INTRODUCTION

Marketing entails a set of functions that includes product promotion,

innovation of goods, pricing, distribution, and developing good customer
relationships. It is vital in maintaining the business image and attracting potential
customers. Marketing has the main responsibility for achieving profitable growth
for the company (Kotler, 2012) Marketing plays an important role in the sales
growth of the business. Building strong relations with the customer is a great
avenue in increasing sales, employing invaluable marketing, boosting the
employee’s morale, and assurance of repurchase and loyalty from customers.
Marketing strategies include social media marketing, SEO, Content marketing,
Integrated planning, Multichannel Analytics, paid search, and email marketing.

The COVID 19 outbreak has disrupted business operations nationwide. The

implementation of mild to hard lockdowns over the country immensely affected its
economic performance. The lockdowns resulted in a historical downswing in the
unemployment rate and the biggest fall in the Philippine GDP. According to the
National Economic and Development Authority, the unemployment rate between
July and August surged from 6.9% to 8.1%. This result is presumed due to stricter
lockdowns imposed to control the spread of the Delta variant. Moreover, the
underemployment rate substantially decreased to 14.7 percent from 20.9 percent,
given improving job conditions. The increasing number of unemployed workers
resulted to the arousal of new businesses. The existing businesses also reassessed
their marketing strategy to comply with current situation.

Social media is a wide platform with over 4.8 billion users worldwide.
Business enterprises started to use social media as a marketplace. According to
Saravanakumar (2012), social media allows companies to establish a
communication channel with their customers, market their products, build brand
equity, and boost clientele faithfulness. Enterprises make use of social media
together with the application of maximum efforts in bridging with their customers
and strengthening their relationship amid the health crisis. Social media is also a
good indicator of social trends. Companies build and innovate products
accordingly to meet the consumers' expectations. In an article written by Apel et.
Al (2019), they explained that customers will be able to engage with firms
anywhere and anytime, and solutions to customers’ problems will be more
accessible and immediate, perhaps even pre-emptive using predictive approaches.
Social media has penetrated many households and improved the consumers’ way
of searching for the basic product information that affects their purchase decision.

Emerging from the COVID 19 Pandemic with an effective marketing

strategy is crucial in all businesses across the nation. Given the various types of
marketing, social marketing is the most convenient strategy that companies may
guarantee greater sales. Social media marketing is defined by Simerpreet (2017) as
the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media website.
Furthermore, social media marketing programs usually covers the efforts to create
content that seeks the attention and urges the readers to share business information
across their social networks.

There are multiple existing studies centered on the effectiveness of

marketing strategies. In the study conducted by Claveria et. Al (2021), they found
out that the most effective strategies employed were webinars, online
advertisement, and boosting Facebook pages.

The researchers conducted the study to determine the implications of social

media marketing to the sustainable growth of businesses amid the crisis.
Researchers were urged to conduct this study since the health crisis immensely
affected the businesses. Moreover, social media becomes the new marketplace
nowadays. Transactions and business operations occur mostly on social media
platforms. The researchers desire to formulate possible solutions that can help
businesses continuously produce products and give services to people despite the
restrictions of the crisis. With this perspective, Entrepreneurs and aspiring business
owners would be able to come up with a better marketing plan and strategy for
their business.