An investigation into the significance of content marketing through social media for fitness industry in Ireland
Authors
Pataria, Aadarsh
Issue Date
2015
Degree
MBA in Marketing
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
Marketers today place a significant amount of trust on social media, around 92% marketers indicate that social media is good for their businesses. With the growth of technology most Irish companies are employing some form of social media marketing through many different channels. Marketing through social media has added benefits of tracking the user response and behavior, with features like ‘Facebook Insights’ and ‘Google Analytics’. The latest trend in online marketing is ‘Content marketing’, refers to communicating with the potential and target customers by providing them engaging and relevant content as a way to market themselves. This paper focuses on content marketing through social media channels for fitness industries in Ireland. It focuses on what type of contents will strengthen customer engagement on social media. This study explores the various effects of content marketing on online consumers. The Study also focuses on what are the benefits associated with actively engaging with customer and how brands can leverage it. This study will also look into what type of contents do users share amongst their friends and peers. Then finally, this study will talk about brand advocates and the effects of E-WOM (electronic word of mouth). In-order to test the hypotheses that was developed in Chapter 3 of this dissertation, the researcher surveyed over 107 respondents. The findings indicated that almost all the respondents were regularly active on social media, with majority (77%) respondents visiting Facebook daily. The findings also suggested that active engagement by fitness brands with their consumers on social media will have positive effect on trust and loyalty. Informative content was found to generate maximum engagement. This study also found that respondents mainly share video content on social media platforms with their friends. The findings also highlighted the benefits of user generated content and electronic word of mouth. The paper also mentions certain areas for future research. Investigating the effects of a content that is perceived negatively by the users. Author keywords: Content marketing, social media, fitness industry