Navigating The Hurdles: Challenges Confronting Smes In Social Media Integration For Brand Image Enhancement

Abstract

As internet usage continues to surge, social media platforms have become integral to daily life, reshaping communication, and information dissemination. This shift has prompted an increasing number of business-to-business (B2B) enterprises to adopt Social Media Marketing (SMM) as a means of engaging with their clientele. Despite this trend, there remains a dearth of comprehensive literature on the adoption of SMM among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for bolstering brand awareness. Thus, this thesis aims to address this gap by exploring and delineating the challenges encountered by SMEs in integrating social media marketing to enhance brand visibility. Employing a qualitative research approach, the study conducted four semi-structured interviews with marketing executives from three SMEs. The findings reveal a set of common challenges, including constraints related to financial and human resources, time limitations, and a lack of expertise in SMM. Additionally, SMEs grapple with issues such as ensuring customer satisfaction, selecting appropriate channels, and managing crises and negative feedback. Furthermore, individual challenges such as cultural barriers, the measurement of brand awareness, linguistic considerations, the creation of impactful content, communication hurdles, promotional expenses, and the potential need for outsourcing were also identified.