1. Introduction

The modern world has seen businesses come up with several measures in order to remain relevant in an ever increasingly competitive market. One of these measures is the use of social media marketing, which involves tapping into the power of popular social media platforms to achieve the marketing goals set by a business [1]. Almost every business today has some form of social media marketing due to the huge number of people using social media platforms. It is a common occurrence to come across advertisements as one scrolls through social media sites, with these ads being one of just the many ways social media has been used for marketing [2]. The emergence of digital marketing prompted business brands to shift from the traditional method by implementing new strategies. These digital marketing strategies increase consumer communication and provide numerous business opportunities. As a result, companies opted for these strategies to remain competitive in the modern era [3]. Therefore, online marketing campaigns have influenced content marketing as a crucial tool for digital marketing. These concerns raise the need to review numerous articles and explore social media marketing strategies, their benefits and challenges, the use of technology in marketing, and the emerging social media marketing trends.

1.1. Social Media Marketing Strategies

Businesses have devised several strategies to ensure that their social media marketing is at a high level. One of the strategies used by marketers to promote their products on social media is using celebrities to endorse these products [4]. These endorsements come through social media sites such as Instagram, twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. These celebrities are viewed to have a high social value hence they attract a larger number of customers to products [5]. Celebrity influencers are powerful tools for advertisement in marketing because they can easily grab costumers’ attentions and have the potential to reach more people than other traditional advertising methods, which can boost the brand awareness and enhance the brand credibility [6]. Nowadays, it is common for social media accounts that attract huge numbers of followers to be approached by businesses so that they can advertise the business’s products to these followers. Part of these advertisements involve these celebrities going live on their social media platforms [4]. Previous research suggests that as many as 25% of all television commercials and 10% of advertising budgets involve celebrity endorsements [7]. And there is a direct relationship between the use of celebrities in advertisements and improvement in company profits because celebrities help companies create unique position and positive brand image in the marketplace [8,9].

Another strategy used in social media advertising is corporate advertising, which aims at enhancing the image of a business instead of just promoting its goods and services [1]. There is a rise in advertisements that just aim at informing the public of the existence of a business, which in turn makes the audience curious to find out what the business is all about. These strategies have made social media marketing highly effective. Image appeals constitute the most effective social media marketing strategy. Johansson and Hiltula assert that image appeal encompasses the aspects of cognitive and orientation reactions to consumers' perceptions [3]. Cognitive engagement involves problem-oriented situations, while orientation reaction involves the consumer's emotions. Using image appeals enhances consumers' knowledge, increasing their emotional attachments. As a result, this strategy effectively promotes valuable and expressive products for the target audience. Business organizations incorporate image appeals into social media platforms to promote their brands. For example, The First Media's "Blossom" garnered the highest number of views in history after posting an advertisement image of a woman with undergarments. The post had over 280 million Facebook views and 12 million shares [10]. The features influencing those statistics include visual appeals that stimulate consumers' emotions. Content marketing also tops the list of effective marketing strategies. Weerasinghe alludes to the fact that content marketing strategy involves distributing and creating relevant, consistent, and valuable brand content to attract audiences to make profits through clear objectives [11]. The content can appear as infographics, eBooks, videos, and blogs. A random sample survey demonstrates that 61.4% of consumers assess content on social media compared to 38.6% on the internet [11]. This statistic affirms the effectiveness of content marketing in impressing social media consumers. Business brands should maintain quality content, frequency and properly scheduled posts to enhance target reach. They can achieve this impression through activities such as creating hashtags. For instance, GoPro attaches the hashtag #GoPro to all their highly engaging content [10]. Therefore, GoPro has become the most influential camera brand due to its approach to promoting innovative products.

1.2. Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing comes with several benefits to businesses and consumers. First, it offers an opportunity for businesses to promote their brands and the goods and services that they offer [12]. Si agrees with this claim by identifying the benefit of social media in eliminating middlemen and linking companies directly with their consumers [13]. According to Arca, 2012, social media marketing enables businesses to reach their intended traffic, generate leads, gain insights on the market and competitors, improve public relations and human resources, save on costs, and get customer feedback and increase brand exposure and awareness [14]. Social media marketing also can target audiences and consumers based on users’ personal interests and feedback from their sites. Through this way, companies can effectively reach the people who are most interested in what they have to offer and boost their word of mouth [15]. An added advantage of social media marketing is its ability to provide businesses with an opportunity to offer personalized products to customers hence increased customer satisfaction [16]. Ibrahim & Ganeshbabu identify the added advantage of social media having analytics tools to help businesses monitor the progress of advertisement campaigns and identify strategies to make these campaigns even better [2]. Dwivedi et al. identify benefits of social media in the healthcare and wellbeing industry such as direct interaction between healthcare providers and their clients, and improved patient outcomes. Social media marketing also contributes to improvement in the education sector, as well as rapid growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) [17]. These benefits explain the increased interest in social media marketing.

Behera and Balaji note that social media marketing assists marketing managers in assessing brand intelligence [18]. Coordination boasts the benefits of conducting brand intelligence on social media. As a result, business brands can find extensive traffic generated on social networks. Previously, people believed that social media only impressed the younger generation. However, the emerging online advertisement has shifted the notion to other groups, such as employees. This observation aligns with the data from Weerasinghe, which shows that 28.6% of employees contributed more to the highest content viewers than 15.7% of students. According to the statistics, social media marketing can equip managers with essential information such as customer feedback, loyalty management, customer segmentation, and product development [11]. Social media marketing also increases brand awareness for business organizations. Behera and Balaji affirm that social media marketing creates the most effective technique for syndicating content that increases business reach. The strategies increase brand recognition due to their high level of engagement with consumers. Marketing managers can increase awareness by recruiting employees, sponsors, and business partners to conduct "like" and "share" campaigns. Associating with people enables them to interact with the content, increasing brand awareness and developing a reputable business image. For instance, the constant sharing of a brand's posts increases consumer reach since the process forms a chain that attracts the attention of both potential and present consumers. Research shows that 91% of marketers believe social media marketing exposes their products significantly [18]. These observations confirm the effectiveness of social media marketing.

1.3. Challenges

Despite these benefits, social media marketing has resulted in several difficulties. To begin with, there is the elimination of interpersonal forms of communication as they are replaced by the use of computers. Businesses, therefore, cannot get direct information from customers regarding their products. The absence of interpersonal interaction between businesses and customers makes it difficult for businesses to understand specific needs of customers, which increases the risk of influx of products that are not in high demand [19]. According to Di Domenico et al., there is the added challenge of misinformation on social media [20]. Social media provides mischievous people with an opportunity to spread fake information regarding a company’s products which may ruin a company’s brand. The use of celebrities to promote products might result in over promotion of these products hence misleading consumers as to what the best products and features actually are [4]. It is essential for businesses to ensure they are careful when marketing through social media marketing in order to overcome these challenges and maintain the good brand of the business.

Social media marketing also exposes business brands to significant challenges. Behera and Balaji argue that data mining poses a great threat for social media marketing, which encompasses consumer data collection. However, the majority of consumers are unwilling to disclose their private data. Their privacy issues pose a significant challenge to accessing clients' private data. Data mining companies can always use social media marketing to collect consumer information from applications and posts. For instance, Colligent collects similar information and sells the statistics to record label companies after mining. Disney's Records advertised the Jonas Brothers album to Latin America through data gained from Colligent. Social media marketing also operates within laws that govern the frequency of posts and content. As such, businesses should adhere to numerous media laws to evade account termination [18]. However, marketing managers can overcome these challenges through various measures. For instance, they should avoid content that directly prompts consumers to share their details. They should also post content that adheres to different platforms' guidelines that prohibit activities such as nudity.

2. Emerging Technologies

Business brands have also incorporated chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) into their marketing strategies. Sadiku et al. elaborate that businesses apply AI-powered chatbots to reply to customers quickly. The tools also assist businesses in giving automated responses through user-interactive AI chatbots. These tools offer personalized consumer support, improving the customer experience at higher levels. The AI also promotes marketing through AI-powered ads, enabling marketers to curate content, identify customers, and advertise better [21]. These observations predict an excellent future use of AI and AI chatbots in social media marketing. The incorporation of AI and AI chatbots also accompanies numerous challenges. Sadiku et al. emphasize that these applications encompass privacy risks that expose sensitive information, such as tax, financial, and health records, to cyber criminals. These scenarios will interfere with the privacy of consumers. Therefore, business brands should differentiate between intuitive and intrusive promotions to protect consumers from the risk associated with AI-powered marketing strategies. Sadiku et al. also note that the market experiences inadequate AI professionals to integrate the tool with social media marketing [21]. These challenges arise due to insufficiently experienced and highly qualified AI professionals. Therefore, businesses should equip their technology experts with modern AI skills by sponsoring their training.

The act of marketing using social media has undergone several stages, especially during the 21st century. Husain et al. identify the exponential growth that social media has witnessed in the new millennium [22]. This claim is in line with Leeflang et al., who identify the increased usage of the internet in the 21st century which has led to rapid rise in digital marketing [23]. It is now common for a large portion of the population to have access to smartphones and computers which enable them to view many business products online [12]. Companies are now spending more than ever on social media advertisements as more people are online. Nyagadza states that over 77% of the North American and European population is frequently online [24]. This figure stands at 61% in Oceania and Australasia. African countries, which make up a large portion of the least developed countries globally, have also witnessed rapid rise in the use of social media, with businesses now aiming to tap into this market [23]. The increased use of social media has attracted the interest of scholars with increased number of journals being published to discuss the use of social media in marketing [25]. These journals provide adequate information on the best ways to market products using social media hence guiding businesses effectively. These trends are expected to evolve more rapidly as time progresses with social media marketing expected to be more rampant. The modern trends in social media marketing also include the use of short videos and social commerce. A study indicates that Tiktok dominates the short video strategy, attracting 67.6% of a sample size daily [26]. The data suggest that most social media users prefer Tiktok due to its bite-sized, entertaining, and engaging content. Therefore, business brands utilize these advantages to create short contents that align with their goals. Social media commerce also tops the list of trends. The post-COVID-19 period has influenced social commerce, where consumers prefer to order products from different online brands. A study predicts a 2024 projection by suggesting that mobile commerce will generate about $620.97 billion [27]. The statistics predict that business brands should keep pace with emerging marketing trends to increase the efficacy of their target reach.

3. Conclusion

Social media marketing is a trend that is here to stay. It is therefore essential for businesses to adapt to this trend so that they can compete adequately in order to achieve their goals. Strategies implemented in this trend include the use of celebrity endorsements and corporate advertisements. These strategies have resulted in benefits such as promotion of business brands, goods and services, provision of personalized goods to customers, customer satisfaction and improvement of several sectors of the economy. Despite the benefits, there are challenges such as misinformation and elimination of interpersonal communication. The trends in social media marketing suggest that there will be rapid increase in this form of marketing in the near future. Businesses therefore need to be fully equipped to handle the trend.