or product can success there. For instance, if the service is of high quality, people write review of it on the business’ page, then others can observe and also use the service.

Other opportunities of Facebook advertisements for business are revealed in next paragraph about advertising in social media.

According to the journal of social sciences and Humanities written by Uchechi Cynthia Ohajionu and Soney Mathews (2015) the total amount of worldwide users in 2013 is one billion people. However, at the present time the general statistics shows that there are over two billion monthly active users in Facebook worldwide in the fourth quarter of the 2017 and this number is rapidly growing as in 2008 the number was 100 millions users (Statista 2017).

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FIGURE 2. Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2017 (in millions) (Statista 2018).

Therefore, Facebook serves as one of the most popular social media tool and according to the research tables above there is a high involvement of the people and the number of participants is very high worldwide. Thus, the platform is suitable for business advertisement and has different opportunities for development.

2.4 Social media in Finland

According to the official webpage Statistics Finland (2017) enterprises in Finland use social media actively and number of users is increasing over the time. There is a high percentage difference from 2013 to 2017 years. For example, in 2013 the percentage of social media usage by enterprises in Finland was 38% and it is significantly grown up by 25% in 2017. Moreover, investigations show that small and medium sized enterprises use social media in 58% and companies with more than one hundred employees use social media in 86%. In addition, authors underlined that the percentage may vary across different sphere of businesses.

2.4.2 The most popular platforms in Finland

The share of Finnish social media users in 2016 (Statista 2018) shows different situation in comparison with worldwide outcomes from 2018. For example, the figure below presents that

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among young people the most popular is WhatsApp and it used by 88% of respondents, the next social media is YouTube and 85% people are using it. The third place in the scale of popularity in Finland is Facebook and 81% of respondents are actively use it. The next place has Instagram and the percentage of users is 72.

FIGURE 3. User share of the most popular social media services among young people in Finland in 2016 (Statista 2018)

As the WhatsApp is primarily based on message exchange we do not take it into account.

Therefore, the most popular social media in Finland are Youtube, Facebook and Instagram.

The next research, conducted in 2017, represents the share of Facebook and Facebook Messenger in Finland in terms of usage frequency. The FIGURE 6. shows that 44% of respondents use these platforms at least several times a day, while only 18% do not use the service at all.

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FIIGURE 4. How often do you use Facebook and Facebook Messenger? (Statista 2018) According to the official statistics Statista (2017), the share of Instagram users in Finland 2017 was gained through the survey where 1005 people in the age of 15 to 74 years have participated.

The percentage of usage varies across the ages, however, the final result shows that 54% do not use Instagram at all, and only 14% of respondents use the platform several times a day

2.4.1 Comparison of statistics’ results

Statistics presented below show that the most popular social media worldwide is Facebook, YouTube and the Instagram in accordance to the general share of usage. The results from the Finnish statistics shows the results from the survey limited with the number of respondents and represented in percentage, where the most platform is Youtube, Facebook and then Instagram.

Therefore, the most popular internet platforms divided between Facebook, Youtube in Finland and worldwide, while the third place in both cases placed by Instagram.

Results concerning Facebook shows that the number of worldwide usage in 2013 was one billion people and in 2017 the number increased by two times, thus there is a rapidly growth.

The share of usage in Finland is also limited by a number of respondents and table is represented

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in percentage, where about half of respondents said that they use Facebook at least several times per day.

The statistics of Instagram share of usage also show the significant growth in the past 4 years, for instance, the number of users in 2013 was 90 million, while in 2017 is 800 million people.

Finnish statistics shows that only 14% of 1005 respondents use Instagram daily and about 54%

do not use it at all.

YouTube analysis worldwide have results that people use in 65% Youtube daily or more than once a day. The results presented in Finland limited in research as well and the survey presented in Statista (2018) shows that 38% of respondents use Instagram one, two or more times per day and only 18% do not use it at all.

Therefore, Facebook and Youtube are the most popular platforms in both cases, the Instagram is popular as well worldwide, but the Finnish investigations had obtained lower results.

However, this fact cannot be taken into account due to the limitation of respondents, thus these three platforms are the most interesting for people, where advertisement for the business development could be placed in order to get benefits from these activities.

2.5 Media richness theory

The Theory of Media Richness (MRT) created by Richard Daft and Robert Lengel in 1986. It is a communication theory that explains the relationship between the content of a transmitted message and the means of communication through which the message is transmitted. According to the media richness theory, this relationship is directly proportional, that means - the more important and complex for understanding and interpretation the transmitted message the richer in its capabilities should be the chosen means of communication (Daft & Lengel 1986). In other words, “the theory indicates the richer the media is the richer the communication and better results in consumer-company relations” (Daft, Lengel & Trevino 1987).

According to the theory, there are two major assumptions. The first one represents that organizations process information in order to as much as possible reduce uncertainty and equivocality. The second assumption means that certain means of communication and information transfer work better for certain types of communication. The choice is effective

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when the wealth of the capabilities of the chosen mean of communication corresponds to the complexity of the task.

In this concept, uncertainty is the difference between the existing information and the information that is need to complete the task by organization (Galbraith 1977). The next term - equivocality means “ambiguity, the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretations about an organizational situation” (Weich, 1976). In other words, equivocality means a “confusion and lack of understanding”. Therefore, it brings problems in understanding of the whole picture about given information. The figure below (FIGURE 1) is presented by Daft and Lengell in their article (1986) in order to represent the relations between high/low uncertanty and equivocality. For instance, when there is a high uncertainty – people know usually understand which questions should be asked but they do not have needed information, and vice, versa, when there is a high equivocality-people do not know the question. (Daft & Lengel 1986).

Thus, when solving the set of communicative task, it is necessary to reduce the level of uncertainty (find the right answer to a question) or ambiguity (to determine the correct question, to which answer should be found).

FIGURE 5. Hypothesized Framework of Equivocally and Uncertainty on Information Requirements. (Daft & Lengell 1986, 557).

According to the Daft and Lengell (1986) media richness hierarchy explains in accordance with four criteria. There are following:

• The possibility of instant feedback: communication is considered as completed when a feedback is received on the transmitted message. Feedback can also show whether the

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message was correctly understood. The presence of feedback allows correct errors when sending a message.

• The ability to transmit multiple cues: information can be transmitted in various forms, for example, as text, audio or video messages. The more types involved in the transmission of a message, the more information will reach the recipient of the message.

• Language variety used: Daft and Lengel divide languages into two types: high and low degree of diversity languages. Languages with a high degree of diversity are not limited to the use of symbols, provide a wide range of ideas and are open to interpretation, for example, natural languages, music or art. Languages with a low variety include restrictive symbols, provide a narrower range of ideas and not open to interpretation (such as mathematics or statistics). The richer means of communication, according to theory, will be those which use languages of a high degree of diversity.

• Focusing media on the individual or Personal focus: each channel of communication has a different degree of focus on the person. Thus, the higher focus, the more information in the message will be transmitted (share with emotions and feelings)

Therefore, if the more of the above characteristics are presented at the communication channel, the richer in its capabilities is. According to the Hierarchy of media richness theory presented by Daft, Lengel and Trevino in 1987 there are following types of communication: “face-toface, telephone, written documents, unaddressed documents” (FIGURE 6). The scale is made in accordance with the wealth of the type of communication from the highest (face-to-face communication) to the lowest (unaddressed documents). The table shows that personal or faceto-face communication is high in media richness since oral communication allows to react instantly to a message, while unaddressed documents are low in personal communication and does not serve as a rich capability.

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FIGURE 6. Hierarchy of Media Richness (Daft, Lengel & Trevino 1987, 358).

At the present time, Media Richness Theory should be complemented with online interaction through social media regardless the location of parties, because social media serves as one of the richest media source and includes video, conversations, texts, different additional information at the same time. Thus, this point will be stated as the highest level of the model and means the most effective and rich method of Media Richness Model, which is used by people and popular nowadays. The example of the new Media Richness Model that could be represented at the present time.

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FIGURE 7. Example of Media Richness model for online and social media time of 2019 year.

Furthermore, there is a “Guide to evaluating enterprise social networks” created by Sharpe T., where social presence theory describes how “media has different levels of interpersonal capability; the more intimate, synchronous, direct the media then the higher the corresponding social presence” (2012). Using the social presence and media richness definitions - the social capability of a large amount of platforms “can be plotted” as presented below. According to the table, there are different groups formed by types of social media, where the most visible and useful for the projects is Social Organization, which indicates one of the most popular social media platform – Facebook. Social Organization is High and Social in uncertainty, while in the middle of equivocality and Media, which emphasis is made generally on relationships, activity ranking and users’ grouping. On this stage, “the social organization platforms have meaning of making existing processes frictionless, incorporating rich media sharing and communications

“(Sharpe 2012).

That is why social media platforms are presented as a rich source for interactions with people and firms all over the world and considered as a useful tool for company’s promotion.

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FIGURE 8. Hypothesized Framework of Equivocally and Uncertainty on Social Media platforms. (Sharpe T 2012).

The media richness theory is relevant at the present time, however it has been criticized because it was created before appearing social media and internet as a whole. Nevertheless, the theory is used as a basis for different projects and serves as a main evidence that new social media is high in media richness and suitable for advertisement as it combines all necessary criteria provided by Daft and Lengel in their article (1986).

2.6 The use of social media within SMEs

The term social media has become popular le in recent years, there are not only friends, but also their dogs, stores, companies, production factories, television programs, world stars and their families. The creation of a new thematic social network has become one of the most popular business ideas among entrepreneurs. By the beginning of 21th centery social media became a larger part of business strategies. Thus, social media serves not only as a platform for communication but also plays a crucial role in business life. At the present time, small companies and start-ups open up the potential, forming target audience in their niche as well as popular brands using social media. (Oztamur, Karakadila 2014).

At a basic level, social media can be used to attract customers to the brand. The internet community is filled with a huge number of current and potential customers or clients who

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communicate with each other, and perhaps negatively respond to the main mistakes and failures of your company. Thus, the idea is to use a social network to portray a person who tries to convey information to other users. For example, when a person plans to send information via Facebook at the message level, at this point, he brings his unique opinion to the post and thereby, appears the process of humanizing. (Sorokin &Talagaeva 2015)

2.7 Why companies use social media

At the present time modern companies choose social media as it is very popular and useful tool for any kind of business. As social media has millions users it makes possible for companies not only increase their sales, but also promote the business as a whole. Therefore, there are a lot of opportunities for company to occupy a certain niche on the market. (VseproIp 2018).

First of all, Social Media is a cost-effective marketing tool, which can be used for free and without any difficulties (Levinson & Gibson 2010). It is very important aspect as different organizations pay a lot for traditional advertisement and have less effectiveness than free advertisement in social media. Generally, social media strives to obtain traditional objectives by using creativity, community and relationships instead paying money and loss of time.

(Rugova & Prenaj 2016). Secondly, social media have unlimited opportunities in searching for partners, advertisement and promotion of the company’s service or product. Besides, company creates own virtual office, where can communicate with different organizations and sell products online while they are located in different geographical areas. Also, there is a direct immediate contact with customers and flexible reaction on different feedback and reviews about the firm that help companies be in touch and customize product or services. In addition, social media provide online payments with customers 24 hours per day including weekends and holidays. Then, social media gives an opportunity to participate in discounts, sales and in various actions. Moreover, there is a possibility to conduct different researches, advertisement campaigns and analyze the effectiveness of marketing strategy. Social media provides more broad and accurate coverage of the target audience, for instance, creating of advertisement or promotion in Facebook’s group requires age range and it helps to focus on certain age range.

(Kordish 2017).

Finally, there is another significant moment - social media is not directly dependent on the politics and economics in the country or region, thus the only danger is the decrease of attendance, but in this case company has to find more suitable platform for advertising and work

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further (Pracy 2018). Therefore, the company itself has possibilities to follow the popularity of own community or group among users, has opportunities to see what attracts and not target audience, to know opinions about a particular product and so on. All these aspects are able to create ultimately a loyal consumer base.

2.8 Creating promotional campaign

2.8.1 Hierarchy of effects

Hierarchy of Effects is the marketing communication model, which includes various of steps that affect customer’s behavior and purchase decision. These steps are crucial for business people as it considers consumers from the beginning to the end of their purchase process, which helps to understand which points are important for promotional campaign creation. Thus, In order to obtain effectiveness of social media advertisement each company has to be prepared in advance (Reklam 2013).

The model AIDA is important tool for effective advertisement as it considers key elements which company has to take into account in order to have a successful strategy in social media advertisement. This algorithm of constructing effective advertising was created by Elmo Lewis in 1898. AIDA is a model of consumer behavior when making a positive decision about the purchase of good that consists of Attention, Interest, Desire and Action (Hadiyati 2016).

However, the model was developed and to gather more efficiency for the company the fifth component Satisfaction was added (Mmrketing 2018). The model is very versatile and can be used for any type of sales, especially in advertising as well as recently selling pages and online sales. For successful application of AIDA model, it is necessary to obtain maximum information about potential clients, to conduct a profound marketing research. According to AIDA theory, firms consider marketing process by using AIDA as a marketing model (Hadiyati 2016). At the present time, model consists of fifth stages of selling which could be used for effective advertisement:

A (attention) – means draw attention, it is a kind of establishment of contact with a potential client (Li & Yu 2013). The first thing that a person does when contacting with company’s advertising - draws or does not draw attention to it. Therefore, if organization wants that customer pays attention to firm (on advertisement), the company has to pay attention to client first. It is significant to research along and across the life of customer, basic needs, problems,

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areas of interest and so on. Finally, when the company has clear image about the customer it will be able to create successful promotional; campaign which attracts attention (Reklam 2013).

I (interest) – it means creation an interest of the product, company, or seller (Li & Yu 2013).

The interest of the product can be a new offer, discounts or sales. The major human needs are presented in the pyramid of Maslow which can be considered to get better results (Mmrketing 2018).

D (desire) – the company has to excite in promotional campaign the desire of the client to own the good or service (Li & Yu 2013). In fact, this is the stage of presentation of the goods to the consumer. In order for the customer to want the product, it needs to be "deliciously presented", the client must imagine that the good satisfies his needs. At this point authors recommend to be persuasive, where positive facts about the organization, product or service in advertising arise desire to purchase it (Reklam 2013).

A (action) – action or more precisely push to action. This is the last stage of marketing model according to Lewis completion of the transaction. (Li & Yu 2013) This stage is very important, because the customer must buy the goods while the desire to buy created in the previous stage existing, otherwise it will disappear or the customer can buy this product from another company (Reklam 2013).

S (satisfaction) – every company wants to get loyal customers, thus firm has to make sure that customer enjoys his first purchase. Lewis did not foresee this moment, but today’s business considers this stage as one of the most important, because wants that customer become lifelong and bring money to organization constantly. Therefore, the customer has to be fully satisfied with a service, prices and quality. (Li & Yu 2013)

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IMAGE 3. AIDA marketing model (Reklam 2013).

The theory states that any promotional campaign should “attract the attention of potential customers, then cause his interest, which will pass into the desire to possess the goods and, finally, to induce to action-purchase and end with satisfaction of the purchase” (Reklam 2013).

The main idea of the companies is to research where company reduce the most number of customers and try to improve this stage. Therefore, the model AIDA is also serves as a basic model for creating effective promotional campaign and being successful on the market.

2.8.2 Promotional campaign scope of media planning by Sissors and Baron

To create an effective promotional campaign scope of media planning activities has to be considered. Major steps suitable for advertisement creation are presented by Sissors J. and Baron R. created in 2010.

First of all, authors, mention that all strategies, projects or works start with a problem or what we want to reach using the promotional campaigns, therefore, in or case we have to determine the marketing problem in the contexts of national or local marketing advertisement. There are different kind of problems could be connected with the social media advertisement, for instance, how much could be spent money for the promotion ads in the next year, how to increase sales, how to stop eroding market share and so on. Then, authors have divided the marketing problems

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in three cases such as Situation analysis, Marketing strategy plan and Creative strategy plan which have to be considered before promotional campaign creation.

Situation analysis is one of the most prior and basic step which aims to understand the main marketing problem of the company. In additions, organization and its competitors have to be analyzed on this stage as well. To find a profound information about the company and its competitors, several steps are provided:

1. Identification of the size and share of the total market 2. Considiration of sales histories, costs and profits 3. Analysis of distribution practicies

4. Methods of selling used by other organizations 5. How other companies use advertisment

6. Identification of prospects 7. Analysis of products' nature

Marketing strategy plan is the next topic for consideration. The strategy is primarily aimed to plan organization’s activities in the way which will solve appeared marketing problems. The plan is also including marketing objectives or goals that should be obtained by creating promotional campaign, product spending strategy which considers how much expenditures are needed for the product or service, distribution strategy is about “how effectively a firm gets its product to consumers and end users”, elements of the marketing mix and which of them could be used, and identification of the most suitable marketing segments for the company.

The main idea of the Creative strategy plan is to identify what to communication through the advertisement the company wants to create. Authors Sissors J. and Baron R suggest several aspects that have to be considered in order to create successful advertisement: research the question about how product can meet needs of customers, how product/service could be presented in promotional campaign, copy topics or research topics created by other companies, create own objectives for each promotional campaign and determine the number and size of advertisement (2010).

2.8.3 Examples of successful campaigns in social media

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There are some examples of promotional campaigns made on Instagram and Facebook, which show absolute success after their launching on the page. At the present time, all developed and developing companies use campaigns to increase sales, brand awareness and content of the company. Therefore, promotional campaigns play an important role in our modern society and should be included in each strategy of each firm to achieve success.

Official article Marketing on Facebook created by Facebook (2016) has provided readers with interesting examples of campaigns’ success. For instance, VisitBritain is the page related to UK began a Facebook campaigns to raise its brand awareness and attract potential customers and visitors to the UK. The main idea of their strategy was to upload every day different pictures of UK and discuss it below the post. At the moment, page has high involvement of people, about four thousand followers and likes. Another page Silly Bandz shows better results from the campaign, the main goal was to obtain more than 1 million followers and the page got this amount by using combination of Facebook Ads and integrated the Graph API into its website with product “Like Buttons”. Thus, when person liked or clicked one of the ads, the story was immediately published to his page, which created viral effect. In 2018 page has more than 1.5 million followers and likes. At the same time brand SEPHORA using the same way to get more followers and has 18 million followers and likes.

The next example is a company Healthy Choice, which provides frozen products. The company had an innovative progressive coupon campaign. The main idea of the promotion was that the value of the discount increase along with the page likes and signed up for the coupon. At the end of the promotional campaign, company got 900% increase in their customer base, obtained 60000 customers and distributed about 50000 coupons. At the present time, company has more than 417000 followers and likes on their Facebook page by using different campaigns.

(Facebook 2016)

ModBiS it is a store of selling stylish fashion for women, that was launched in 2009 by Barbara Lalik. She has mentioned that there is a gap in the market. The beginning of the company’s development was problematic, but in 2018 firm has started to grow. ModBiS was able to measure the true impact of its ads on eventual sales and use this information to precisely plan future campaigns by using Facebook Conversion Lift to analyze campaign launched in April–

May 2018. The analysis has represented that they got 29% more sales during Facebook campaign and 27% higher conversion rate with Facebook ads (Facebook 2018).

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The swimwear company Bikini Luxe created by Candice Galek. to increase brand awareness, it was decided to change employees to brand ambassadors, through what workers get commissions of 15% from their sales, post everyday photos to their pages and get different rewards. After these changes company got visible different in sales, which are increased and company got more followers on Instagram and Facebook. At the moment there are about 250000 likes and followers (Dinesh 2018).

Another good example of successful promotional campaign was launched by organization founded by Polish expert marketers and sports fans, called OSHEE. The range of company is more than 50 sports drink products are currently available in 27 international markets. The organization has launched the campaign in terms of 4-week video ad campaign, which scored a major boost in brand awareness, creating a strong foundation for future direct response campaigns and brought 17% of viewers watched entire videos and 11-point lift in ad recall (Facebook 2018).

2.8.4 Analyzing the effect of promotional campaign

In order to talk about effectiveness, it is important to understand which effectiveness of social media advertisement is explained in this chapter. In this part the effectiveness means that any activity is the ratio of the effect achieved as a result of the activity to the amount of resources expended to achieve this effect, where the efficiency - the relative value and for the same process can be different, depending on what the purpose of the activity is (Cossa 2018).

Moreover, planning marketing activities determines the course of business development. When developing strategies, market indicators are taken into account, on the basis of which it is possible to build a forecast of the dynamics of consumer preferences (indicators). The Data for evaluation can be obtained through social networks, where advertising of the brand or product helps to see changes in the characteristics of the target audience (Sales Generator 2018), steps presented in the chapter help to measure the effectiveness of promotional campaign.

At the present time, the effectiveness of online advertising with direct response could be analyzed without any difficulties by click/through rates and amount of leads generated.

However, when we considering service or goods to be purchased through the internet where the direct response is absent, there is no officially accepted way of advertisement effectiveness

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(Sissors & Baron 2010) and no ‘best practices’ for measuring a successful promotional campaign (Suryakumar 2011). Other authors of researches, journals and books cannot disagree with this aspect as social media advertising require human communications and interactions which cannot be calculated and measured accurately. (Vaynerchuk 2011). In addition, Owyang J. in his publication created in 2010 has also underlined that the profound measures and results have to be created through the composition of financial and non-financial outcomes of the campaign.

Nevertheless, theories tell that the measurement is complex and is not accurate, but there are some possibilities which identify effectiveness of promotional campaign by eight steps provided by Blanchard in 2011. According to the author, the measurement steps are necessary to use because they help to determine which campaigns were the most effective and which advertisements did not show any effect to the company’s success (Blanchard 2011, 222).

The first step is to establish a baseline, which primarily concentrates on creating the data that should be measured such as sales volume, net transactions, number of brand mentions (Blanchard 2011). In other words, the basic information about the company has to be collected in order to establish primary image of the organization.

The second step is to create activity timelines, which means that companies have to plan all actions from firm’s departments and social media platforms that have an effect on the nonfinancial outcomes and the best way is to create one shared document in joint network in order to integrate campaign, which prevent the biggest part of misassumptions when analyzing the results (Blanchard 2011).

The third step is to monitor the volume of mentions, author underline that at this level companies have to measure brand mentions, research different social media sites, blogs and networks. Secondly, to measure “the mix of sentiment” of the brand mentions presented in the previous step (Blanchard 2011). Thus, there are positive and negative sentiments which could be served as an indicator of shift of customers’ preferences, for instance, increase in positive sentiments shows that the positive mentions were increased by word of mouth.

The next step is to measure transactional precursors, on this step company has to analyze all non-financial results obtained by the company such as number of “fans, followers, shares,

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recommendations, RSS subscriptions, content downloads”. In other world, company has to research all things connected with consumers, their number and involvement to the company’s activities before and after promotional campaign.

The fifth stage is to look at transactional data or research financial changes. Organizations have to compare the changes in net transacting customers and the number of net transactions.

This step shows companies which changes they have got after the promotional campaign. For instance, “if the percentage change in net transaction is bigger than the percentage changes in sales volume, this means that new customers have begun to buy small things. And vice versa, if the percentage change in sales volume is bigger than the percentage changes in net number of transactions, it means that the current customers are spending more money than before”

(Blanchard 2011, 231).

The next step is to overlay all data (steps 1-5) onto a single timeline. On this stage companies have to establish the whole baseline, including relevant data such as ‘competitors’ press release and important events that might affect firm’s activities’.

The seventh step is to look at patterns, the author has presented three possible impacts of social media campaign. The fist example tells that there is an developing tendency even before the campaign was uploaded, because the impact of social media activities is complicated to determine from the pattern due to the lack of visible changes on the firm’s performance. The second example shows the lack of influences from the social media program. Probably, it was caused by the outside activities of the firm. In this case company has to concentrate on these factors which can cause this pattern. For instance, the promotional campaign was success, but due to the selling directly through the shop, there were no stock available, this process can also interrupt the process. The third pattern shows the desired outcome of the promotional campaign, where the social media performance increased is observed immediately after campaign was launched. Therefore, advertisement campaign would bring to the company any of three presented outcomes to the companies and to get to the third one, firm has considered all steps to the effective promotional campaign creation.

The last stage of the measurement of promotional campaign effectiveness is to prove of disapprove relationships. So, to prove the effective using of the promotional campaign company has to work “their way backward from the outcome to trace the correlation between

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the change in firm’s performance and its social media marketing” (Blanchard 2011). In order to conduct it, company has to connect own metrics with the complete timeline (which was considered in the step six). For instance, company can check if there is a correlation between campaign of launching new product or service with increase of site visitors, reviews, likes and so on. In this way, the process can help organizations to analyze if campaign in social media help companies to achieve success.

According to the publication made by American Express (2018), which has proposed own way to measure the results, some of the campaigns have easy measurement criteria by using several simple questions such as how many visitors have company has or how many customers bought the product or service after launching the campaign. However, to measure the effectiveness deeper American Express has provided readers with the step questions, which can bring more useful information about campaign effectiveness, the questions are following:

1. Did we meet the objective we set?

2. Are there measurable items like coupons, or vouchers that are directly linked to the campaign?

3. Can I compare sales figures for the same period, year on year?

4. Have I noticed a difference in sales activity on products featured in the campaign?

5. Have I noticed a change in the type of customers I am now getting?

6. Can I see if spend per customer has changed over the period of the promotion?

7. Were there more footfall/traffic/phone calls/bookings/online visits during the period of the campaign?

8. Did customers give any feedback on specific elements of the campaign?

9. Have we created a sustained change in business or was it a short-term success?

10. Did your campaign cost less than the value of the new business it generated? (American Express 2018).

In addition, company American Express underlines in their paper that everyone who helped in campaign creation has to take a part in researching and measuring it to get profound results and understand what worked and what did not work at all.

According to the Sales Generator (2018), users of social networks are partly attracted by metrics that allow companies to analyze how many subscribers have their community or channel, how many comments, likes and reposts have company’s content. Business owners

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should also pay attention to these indicators in order to measure them and evaluate the effectiveness of advertising for the company.

The first indicator is audience, company has to identify how many followers has the company’s group or page and the dynamics of organization’s performance. The next indicator is coverage which reflects how many users from the total audience of the social network watched content, including paid advertising. This indicator is applicable to a separate post and to the entire page as a whole. This indicator can help to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising impact on the target audience. The last indicator is involvement, which helps to evaluate the reaction of the audience by using following aspects:

1. Likes - shows the number of users who have viewed and rated your content

2. Comments -demonstrate the effectiveness of the content, which stimulated users to enter into a dialogue

3. Reposts - reflect the increased interest of the audience, counted the content relevant for posting on pages of organization as well as for further distribution

4. Mentions - show how many times during the communication of users the name of the brand is cited

The more active the audience demonstrates, the higher the effectiveness of advertising in social networks. The engagement indicator helps to assess the degree of interest of users in relation to your content. Thanks to this, the audience's loyalty grows, which in future can lead to sales growth (Sales Generator, 2018).

Finally, in order to conduct proper analysis of social media campaign effectiveness, company has to measure it inside the organization first, because managers outside the firm might not understand exact goal of the research. Nevertheless, company has to use other services outside the organization to involve different department that can bring the neutrality of the research outcomes to the report (Blanchard 2011).

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The main purpose of the research is to study how to create a successful promotional campaign in social media, launch it, evaluate and compare with previous campaign launched in 2017 year.

This chapter is based on practical problem solving and systematizing that experience to research of the whole research and tries to answer fundamental question. The research method of the

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thesis is an Action Research as the main idea is to create promotional campaign, launch it to Facebook, wait for a result, analyze and compare with previous campaign launched in October 2017 to answer the basic question of the research is how to create a successful promotional campaign and which key elements have to be considered during the process.

The Chapter presents research methods which are used in the study. This section is divided into several topics such as research approaches, methods, data gathering and analysis. These topics discuss research design and which approaches and methods were used in order to implement the research, considers methods to collect necessary data, explain how the analysis is implemented and, finally, show if the research I valid and reliable.

3.1 Case company

Case company is Silver BeautyStudio. This is a developing organization which operates in beauty sphere in Kuopio, Finland from March 2016. There are different services connected with eyelashes, nails, face and brows. The owner of Silver Industry (general name of all departments) is one person, who makes eyelashes, micropigmentation and all marketing and brand activities.

In addition, company has 4 members: two lash makers, nail technician and hairdresser. Pages of the company are well-promoted on Facebook and Instagram, they are daily updated with photos and information about the service. Facebook group has about 2300 followers and likes from Finland (the most share from Kuopio) and Instagram page has 10000 followers from different countries. At the moment, company is popular locally and the timetable is fully booked for every four next weeks to three employees and to other two workers are possible to find time after one week.

Generally, all customers reserve time at the place or through Facebook page, new customers are acceptable only to new employees. In the future, own eyelash/hair school will be established and own eyelash production will be available on sale.

3.3 Research approach

There are several approaches for a research such as deductive and inductive. In the current research elements of deductive approach are presented. The deductive approach is a method of mediating knowledge, in which the transition from knowledge of a large community to knowledge of a smaller community takes place. According to the rule of the deductive method, a single (particular) knowledge can be obtained from general knowledge by virtue of a causal

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natural relationship of phenomena and processes (Worster 2013). In accordance to Eriksson and Kovalainen, the term “deduction” supports the idea that the source of knowledge is a theory, where on the basis of phenomenon theoretically, the research is able to find one or more hypotheses for empirical study (2016). Thus, the deduction is a logically prepared method of linear type, where empirical data goes from the theoretical background.

Finally, as the research is deductive, the general theory presented in the previous chapters aimed to create a suitable implementation for the research part. Thus, the research part is created in accordance to the theoretical background, implemented and analyzed in the next chapters.

3.4 Research method

The main research method of the thesis is an action research. This type of research is a study where the main goal is not to gain new knowledge, confirm hypotheses or collect empirical facts, but the idea is to solve practical problems related to improving the situation in a particular organization, school, college and family. This is very similar type to the methods commonly used in anthropology, ethnography, heuristics, epistemology, since the main process is the group decision-making process (Wadsworth 1998).

Thus, different scientists provide readers with definitions of Action Research in their publications. For example, Adelman defines Action Research as a “spiral process that involves three stages: planning, taking actions, gathering facts about the results of the action” (1993).

Corey determines Action Research as a process in which a researcher tries to resolve facing problems “in a way to manage, adjust and evaluate his decisions and actions” (1954). Besides, Action Research serves as a way in which certain amount of people are able to create conditions, which help then to learn from their own experiences and knowledge and make it available for others (Kemmis, McTaggart & Nixon 2014). Generally, the term Action Research could be determined as a “dual goal of improving the organization participating in the research, and at the same time rigorously generating valid and consistent knowledge “(Kock & McQueen, 1997).

The term of Action Research has a wide scope of application because it used in science, education, healthcare, medicine, business and management. Thus, this type of research is universal, with multi-purpose design and complex structure, which methods are equally applicable to different spheres of human activity. Therefore, Action Research has features from

Creating an effective social media campaign for a small business : Case company: Silver LuxuryWorld