primarily SMB – (Small Medium businesses) on various digital ad (social media) platforms: Consultancy Project – Final Submission for MSC in Global Business Services Other, UOG, Ireland

Consultancy Project Proposal – Hemant Ajmani

The document outlines an initial project proposal to capture the as-is customer experience (advertiser experience primarily SMB – Small Medium businesses) on various digital ad (social media) platforms and what the various social media companies should be doing to improve the advertiser experience that helps the SMB owners to maximize return on ad revenue spent. The working title of the project is Advertiser Experience in the Digital Landscape or Analog People in a Digital World.

With COVID-19, Social Media platforms saw a surge in the time that was spent on the platforms, and advertising on these platforms by SMBs saw a massive surge. Initially what started as awareness campaigns started to move towards conversion. If we look across platforms be it Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or anything else, each platform has substantial SMB sales teams that are reaching out to small business owners to have them advertise on their platform. As per a report published by Insider Intelligence (2022), the forecasted US digital ad spending in 2023, is $278.59 billion.

Insider intelligence 2022 report adjusted the forecast for 2023 by 5 billion lower than 2022 on account of inflation and macro-economic factors, however, the spending is still substantial and the platform/organization that will maximize their market share in the digital ad spend arena will need to carefully curate the advertiser experience with other variables like active users on the platform, average time spent on the platform, etc.

As Per Ghosh (2017), there is a shift in the needs of most companies and Companies want global business services to make them more agile and adaptable, to help them manage risk and compliance, and to increase growth and scalability. They also want to reduce capital and asset intensity, as well as costs, while enabling innovation.

Ghosh (2017) puts forward the key question How can GBS leaders address this reality and meet their businesses’ basic and evolving needs? The answer: By mastering seemingly competing demands in four areas. To do this they must:

⦁ Standardize and stay flexible
⦁ Commit to efficiency and innovation
⦁ Run centers of work and centers of excellence (CoE)
⦁ Focus on robust service and collaboration
The image captures the shift in needs of most companies

Based on the shift in needs (illustrated by Ghosh, 2017 – How to leapfrog Global Business Services maturity curve) for most companies, and in the context of this study, it will be critical for social media platforms to think about efficiency and effectiveness of world-class performance to maximize market share will come down to process design and enabling technology

Process Design – involves the creation and optimization of efficient and effective processes for delivering shared services across multiple locations or business units.
The process design in GBS is critical to ensuring that services are delivered consistently and efficiently across the organization. It involves defining and documenting the processes, workflows, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for each service and identifying opportunities for automation and continuous improvement.

For any of the social media platforms, process design needs to consider uniformity of experience keeping in nuances in geographies and culture, multiple types of users and customers such as Direct Seller vs Reseller vs Agencies, and personas need to be created to help internal teams help customize insights for not only managed SMB accounts but also for unmanaged SMB accounts.

Gentile, Spiller, and Noci (2007) shed some light on the concept of Customer Experience, and on how the right environment and setting for the desired Customer Experience should be created in such a way as to contribute to the value creation for customers and the company itself. An organization that enriches every interaction that they have with its customers will come out ahead and it cannot be achieved by a generic process design that does not differentiate between customer treatment and creating value for the advertisers leading to the creation of value for the organization.

On the other hand, social media platforms enabling technology have two key objectives;

⦁ To identify what toolsets and insights are available to customers through the platform for them to understand optimization opportunities of their ad budget while maximizing their revenue.
⦁ To allow the technology stack used by the platform to enable their Global Business Service teams to understand and iterate processes based on the customer journey. The stack needs to bring together customer relationship management, and communication channels into one omnichannel tied to customer industry insights and tools like ads manager to drive innovation for different customer types.