Entrepreneurial Aspects of Digital and Social Media Marketing
Intro
Digital marketing is a way to promote products and services and the company as a whole. Email, instant messengers, advertising, and opinion leaders are used as channels for delivering information to the target audience.
Currently, digitalization is one of the most important areas of development of the global economy. Some digital technologies have found their application in the marketing environment.
Digital marketing allows you to use all these technologies to interact with customers. At the same time, content is distributed through media channels such as websites, social media networks, email, and mobile applications.
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Some of the key concepts of entrepreneurship in digital and social media marketing are:
Digital transformation: Companies have to adapt to changes in consumer preferences and behavior, which are increasingly dependent on digital technologies. This includes the use of websites, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, and email.
Social media: Popular platforms such as Instagram, Twitter(X), and TikTok provide unique opportunities to engage with audiences, build community, and increase brand awareness. They allow companies to not only promote their products but also build relationships with customers.
Analytics and data: It is important to use data in order to analyze consumer behavior and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This allows entrepreneurs to make informed decisions and adjust their strategies if needed.
Creativity and content: Success in digital marketing often depends on a creative approach to content creation. Visually appealing and interesting materials can attract attention and increase engagement.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset
Ability to create successful business processes
Mastering the skills of planning, setting a goal and achieving it helps to avoid routine in everyday work without compromising the result. To evaluate their actions, a businessman defines a range of indicators that he is going to achieve in a specified time. For example - gain 3000 followers by the end of the month.
Communication
One of the main skills for an entrepreneur is a clear and precise formulation of his thoughts for employees and partners. Building human relationships with employees, clients, and other businessmen affects the quality of company management.
Know how to build a team
In business, it is important not only to demonstrate leadership. The ability to create a team to achieve a goal is also a quality that an entrepreneur needs. A manager sometimes needs to take a break from business processes and pay attention to the team. Helping emloyess is one of the components of teamwork.
Critical thinking
The ability to objectively evaluate information and the ability to choose the right solution is called critical thinking. An entrepreneur who has mastered it can easily analyze business processes, determine the right strategy, relying not on emotions, but on logic. An entrepreneur with critical thinking skills finds the right approach to a customer or partner, a way to defeat competitors, and resolve a crisis situation.
Leadership
Without leadership qualities, an entrepreneur will not be able to unite and motivate a team to move towards a set goal. A good leader enjoys trust and respect due to possession not only of formal authority, but also of other personal characteristics: honesty regardless of the circumstances, moral and ethical stability, effective communication skills,
ability to go beyond the traditional approach in business,
knowledge of methods and processes in business and the unmeasurable desire to succeed in business.
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Limited budget and digital advertising
One of the main challenges that entrepreneurs might face at early stages is that small and medium-sized businesses have limited marketing budgets. Advertising in digital channels can be expensive, and many companies do not have enough funds for full-time promotion.
The solution for this challenge: optimize the budget and use more affordable but effective promotion channels, such as social media or content marketing. For example, developing creative content for Instagram can attract audience attention without large financial investments.
Lack of digital marketing knowledge
Many business owners lack digital marketing expertise. Lack of experience in using digital tools can become an obstacle for effective promotion.
Solution: train staff or hire digital marketing specialists. Modern online courses and consulting with marketers can significantly increase the level of competence.
Uncertainty in choosing a target audience
Defining the target audience is a key step in creating an effective marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs face difficulties in defining their ideal customer.
The solution: market research and collecting consumer data using analytical tools. For example, using Google Analytics allows you to track the behavior of website visitors and identify the characteristics of the target audience.
Effective use of social media
Social media offers tremendous opportunities to engage with your audience. However, to use this tool successfully, you need to choose the right channels and content.
Solution: Analyze the effectiveness of different social platforms, create unique and tailored content, and engage with customers through comments and private messages.
Lack of a clear strategy for monitoring results
Without a proper system for analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, entrepreneurs can easily waste precious time and resources, not knowing what brings real results.
Solution: implement analytics tools such as Google Analytics to constantly monitor traffic, user behavior, and conversions. Regular reports will help adjust your marketing strategy.
For the real-world example, I want to talk about how Airbnb faced tough competition in the rental market, but was able to overcome the obstacles by creating the right strategy.
Airbnb's social media marketing strategy effectively uses the power of user-generated content (UGC). It helps the company to create an authentic and engaging experience for potential travelers. Airbnb does not have to do much because most of it is the user-generated content, where they are showcasing real photos from hosts and guests, it also helps to foster a sense of community and trust among users.With this strategy, they can easily maintain a steady stream of new content because the posts are generated by their users.
In addition to their social media campaigns, Airbnb has a well-designed email marketing strategy that helps to attract potential customers. They target users who have expressed interest in specific destinations but have not completed a booking yet. Airbnb uses this data in order to create personalized and timely email campaigns that encourage these users to revisit their options. These emails can include unique offers, reminders of saved listings, or travel guides that demonstrate local attractions, making it easier for users to envision their stay and motivating them to finalize their booking.
PlanetMedia has this to say about Airbnb and their strategy: "The digital marketing strategies of Airbnb are a great model for all start-ups struggling out there. Airbnb has managed its digital marketing approach smartly by evaluating different prospects of the business communication strategies and continues to do so to this day."
Innovation
AI and Automation
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation play a key role in digital marketing. With AI, entrepreneurs can collect and analyze large amounts of data, optimize campaigns, and personalize customer experiences. Automation allows them to reduce time on sending emails and managing content, and focus on the strategic and creative aspects of marketing.
Voice Search
With the rise of voice assistants and devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, voice search is becoming increasingly popular. People find it convenient to complete a search using their voice. Marketers must adapt their SEO strategies and content to meet the needs of users searching for information and making purchases through voice search engines.
Video Marketing and Streaming
Videos are one of the most popular content formats today. Marketers are increasingly using videos to attract an audience and increase engagement. Streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch are becoming platforms for broadcasting ads and creating their own video content.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile devices are an integral part of our lives, people use them daily and often more than laptops. It is important for marketers to adapt their strategies to mobile users. Mobile optimization and responsive design should be the main principles of developing websites and advertising campaigns.
Growth Strategies
Now let's talk about opportunities for growth and particularly talk about the importance of scalability, customer acquisition, and long-term sustainability in entrepreneurial ventures.
Scalability is important because it helps entrepreneurs to increase revenue without a drastic increase in costs. For example, automated marketing tools like Mailchimp can help to send out automated emails which leads to rapid growth.
Customer acquisition is another key aspect for entrepreneurs, they always need to find ways to attract and retain customers in a competitive landscape. This involves installing new features but also analyzing customer behavior data to optimize targeting and messaging.
Long-term sustainability is one of keys to success. Entrepreneurs HAVE TO prioritize building strong customer relationships and brand loyalty. If you have no customers, you have no businesses.
Social media is a powerful tool if used correctly. Companies have the ability to utilize social media platforms as tools for growth, branding, and customer engagement. And it is all FREE! Let’s look at a couple successful social media ventures.
Coca-Cola - The "Share a Coke" campaign started in 2011 in Australia and was very successful due to the active use of social media. A lot of customers wanted to share on their social media a bottle with their name on it. Coca-Cola encouraged people to do so which helped increase engagement, sales as well as increase brand loyalty.
Yelp - helps businesses to receive crowd-sourced reviews. The platform allows businesses to receive feedback from customers and make changes to their services. It is a powerful and free tool for entrepreneurs, who can use feedback to improve their service and adjust their offering to the needs of their audience.
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Ethics
In today's fast-changing and increasingly competitive business environment, ethics in business has become one of the key factors determining long-term success. Business cannot exist solely on the basis of financial indicators and strategies for achieving quick gains - in order to ensure sustainability and prosperity in the future, it is necessary to focus on the principles of honesty, responsibility and transparency.
One key issue I want to talk about is data privacy. In today's world, entrepreneurs not only actively collect information about users, but also face the responsibility to protect this information from leaks and abuse. They must ensure compliance with regulations and standards, such as GDPR, to establish trust with customers.
The potential abuse of social media is another ethical concern. Manipulating public opinion and spreading disinformation can cause significant harm. Therefore, entrepreneurs must ensure that all employees are on the same page and use their platforms responsibly, promoting positive influence and image.
Thus, entrepreneurial ethics should not be something additional or something that stands apart from operational activities. It should become part of the strategy and cultural identity of each company, because it is ethics that allows you not only to win today, but also to remain competitive in the future.
Trends
Predicting future marketing trends is not an easy task, as Internet technologies are constantly evolving and consumer behavior is changing rapidly. However, digital marketing trends in 2024 give an opportunity to get the main idea of what entrepreneurs should be aware of.
Of course, the implementation and use of artificial intelligence. Companies will continue to include AI in marketing tasks, and will only increase and become more widespread. Companies will more actively and boldly use AI to analyze data, create content, improve customer experience and optimize advertising campaigns.
Videos continue to be one of the most popular types of content and effective promotion tools, especially among a younger audience. Entrepreneurs should expect the active use of video marketing in advertising campaigns, especially short video formats in the form of stories, reels, and shorts.
Influencers with different audience sizes will be in demand among advertisers, despite the difficulties in applying the law on advertising labeling.
My Thoughts
After writing this blog I have learned a lot of things about the entrepreneurial aspects of digital and social media marketing. Limited budget might be one of the road blocks for young entrepreneurs, however there are multiple ways of how they can promote the content, for example via social media. Also, I realized how important search engine optimization (SEO) is. And if entrepreneurs do not know how to use it properly, they need to seek people who know and can help them.
Citations:
Accelingo. (2024, April 8). Airbnb’s global strategy: How they conquered travel worldwide. https://www.accelingo.com/airbnbs-global-strategy/
AIContentfy team. (2025, January 23). The impact of social media on Entrepreneurship. AIContentfy. https://aicontentfy.com/en/blog/impact-of-social-media-on-entrepreneurship
Bansal, A. (2023, December 18). Tech trends and entrepreneurship: Adapting to the digital revolution. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-trends-entrepreneurship-adapting-digital-amit-bansal-ab--6yd5c
Bizhanova, K. (2019). (PDF) impact of Digital Marketing Development on Entrepreneurship. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337737764_Impact_of_digital_marketing_development_on_entrepreneurship
Planet media. (2024). How airbnb uses digital marketing to drive business. How Airbnb Uses Digital Marketing to drive business. https://www.planetmedia.com.au/blog/airbnbs-digital-marketing-strategies
Udoudom, U. (2024). Impact of social media platform on entrepreneurial venture: A technopreneurship perspective. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378176851_Impact_of_Social_Media_Platform_on_Entrepreneurial_Venture_A_Technopreneurship_Perspective
Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, December 5). Share a Coke. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_a_Coke
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