How Marketing Managers Work with Social Media and Measure its Effectiveness : A multiple-case study focusing on the B2B context

Abstract: In the past few years, a topic that has caught much attention by academia is the rather new concept of ‘social media’. Today, it is expected by business-to-business organizations to involve social media in their marketing activities. However, the existing literature surrounding the concept has mainly focused on the business-toconsumer context, and there is a lack of research on the concept in a business-tobusiness context. This bachelor thesis aims to contribute to the theoretical landscape of social media in a business-to-business context as well as to study marketing managers’ work with social media in large international business-to-business organizations. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the reasons for large international business-tobusiness organizations to engage in social media for marketing purposes. In order to fulfill the purpose, two research questions were formulated as (i) What do marketing managers at large international business-to-business organizations experience that social media is effective for? and (ii) How do marketing managers at large international business-to-business organizations measure the effectiveness of social media? A qualitative method was chosen for the thesis, where seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with marketing managers from three large international business-tobusiness companies. The marketing managers contributed with their experiences which resulted in that the thesis concluded that social media is effective for; firstly, as a communications channel with customers, secondly, to create awareness as well as third and lastly, to support existing relationships as well as build new relationships. Further, the thesis also found that the interviewed marketing managers use the metrics; reach, likes, comments, cost per lead and impressions when measuring the social media effectiveness. However, uncertainties were expressed regarding the reliability of these metrics.