Challenges SMEs Face when Adopting Social Media Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness : A Multiple-Case Study

Abstract: As the use of the internet increases, so does the use of social media channels. These channels have become a part of everyday life and are changing the way of communication and information exchange. Today, more and more business-to-business (B2B) companies are adopting social media marketing (SMM) to communicate with their customers. Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have also started adopting SMM to increase their brand awareness, the existing literature is very limited on this subject. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to identify and describe challenges SMEs face adopting social media marketing in order to increase their brand awareness. In order to achieve the purpose of this thesis a qualitative research method was selected and four semi-structured interviews with marketing directors and coordinators at three SMEs were conducted. The result of this thesis shows that SMEs face some common challenges like financial and human resources, lack of time and expertise in SMM, customer satisfaction, channel selection, global crisis and bad reviews. Further, this thesis found that SMEs also face some individual challenges like cultural issues, measuring brand awareness, language, influential content, communication issues, promotion costs and outsourcing.