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).Īlthough 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.

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). 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).ĭespite 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). 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. 2012), and build closer connections with customers (Rapp et al. 2018), bolster brand evaluations (Naylor et al. On the one hand, firms are taking advantage of social media platforms to expand geographic reach to buyers (Gao et al.

The past decade has witnessed the development of complex, multifarious, and intensified interactions between firms and their customers through social media usage. Finally, we suggest fruitful directions for future research based on input received from scholars specializing in the field. 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. 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. This is followed by a conceptualization of the developmental process of SMMSs, which comprises four major components, namely drivers, inputs, throughputs, and outputs. To fill this research gap, we first define SMMS, using social media and marketing strategy dimensions. 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).

Marketing landscape definition