Recognised by Gelder (2005), brand recognition is more than mere brand awareness. What the brand means affects not only the consumers but also affects how the brand is considered in relation to other companies and their brands.
According to Kim & Ko (2011), social media can have a dramatic effect upon a brand reputation. It is very easy to under estimate the power of brand awareness especially for small companies. Where one would usually associate brand awareness with large multinational companies, in actual fact local companies also need brand awareness to increase their size amongst their customers. When someone mentions Zara and New Look as opposed to a small boutique in the Brighton lanes, the height to brand awareness is displayed (Roesler 2014). Successful businesses are aware that generating profitable sales goes beyond having to sell a product or a service, notes Gregorio (2014). Essentially, the successes of businesses rely on the effectiveness of their visibility and awareness of their brand or services with their target customers.
In todays age, with the rapid development of digital means of communication, small businesses can get even better visibility and exposure for their brands and services through social media platforms. Provided by the global statistics report in November 2014, in a population of 7.272 billion people, 3.001 billion people actively use the internet and an outstanding 2.046 people have active social media accounts. Having social media accounts provides any business whether small or large access to 2.046 billion potential customers. Thus with figures like these, businesses can simply not afford to overlook the benefits that social media can provide to their brand awareness (Gregorio 2014).
“Right here, Right Now”
Watch the clip below to truly understand the IMPORTANCE of social media in todays generation…
Now we have the statistics, care to see the affects of implementing social media to any business? Watch the quick video below…
Example: Cocowhite
So who are they?
Cocowhite is a UK based, 100% natural health product company that began with a desire to promote healthy and balance lifestyles. It’s products originated on the back of a well-known practice called ‘oil pulling’ that was around many generations ago.
Brand Awareness: the ‘fad’
Cocowhite are a brand that keeps appearing on celebrity social media accounts- mainly on instagram. Celebrities including stars from ‘The Only Way is Essex’ and ‘Geordie Shore’ regularly post pictures on instagram when using the ‘oil pulling’ product.
Scrolling through my instagram as I do on an everyday basis, to my surprise most of the pictures from the ‘celeb’ accounts contained at least one picture of this ‘Cocowhite’ product.
Intrigued and wanting to get the same ‘celebrity smile’, I popped over onto their website and decided to order myself some. When the box arrived home, I noticed that on the box beside the instructions was some text that said…
“TAKE A #COCOSELFIE & TAG @COCOWHITEUK ON INSTAGRAM FOR A CHANCE TO WIN AMAZING PRIZES! DETAILS: COCOWHITE.COM/WIN”
So here was my #cocoselfie…
What are they doing right?
In terms of brand awareness, Cocowhite is at the top of its game! The company’s #cocoselfie has created mayhem on the social networking platforms including instagram and twitter. It is has even sucked me into it! The company is aware that they key to increasing brand awareness is through the notion of ‘getting visual’. Noted by Hodkinson (2014), getting your content noticed in a noisy social media world requires an eye-catching subject matter. With the results of the prodict evident through the selfies (whitening of the teeth), promotion of the product couldn’t be any better.
Increasing brand awareness amongst young consumers is necessary for businesses looking to grow in the future. Fundamentally, if young consumers are not exposed to the brand at a young age, adapting at an older stage will be difficult and thus will create obstacles for the business. With ‘selifies’ being a new ‘craze’ in todays young generation, by leveraging the trend of ‘#selfie”, the visual content (selfies) instantly grab the attention of the target audience and increase the brand awareness of the company.
What a brilliant way to use social media to increase brand awareness…
So how can your businesses increase their brand awareness through social media sites? Here are my 5 top tips…
- Find the right market and platform:
There are so many different social media platforms and it is important that businesses choose the right platform. However, fortunately as each platform has its own search engine, it is advisable that you first find out conversations about your industry and target those markets and platforms.
Depicted though the image above, the most actively used social media platform is Facebook, shortly followed by Twitter and Instagram. In terms of active users it would be advisable that small businesses consider using the social media platforms in the order above to maximize the effect of their brand awareness (Hodkinson 2014).
- Make it manageable:
There is no point having presence over all the social media platforms if you are not able to manage it well. In the assumption that as a business you already have so many things to do, it is right to assume that you wouldn’t be spending a lot of time composing tweets and updating Facebook statuses (Hodkinson 2014). Choose only two or maximum three social media platforms and make sure that you give it importance. More importantly, make sure that you are consistent! Make sure that the quality of your connections is high!
- Be friendly and conversational
There is no point updating statuses and composing tweets that in business languages on a social media network. Remember that the visitors on your page are normal people from various backgrounds; they are not all business professionals. Strike up conversations that are charming and friendly, which mentions customers and the nature of your product. Ultimately, you want customers to engage with your brand.
- Optimise your social content strategy
Once you have established presence over your social media networks, the next step involves optimizing the content on your network. To increase brand awareness, you want to post content on your network that your customers and visitors will be interested in. You goal is to make your content go viral, be liked, be shared and be commented on. This type of content can range from being humorous, controversial and visual. But remember, regardless to the content make sure that you provide your target audience the content that they want, not the content that you would like to see. Doing so involves one thing… RESEARCH. So understand your audience’s needs and preferences.
- Track everything!
It is important especially with regard to brand awareness that as a company you measure and track your strategy and presence on your social media pages. Many platforms offer engagement statistics. For example: Facebook offer insight as so how many people have visited your site and how many people have liked and shared the content on your page. In addition to the social tracking methods, you can also consider shortening your links using bit.ly and then using web analytics (such as Google analytics) to measure the number of clicks on the link.
There you go! So you have the why and the how behind marketing your brand awareness! Is the ‘brand awareness’ campaign for your company out of this world? Like, Share and Comment below with all your thoughts!
References:
Gregorio. J, (2014), How to boost Brand Awareness using social media, Retrieved April 22, 2015, from, http://cjgdigitalmarketing.com/how-to-boost-brand-awareness-using-social-media/
Hodkinson. M, (2014), 10 tips for increasing brand awareness with social media marketing, Retrieved April 22, 2015, from, http://www.influenceagents.com/matts-chat/10-tips-increasing-brand-awareness-social-media-marketing
Kim. A, Ko. E, (2011), Do social media marketing activities enhance customer equity? An empirical study of luxury fashion brand, Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, Retrieved April 22, 2015, from, http://kenanaonline.com/files/0081/81970/Do%20social%20media%20marketing%20activities%20enhance%20customer%20equity%20An%20empirical%20study%20of%20luxury%20fashion%20brand.pdf
Patel. N, (2014), How to build brand awareness for you business, Retrieved April 22, 2015, from, http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/07/25/how-to-build-brand-awareness-for-your-business/
Roesler. P, (2014), Why and How you should use internet marketing to improve Brand Awareness, Retrieved April 22, 2015, from, http://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/why-and-how-you-should-use-internet-marketing-to-improve-brand-awareness.html