Description

Advertising and communications have changed significantly over the last decade, specifically in the consumer market. The way that people buy and consume products is now closely linked to social media and advertising on social media platforms. Greenberg and Kates (n.d.) refer to ‘social media’ as a new approach to marketing, which relies on dialogue, storytelling, and long-term relationship-building. These social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, all of which have shown significant growth over the past 10 years. An example of this can be seen with regard to the growth of Facebook which - at the end of March 2016 - had 1.65 billion users. The benefit of these social networking platforms is that one can easily group users into age, demographic, language, gender and interests.
The challenge in a business-to-business environment is that social media and the abovementioned platforms are seen as only applicable to the business-to-consumer markets. According to Qualman (2009), as of July 2012 70% of big company CEOs do not have a presence on social networks. Kotler and Keller (2006) state that a key goal of marketing is to develop deep, enduring relationships with all people and organisations that could directly or indirectly affect the success of the company’s marketing activities. One of the ways in which to build these relationships has historically been to build a brand that is referred by word of mouth or referrals. This has been challenged in the digital era, where the Internet and social media have disrupted the normal campaigns which businesses send out as all individuals can express their opinion about a brand based on their experiences, according to Brown and Fiorella (n.d.). Brown and Fiorella (n.d.) also state that social media uses word-of-mouth marketing as its cornerstone.
Reichheld (2011) states that loyal customers come back more often, refer their friends and are less price sensitive. Also it is cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. Therefore, maintaining a customer relationship is an effective way of building a brand and ultimately improving one’s bottom line.
The objective of this study is to test the practicality of using social networking as a relationship-building tool in a business-to-business environment and how social networking can be used to transform relationship-building to engage with customers in the digital space. The research will also investigate whether social media networking be used as a communication tool in improving marketing return on investment (ROI) in the business-to-business environment, particularly in a service industry such as the plant rental industry. In addition, the question of whether or not social media networks can be used to complement existing customer engagement, such as face-to-face selling, will be investigated.
This study will look at how social media can be incorporated into an existing marketing strategy and how a blended approach - of using multiple media platforms to reach a target audience - will need to be adopted in the future.
In addition, this study will examine the possibility of socially involving all stakeholders of the organisation - such as current employees, previous employees, suppliers, investors, shareholders, customers, future employees and future customers - and their importance in using social media to gain information on the industrial company.
Greenberg and Kates (n.d.) state that social media is important because one’s customers prefer to gather, review and share information about the company with people they trust. It is now possible, by means of social media, to track and monetise this behaviour.
The outcome of this research will determine whether further investment is necessary in social networking in order to expand the Rand-Air brand with customers as well as staff and suppliers.