UTILIZATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPACT ON MARKETING PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY OF SMEs IN INDONESIA

Abstract

The role of social media has changed both producer and consumer behaviour worldwide. It connects businesses and customers to communicate with each other seamlessly. Social media can bring many advantages for SMEs, but many SMEs still have not realized it. Several SMEs have higher marketing performance through social media channels, while most SMEs struggle to implement social media benefits because of their limitation in technological knowledge. This study explores why and how SMEs use social media and its impact on marketing performance by using an explanatory pilot study as a research method. The qualitative data analysis were examined through thematic analysis. The findings of this study provide nuance to explain the role of social media for SMEs in six main themes: (1) Branding, advertising, and promoting; (2) Enhancing community interaction and content sharing; (3) Building trust and relationships; (4) Reaching potential customers; (5) Digital marketing trends, and (6) Low-cost promotion and content customization. Another notable contribution of this study is the importance of social media adoption to improve SMEs' marketing performance through creative advertisement using lower marketing costs.