Social media marketing in the modern world

Social media marketing is one of the main marketing strategies used primarily in the current business environment. The main reason for this is that every person has a mobile phone, and having this mobile phone with them all the time, consumers are more likely to be constantly on the lookout for new things. They also use social media through this mobile phone to fulfil various needs in their daily life. The current world population is 7.91 billion and mobile connection use is 10.37 billion worldwide (UN digital analyst estimate). Among these social media, the two most popular social media platforms are Facebook and YouTube (UN digital analyst estimate). Due to this many companies in Sri Lanka have paid more attention to Facebook and YouTube marketing as compared to the rest of the world. 

The important thing to note here is that in addition to companies, small businesses and self-employed people, as well as individuals who sell their products alone, are increasingly marketing through this medium. Facebook and YouTube media marketing is commonly used in the business-to-consumer (B2C) area. This is because sales can be done in a way that gives the customer more confidence. Consumer confidence is a very important factor in complex purchasing behaviors. There were 7.646 million Facebook users in Sri Lanka in January 2021, which accounted for 35.7% of its entire population. The majority of them were men - 64.6%. People aged 25 to 34 were the largest user group (2,560,000). 6.68 million YouTube users in Sri Lanka in early 2022. It is 31.0% of Sri Lanka’s total population. 39.1% of YouTube’s audience in Sri Lanka was female, while 60.9 % was male.

According to statistics from Statusbrew (2019), by 2020, social media advertising spending will reach $ 102,292 million. Advertising spending is expected to grow at an annual rate of 7.0%, with a market volume of $ 125,482 million by 2020. Facebook and YouTube, which account for 75% of the market, are also the most popular social networks today (Statista, 2020). Therefore, marketers focus on Facebook and YouTube, which have the largest number of users.