A Framework for Social Media Marketing Evaluation in SMEs: A Mixed-methods Approach

Despite the importance of social media marketing in many organizations, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), scattered and limited studies have been done to evaluate its performance. Therefore, the present study attempts to develop a comprehensive framework for evaluating the performance of social media marketing in SMEs using the well-known management of the balanced scorecard (BSC). This study is an applied-development study in terms of purpose and mixed-methods in terms of data collection. In order to achieve the research goal, in the first step, the qualitative method via interviewing with experts as well as a comprehensive literature review was applied and the indicators of the proposed framework were extracted. In the second step, a questionnaire was developed for the validation and weighting of dimensions and indicators. Besides, an evaluation of academic experts, experienced marketing managers in the field of social media marketing, and senior managers of small and medium enterprises was done. The findings of the study showed that the financial dimension with a weight of 0.257 was the first priority. The customer dimension with a weight of 0.255 was the second priority. The learning and growth dimension with a weight of 0.250 was the third priority, and then the internal business processes dimension with a weight of 0.236 was the last priority. The developed framework can be used as a tool to measure the strengths and weaknesses of social media marketing performance projects in organizations, especially SMEs.

With the expansion of cyberspace and the emergence of social media, the use of media space has been recognized as a common experience for corporate communication with customers and the exchange of information. In the past decade, social media has had tremendous success. Nowadays, implementing some form of online marketing through social media is very important for all businesses. Despite the importance of social media marketing in many organizations, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), scattered and limited studies have been done to evaluate its performance. Therefore, the present study attempts to develop a comprehensive framework for evaluating the performance of social media marketing in SMEs using the well-known management of the balanced scorecard (BSC).

This research has been conducted using a mixed-methods approach in three phases as below:
In the first phase, a comprehensive literature review was conducted among the past studies on this field to identify the indicators and dimensions that were mentioned in the previous studies for assessing the performance evaluation of social media marketing.
In the second phase, through a qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with ten experts to identify and extract the indicators and dimensions of social media marketing performance evaluation in SMEs. Judgment sampling was applied for sample selection.
In the third phase, the research approach was quantitative, and a questionnaire based on the indicators and dimensions extracted from the earlier phases was used. The Likert scale was utilized to collect the perception of the respondents on the questionnaire items. For this phase, about 39 samples were collected.

In this study, interviews were conducted using a semi-structured exploratory approach to collect the data. Two criteria of credibility and reliability were used to validate the present study. To achieve these two criteria, the following steps were followed:
Credibility: for this purpose, the participant feedback method was employed, in which six interviewees were asked to provide feedback on the interviews conducted and the analyses obtained. This helped to obtain the agreement of the interviewees.
Reliability: to do this, all details of the interviews were recorded, and notes at every step of the research were taken. Voice recording and oral data writing were performed in all interviews. In order to calculate the interview reliability, the two coders (evaluators) agreement method was used.

The researcher, along with the research fellow, coded the three interviews. The percentage of agreement within the results as a measure of reliability was 0.8, which is more than the acceptable level of 0.6.
Also, to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was calculated by SPSS software. The alpha coefficients of the studied variables were higher than the threshold value of 0.7. Therefore, it can be said that the questionnaire was valid. To analyze the data obtained from interviews, the content analysis method, which is the most common approach for analyzing data in the social sciences, was utilized in this research. The data gathered via questionnaires were analyzed using the sign test to confirm or reject the research indices, and the weighted average method was used to measure and rank the research indices via SPSS software.

After the code and indicators were identified for each interviewee in the first step, 65 indicators were extracted. It was found that 7 indicators are related to the financial dimension. Twenty-six indicators are related to the customer dimension, and 17 indicators are related to the internal business processes dimension. In addition, 15 indicators are related to the dimension of learning and growth. Also, with the results of the indicators obtained during the research, it was found that many indicators have been extracted from the study and review of the content of other studies by citing sources, and some indicators are just the result of interviews with experts in the field of social media in the executive and academic field. This part of the indicators, in turn, refers to the innovative aspect of the current research.

The top indicators identified in this study are as follows: the financial dimension (0.257), the customer dimension (0.255), the learning and growth dimension (0.250), and the internal business processes dimension (0.236). Also, with the results of the indicators calculated during the research, it was found that many indicators have been extracted from the study and a review of the literature content of other studies by mentioning the sources. And some indicators are just the result of interviews with experts in the domain of social media in executive and academic fields. This type of indicators, in turn, refers to the innovative aspect of the current research. The developed framework can be used as a tool to measure the strengths and weaknesses of social media marketing performance projects in organizations, especially SMEs.
This research has some limitations. First, the proposed framework is presented at the theoretical level and has not been used in practice. It is suggested to use the case study method to evaluate the selected company in terms of social media marketing performance. The second limitation of this research is that the mutual effects of the identified dimensions have not been considered in the framework. Therefore, it is suggested to investigate the mutual effects of dimensions and indicators using quantitative modeling methods such as DEMATEL in future studies. Third, the proposed framework generally provides a performance evaluation framework regardless of the media type. Therefore, it is suggested that future researchers identify social media marketing performance evaluation indicators according to the type of media used by the company.