Social Media Campaign Focus on Brand Awareness Research (Research Paper Sample)

Social Media Campaign – Focus on Brand Awareness
[Name of the Student]
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Introduction
The classical marketing approach in 20th century was television commercial of thirty seconds, which was even considered as healthy solution for every marketing concern. During that period, companies needed effective time and content management in order to convey core message in concise span. However, the era of digitalization is entirely distinct. Building brand awareness is not adequate since competitors can retarget them easily through social media platforms. Hence, it can be stated that digital era has transformed marketing objective. The attention-gaining activity needs a prompt follow up attention-holding strategy. The period of appealing slogans and extensive advertisement campaigns has fallen, since brands, operating in current epoch need to act and deliver like publishers (Satell, 2013). This paper focuses on proposing social media campaign that can assist in creating brand awareness and its sustainability. Moreover, it will briefly discuss mistakes made by companies that lead towards brand destruction.
Discussion
Before proceeding with steps of creating widespread brand awareness on social media platforms, it is essential to understand the metaphor itself. By definition, brand awareness is a tendency of consumers towards familiarity with various attributes and goodwill of specific brand. As evidence, we can understand brand awareness created by Coca Cola, Nestle Mineral Water, and/or McDonalds. When group or target audience intends to visit a fast-food restaurant, they tend to mention McDonalds. At fast-food restaurant, they order Coca Cola rather asking for cola itself. Lastly, healthy and hygienic mineral water is specified as Nestle Mineral Water. The replacement of generic metaphors of products with specific brand is termed as ‘Brand Awareness’. Brands such as Coca Cola, McDonalds and Nestle became patent metronymic for general categories of routine products and services (Marrs, 2016).
Brands like Coca Cola and McDonalds, there are millions of brands worldwide that offer finest quality of products and services. However, they are still failures in capturing deserving market share due to poor brand awareness among target audience. Besides quality, visibility, communication and timely market presence are equaled significant for product and/or service to be successful (Kang, 2010). In 21st century where target audiences are highly active, interactive and brand conscious, it is important for companies to earn positive word-of-mouth for strong market share.
Steps to Create Brand Awareness through Social Media Platforms
Step I – Significance of Leadership and Aligned Mission
Every brand and/or company is defined through its mission that caused emergence in industry. A mission statement of the business elaborates corporate or brand representation, purpose and motive of existence. A mission statement of the brand is responsible for highlighting unique selling point (USP) if defined in an adequate manner. It needs to be strong, clear and meaningful. The brand managers and related regulatory need to realize that mission is a subliminal cause of developing and strengthening goodwill of a brand. It assists in enhancing profitability and productivity of brand, and developing a focused path if aligned effectively with brand culture (Groscurth, 2014).
Initially, a stronger mission statement will be created that is capable of promoting brand differentiation and customer engagement on social media. Statement with such characteristics can be attained if audience is chosen correctly. Like statement, it is also significant to segment audience that is appropriate for products and/or services offered by brand. Moreover, a visionary and charismatic leader is also required who can align these essentials and create an impact in among audience through social platforms. An efficient leader is essential to initiate brand awareness campaign as change-maker rather change-taker.
Step II – Creating a Social Media Presence
In accordance to mission statement for initiating campaign, an active social media presence needs to be followed. According to Mellinger (2013), different podiums of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram can prove to be fundamental mechanisms in developing and sustaining brand awareness. These platforms are public forums where target audiences share their experiences, preferences, expectations, etc. towards brands, products and services. Moreover, assigned leader can capably utilize this information to mould strategies accordingly. Further, information that is shared by audiences can be used effectively to acquire healthy public relations (PR) and word-of-mouth. This approach should be considered ‘smart’ in expansion of brand awareness.
As previously stated, brand managers need to think and work as publishers while ensuring presence on social media contemporarily. Attractive and engaging guest content will surely assist in impressing audience with brand image. It would be smarter approach for campaign team to create a content, which is interesting, unique, and easy for memorization. There is a significance of creating a healthy and lasting impression among audience. It is possible to achieve through providing valuable social media substance that fits with nature and preferences of customers perfectly (Marrs, 2016). Any error on this stage may lead towards brand catastrophe, which has minimal chances of eradication in future.
For specifying content adequacy, Smith (2013) and Barrete (2013) suggested to utilize Social Media Listening (SML), which is an identification and examination procedure of different opinions generated after social conversations. According to Smith (2013), SML helps different brands to ‘contrast (providing meaningful ideas)’ and ‘articulate (understanding)’ audience interactions. The "Hash Tag" phenomenon, created by Facebook, has power to develop and modify consumer perceptions that can change industrial patterns overnight. Hence, Smith (2013) enforced campaign publishers to develop content with elements of ‘reach (adequacy)’ and ‘exposure (delivery frequency)’ to maintain audience engagement.
Step III – Providing Rationales to Trust
Easy and free access of penetration to every brand worldwide has created issues of credibility among consumers. On platforms such as Facebook and Google+, audiences have innumerable brands to like and follow. Question is raised regarding engagement and trust with a specific brand. Firstly, it would appropriate for a brand to communicate with audience directly on popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This refers to tangible conversation sessions through chats and tweets, addressing queries, and generating feedbacks. Conversations will institute element of humanization among audience and develop sense of ‘brand availability’ among them (Johansson, 2015).
Secondly, arranging social media contests and competitions will prove healthier in sustaining engagement with audience. Communicating imminent events, offering promotional codes (coupon) and related discounts will increase popularity among audience. Besides increase in sales figures, there will be a sharp increase in brand awareness simultaneously (Gilfoil & Jobs, 2012).
Lastly, following an appropriate lead generation approach will help in brand awareness by reducing ambiguities between brand and audience. Lead generation will allow brand to entertain new audience on social platforms that possesses unrefined interests. It is an easier tactic of developing a relationship, or new relationship (Hussain, 2016). Campaign leader needs to utilize lead generation in order to convince new audience for purchasing product and/service.
Step IV – Social Media Monitoring & Measurement Tools for Campaign’s Success Assessment
The Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tool counts every platform that congregate opinions and voices of worldwide audience towards a brand. SMM can be understood as library of opinions where customers shelf information that are used for business intelligence reporting. Aligning with another metaphor, Social Media Measurement tools are different applications or software designed for smart phones and supporting gadgets, assisting a brand to create long-term marketing strategy and expansion plans (Mindruta, 2013). It even allows performing community development activities and providing effective customer services (Price, Ratcliff, & Loras, 2016).
According to Smith (2013), both are significant tools in world of social media, allowing brands to acquire rationale outcomes. Using these customer-engagement tools, brands can easily extract opinions from noise, which will help in gaining customer satisfaction and brand recognition.
The campaign leader can employ suitable applications such as Topsy and Talkwalker to obtain information regarding brands from internet or social platforms. In order to save time, a subscription for alerts can be done to acquire relevant data, which are used for analysis and assessment (Weinberg, 2016).
In context to Social Media Measurement, tools such as HootSuite and SocialMention can play role of efficiency as they utilize comments and postings from platforms for conducting brand management activities. Due to synchronization with various monitoring platforms such as Google+ and Twitter, it is easier to engender reports and statistics of specific words and preferences mentioned by audience frequently (Price, Ratcliff, & Loras, 2016).
Significantly, these applications and web tools allow campaigns to analyze tendency of brand recognition among audience. Moreover, it...