Social media marketing : Acquiring customer loyalty and relationship management using social media as a marketing channel

Abstract Social media is a marketing phenomenon that is growing very fast. Social media helps creating value for customers in broadcasting the advertising among social networks. Blog posts, videos, pictures, reviews and ratings all have a significant impact on marketing. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate how companies can achieve customer loyalty and customer relationship management using social media marketing and if companies can target new customers by social media. An inductive research approach was used in the study. Semi-structured interviews were performed with interviewees from two companies. A survey questionnaire was answered by 100 social media users which were also customers of the companies. The findings show that there are certain constraints in social media such as risk of user information security when their information can be shared with the companies so that companies can do better marketing research. Word of mouth is spread on social media where new customers are targeted. Social media is providing new channels for support, advertisement and acting as a news feed tool to keep customers up to date about recent events and news. The company stated that no extra resources were required to market on social media