Dissecting the Changes of Marketing: Traditional to Digital
The rise of global marketing has been engineered by the involvement of social media practices that have positively impacted businesses. The growth of brands has been as a result of increasing visibility and media attention offered through these social marketing channels that provide several metrics for channelising brand growth.
A brand’s reputation is highly dependent on its perception and popularity within the common public; since everyone has access to social media these days, it has become one of the easiest ways to garner attention for branding companies.
The current day and age have been described as the “golden era of marketing” primarily because of the role of social media and its different platforms in transforming digital practices.
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Social media has taken the marketing world by storm since it provides companies with real-time data about their services without spending a lump sum on other tools and software. Moreover, companies can pitch sales without coming as too strong since social media is used by users and businesses alike.
Gauging interest online requires a deeper understanding of marketing proceedings and how a particular organisation fits into the advertising and promotional scheme of things—the critical aspect of garnering success with branding procedures online works around delivering products in an innovative manner.
Social media has led to changing of cultures and providing breakthroughs with out of box thinking that has been met with open arms. It’s crucial to note that such nuanced and digital promotions weren’t possible nearly ten years ago.
Earlier, the world as a whole was more inclined towards sticking with traditional norms of marketing. These included billboards, caricatures, printed media, magazines, glossy pages, newspapers, and broadcasting mediums like television and radios for promotions and campaigning.
The mechanisms above were highly successful since there weren’t as many fluctuations as today in international markets with less complexity across corporations.
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Today, with the influx of technologies and data being generated every second, it’s humanly impossible to just stick to traditional marketing and advertising practices for ripping in leads and conversions.
Therefore, the need of the hour was felt in shifting marketing interactions online where both customers and agencies could work with each other and develop healthy, long-lasting relationships.
What does a Branding Company Mean, and How do they Fit in with Delivering Marketing Solutions?
What constitutes a branding company?
What is the need for efficient online marketing solutions?
The questions described above are bound to pop up when a tremendous shift in marketing practices takes place. The reason being since marketing is a facet that deals directly with consumers, they can see the changes and might feel confused as to how to look for their loved brands and their goods.
A plethora of brand management courses online teach young and aspiring learners about how social media channels are causing a revolution in the marketing and branding worlds.
These programs have been designed to widen students’ perspectives about different online-based channels that help businesses cater to their consumers’ needs and interests.
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However, it’s vital to understand the branding term and how companies use this term for attracting wide attention from demographics.
A branding firm is defined as the act of giving a particular company a specific design or symbol for promoting their goods, services and products. Branding is a quintessential part of any company since it deals with making a memorable and ever-lasting impression on customers.
They are used for delivering robust marketing solutions since they provide a tabloid of information for distinguishing their brand from others and creating an audience that explicitly interacts with their content.
The brand needs to be an exact representation of what the company is all about and must focus on building loyalty and transparency with their clients.
There are several online marketing certification courses in India that offer holistic coverage over branding processes and their critical steps in developing effective campaigns that utilise social media practices.
A branding process is defined as the systematic approach used to create, communicate and strengthen a firm’s branded goods, items and services. There are several elements to a braiding process that vary in accordance with the target audience, the customer’s interaction and unique selling propositions.
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The need for the branding process can be understood from a variety of factors; moreover, unlike other approaches that a company constitutes, a branding one may not require a total revamp of steps and just allows managers to iron out procedures that they find valuable.
Branding and its processing fits into the market solutions through several factors; these include the following:-
- Repositioning of a firm’s long term goals with regards to competing with a new set of competitors.
- It is the merging of two different firms that deliver similar branded goods, services and products.
- While launching a new product by a firm
- Changes made in branding strategy, procedures and other defined objectives
- The emergence of a new competitive advantage
- The addition of a loss of a high visibility market expert
- The launching of a new service line such as clothing chain, mobile accessories etc.
- Reformative “commodification” of existing services
It’s interesting to know how social media fits into the branding world and the benefits it offers for delivering valued products, goods and services to consumers.
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Building brand awareness using effective strategies that aim at long-term success requires a clear understanding of basic concepts that govern the world of marketing.
There are phases of branding that revolve around utilising social media paradigms for developing a robust and achievable digital marketing strategy.
Young and upcoming professionals need to get their concepts and their practical applications honed as per corporate levels by enrolling for credible online digital marketing courses available in Indian elite institutions.
The role of social media in spreading brand awareness and identity is extremely crucial for setting up successful marketing procedures.
Role of Social Media in Developing Measurable Brand Building Strategies
Social media is like a close sibling that deals with brand building perspectives. The presence of social media plays a vital role in setting up adequate measures to develop interactions and meaningful connections with the target audience online.
It’s a new age way of bringing in more consumers to engage with branded items, goods and services for creating positive reviews about their end products.
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The world of marketing is significantly influenced by a brand’s reputation and its global perception. There’s perhaps no better mechanism for PR relations and advertising for goods, services and products than leveraging social media for doing the same.
Social media is an excellent tool for auguring brands and their positive image since it allows organisations to connect with target audiences on a more interpersonal level.
All credit to the rise of social media for interacting with consumers on a real-time basis to let their voices be heard and for getting clarity over their needs wants, and concerns.
Social media has been a revolutionary tool in giving voice to the voiceless and offering opinions over brands through customer reviews, portals for feedback and other discussion forums.
These reviews are regularly surveyed by marketing and sales departments for understanding how their products are performing and the areas that they can improve on further for delivering better results.
The extent of exposure through social media is immense since it leads to an increase in organic traffic and leads to the development of trustworthy brands and more extensive conversion of leads.
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With the brands, companies can bring in innovative, trendy and interactive methodologies for marketing their goods online and can see its results in real-time through likes, shares, comments and other means on these social media platforms.
The exponential growth of Instagram and Facebook have allowed marketing companies to advertise their services on these platforms on users timelines and also with their short story features such as “Reels” by Instagram.
Having a solid social media presence works in a company’s favour and can lead to long term dividends in monetary and financial assets aspects. It leads to better company partnerships, reduces marketing costs immensely and also helps in improving sales for companies.
There are several social media campaigns that have thronged the markets today, and they are developed in a manner that automatically attracts targeted audience groups.
Today companies conduct unboxing, launching events, set up countdowns on social media networks for maximum viewership and create hype for their brands prior to the actual release of items.
Social media has been influential and successful in current digitised times since it offers live updates of marketing insights that consumers can view for making better purchasing decisions.
In case of a situation wherein a brand is dealing with specific issues, social media can act as a mediator for customers to provide real time problems that a company is facing, thereby leading to transparency and a whole new level of trust between both parties.
Social media also helps in rendering a humanistic appeal to brands since it allows companies to solve consumer problems, provides excellent overall customer service and sets up call-to-action by reinforcing deeper connections.
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However, the rules for acing the social media aspect of marketing need to be understood prior to developing marketing strategies that lead to maximum results for organisations.
There are specific steps in brand management that optimise social media for helping both consumers and marketing agencies for coming up with advanced marketing practices.
The marketing analytics course in India can be used for getting resourceful intel regarding the various concepts, principles and terminologies that comprise social media marketing in the current day and age.
Social media leads to better consistency and delivery of messages across channels and helps in getting good reception from audiences.
There have been specific outstanding social media campaigns in the recent past that have changed the shape of creating a brand reputation.
Managing Brand Reputation in the Social Media Age: A Look at Popular Campaigns
Campaigning is similar to developing projects for industries since they both require tenacity, planning, attrition, a talented and diligent team of employees and an achievable vision that needs to be broken down into goals.
Projects are the basic building blocks for any engineering and synthesis based company; it’s the entity that allows organisations to stay up-to-date with growing corporational needs. When it comes to marketing agencies, they need to draft campaigns so as to suffice their customer’s needs and concerns.
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Campaigning in marketing terms is the process of strategic and well-furnished activities that help promote an organisation’s business goal objectives or their end products. Today marketing campaigns are used to market ideas, services and brands as a whole.
Undertaking a digital marketing course from an elite level institution such as MICA can help in drafting successful campaigns that fit in with a corporation’s budgets.
Campaigning by utilising coming of age social media channels and practices is amongst the most successful and sure shot ways of building a powerful brand presence in modern times.
The art of developing a social media campaign might seem a daunting task at first, but with a correct understanding of the target audience and a vision to achieve the set objectives, companies can come up with great ideas that lead to favourable outcomes.
“A goal without a plan is just wish”
The words described above by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry highlight the harsh reality of getting goals ticked through set out execution plans.
A potent example of social media campaign could be “Virat Kohli”, the man himself is a brand icon by sponsoring numerous products, endorsements and screen time. Therefore, brand campaigning boils down to the promotion of a company’s commodity in a manner that appeals to the target audience’s interests.
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There have been some terrific social media campaigns in current times that have changed the face of marketing all over the world. Several companies and MNCs have utilised social media channels for marketing their goods and services for broader reception.
The by-product of such practices has led to the deployment of successful marketing campaigns that reshapes customer’s buying patterns.
The galvanising power associated with social media can be leveraged for inspiring, influencing, engaging, amusing and could become a potent tool for marketing goods.
There’s a buzz associated with utilising social media since it takes over popular channels used by Millennials and scores of people regularly.
Social media makes it easier for companies to churn out leads and attract consumers towards interacting with their marketed goods, services and items. Brand campaigning provides a layout for product promotion and helps in bringing it to people’s notice.
It can be thought of as an action plan for giving a realistic view over different marketing and advertising procedures for delivering goods.
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Social media paves the way for deploying methodologies that lead to better insights about marketing behaviours and show how they can bind the audience’s interests.
The following list of social media campaigns tell us the importance of these mediums in creating brand awareness and visibility:-
Airbnb: We Are Here Campaign
“The Airbnb – we are here” was a Facebook live campaign launched in November 2016. The campaign was aimed at showcasing to potential customers the tourist spots they can visit while staying in cities.
The best part about this live campaign was that the renters could visit exotic places and sites with their hosts to bring both of these parties together and for creating a wholesome experience for first time Airbnb users.
Given the extreme rise of video based content over the last couple of years, the company decided to take a significant step towards offering a live feed of locations that Airbnb renters can move while visiting different countries.
The live video was a step forward in the future practices of marketing and advertising that could model user experiences and help them book Airbnb locations for their subsequent journeys.
Airbnb made a lovely initiative that allowed travelling enthusiasts, tourists and even university students to go for explorations and live to feed their journeys. The Facebook led marketing initiative was successful since the platform gained momentum through an influx of user’s posts, shares, comments, interactions and other features.
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It was also a Facebook initiative for promoting their live mode of interaction and communication with online friends. With the live shooting of tourist spots and locations, everyone on a user’s timeline can see their pics, leading to more renting of rooms through Airbnb.
The marketing initiative created strong brand visibility for Airbnb, and today it has become the ideal go to accommodation service for travellers.
Dove’s #NoDigitalDistortion Campaign
Dove came up with a brand new idea to promote natural skin and beauty for women of all shapes and sizes. The brand campaign garnered success since it focused on showing women without filters and any perfections on social media.
The beauty brand promoted shedding off distorted beauty norms and practices that have arisen due to social media. It was a massive and successful campaign since it allowed women to come forward and show them as they are, leading to increased sales of products.
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Dove has always believed in promoting natural beauty and highlights the same through its advertisements on television. It has idealised the same preachings through their #nodigitaldistortion campaign that peels off morphing of images online for getting more likes and views.
It was another remarkable initiative that helped bring the vast usage of filters to make images appear more striking on social media platforms. Dove compiled research as to how the likes and follows on these socials had a direct correlation with mental health.
Therefore, the campaign helped in removing those mental blocks by allowing women to come ahead and accept themselves as they were.
This is a fine example of reverse marketing at its best, although Dove took a significant risk of going all out, prompting the filter free beauty of women. However, despite these factors, the campaign was a huge success, and it allowed Dove to create a separate marketing niche for its shampoos, hair creams and other products.
KitKat’s #HaveABreakHaveAKitKat Campaign
Probably one of the most recognised and popular campaigns is KitKat’s #HaveABreakHaveAKitKat promotion that took a quirky side to market their chocolates. It’s one of the profitable and longest running campaigns on social media.
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The brand campaign began in late 2017, and since the pandemic, Kitkat’s profits have skyrocketed since it conveyed the idea that “having breaks is important”.
The marketing managers are working closely with popular content creators to give their own version of trends and add a flair of creativity. This helps them connect with their younger audience on popular social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Kitkat has always had what millennials call a “chill” vibe attached to their marketing practices and therefore always renders a free-flowing appeal to their campaigns.
The #haveabreakhaveakitkat theme too stresses on taking a break from mundane tasks and indulging in chocolates.
Their benches have become an invaluable part of their marketing procedures. They are set up around shopping centres, parks, and other areas to allow people to sit down and take a “break” by enjoying their Kitkat ™.
Furthermore, KitKat never shies away from hogging the limelight, the recent example being promoting their sweet chocolates during the running of Friends TV show on OTT platforms.
OnePlus India #YourBestShot Campaign
OnePlus took a leaf out of its competitor Apple in generating user based content for marketing their phone services and accessories. The brand has started its #YourBestShot campaign to cater to its Indian users.
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OnePlus has worked on its marketing strategies to create a broad follower base and keep its content updated with hosts of iconic images across India’s users.
Its recent and most successful #YourBestShot campaign focuses on bringing together photographers and nature enthusiasts to click pictures and get them featured on OnePlus socials.
Through this, they aim to give recognition to aspiring photographers by providing them with a theme every week and taking in entries for scores of pictures.
To make their campaign visible across social media channels, OnePlus has also created a dedicated social media page that will showcase the name of winners at the end of the campaign.
It’s an intelligent marketing plan that can help in increasing followers and creating a brand reputation at the same time. OnePlus is a step forward in future marketing strategies that showcase how brands will integrate human interaction for driving their sales.
Today, OnePlus phones are pretty popular in India primarily because of their wide acceptance of users’ images, making it the go-to mobile for clicking amazing pictures.
Linkedin’s #LinkedInNextWave Campaign
Linkedin has too joined in the fun of brand campaigning with its #LinkedInNextWave promotional jargon. The campaign aims at changing work cultures due to pandemics and the upcoming transformations taking place as a result.
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Linkedin has invested its time in this campaign by rendering insightful and informative social media posts to its followers. It always comes up with innovative ways of gauging consumer’s interests by creating engaging and re-shareable posts.
Recently it came up with “top professionals under 35 years of age” that reflects how young executives can utilise pandemics for career expansion.
Linkedin, through its #LinkedInNextWave campaign, offers valuable content that solves any doubts related to career changes and helps its followers to stay updated with the latest developments in the corporate world.
The brand name of Linkedin has been associated with creating and offering a multitude of job opportunities for several users. Be it formulating a career path, changing jobs or even reviving career roles, the brand Linkedin has been instrumental in creating a plethora of work related corporate options for its online web users.
Swiggy – #SwiggyVoiceofHunger Campaign
The food delivery app has gained tremendous popularity over the last year, and it often comes up with mouth-watering deals that swoon its audiences for getting orders. The myriad of options provided from western, eastern, Indian to other delicacies makes it an ideal food ordering app for Indian metropolitan cities.
Swiggy came up with another innovative campaign called SwiggyVoiceofHunger that was launched in conjunction with Dentsu Webchutney. The campaign was primarily based around Instagram, wherein users had to send them voice notes through direct messaging.
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However, there was a catch with the voice-based message that it needed to represent a dish served by Swiggy. Through this marketing initiative, Swiggy was able to interact with its customers on a more personal level and engage them through a social media network.
The dishes in voice memos had to be based around popular dishes such as Kebab-skewer, Shawarma, fish, Nachos, 21 stack Pancake, amongst others. The brand image of Swiggy increased manifold since it raised issues regarding food safety and security by deploying hashtags for the same.
As a result of this marketing niche, Swiggy has become the default app for making online food orders, and the delivery riders can be seen during any time of the day. Swiggy has worked hard to create a positive brand image and has utilised innovative mechanisms to offer coupons and discount codes to its customers.
Moreover, Swiggy’s #VoiceofHunger met a positive response from users with nearly 1.5 Lakh DM’s regarding different shapes of dishes highlighted in their campaign. The delivery company roped in leading social media influencers for creating decent brand awareness amongst their target audience.
Some of the big names in Indian social media domains like Shristi Dixit (Buzzfeed India’s content creator), Rohan Joshi (Founding member of AIB India), and several others helped bring Swiggy to the limelight and garnering a decent number of customers.
Amazon Prime India
Amazon prime always has new and advanced marketing practices up its sleeves for garnering the viewership of its services to consumers. But Amazon peaked with its #RahulBose moment in July 2020.
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The OTT platform poked fun at Rahul Bose’s viral tweet of spending Rs. Four hundred forty-two for a couple of bananas and highlighted the services the platform offers.
It was an intelligent and cunning way of remodelling an already created tweet for marketing their own brand and displaying the affordability of their OTT services.
As seen from Amazon Prime’s tweet, there were a host of services such as prime video for different memberships, free delivery for products ordered, same-day shipping of goods, music streaming, e-books downloads, students discount under 24 years of age, and overall savings of Rs.55.
The tweet by Amazon Prime India went viral and hit numerous reshares, and took over leading newspapers and blog posts.
The respondents affiliated with Amazon Prime responded to each tweet and its reply within seconds, leading to better leads and conversions.
The tweet symbolised value attached to Amazon Prime and the added benefits with this OTT platform. Customers took note of services the brand offered in just under 500 Rs and led to more memberships within days.
The thing to note here is that Amazon Prime targeted millennials and other audience groups who were social media savvy and had a wicked sense of humour for getting their message across. The content created is a mere reflection of the audience groups they aimed at targeting.
British Airways: Fuelled by Love Campaign
The video link for Fuelled by Love campaign by British Airways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFb01yTR9bA
British Airways offered a tremendous emotional experience to its list of followers and flight travellers by coming up with a unique connection with India. The cross-cultural advertisement was aimed at increasing its popularity amongst Indian passengers.
The brand campaign titled Fuelled by Love shows how one of the British Airways crew members falls in love with Indian culture and its values. The deep bond between the crewperson and how they feel for Indian culture is deeply reflected in the advertisement.
The campaign showcases a real-life example of a British Airways cabin crew who gets a once-in-a-lifetime experience travelling to India during their first flight. The brand campaign captures the essence of “while the service is driven by purpose and efficiency, but the true care is only fuelled by love.”
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The brand campaign is an excellent example of emotional-based marketing strategies for gauging the audience’s attention and interests. Today, there are numerous IIM marketing courses that teach how companies facilitate emotions in taking advertisement procedures and setting up their role in conveying consistent messages.
British Airways roped in SapientNitro to bring their emotional campaign into reality and create a broader target audience amongst Indian passengers. The story follows the journey of a cabin crew Helena Flynn who meets an elderly Indian passenger and instantly forms a special connection with her.
She caters to the elderly woman’s needs by assisting her with seat belts and later on while she struggles to slip on her socks. Touched by Helena’s gestures and concern, the elderly woman gives her house address and invites her over.
Helena at the elderly lady’s place absorbs herself in Carnatic music, plays the musical instrument Veena and enjoys the local delicacies. Once she leaves the area, she develops a unique and emotional bond with India and its people.
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The campaign was amongst the best ones that showed positive intermixing of cultures and allowed British Airways to develop a solid consumer base in India and its audience. The video was promoted using social media channels such as Facebook, Google Plus and YouTube.
With nearly 10M views and counting, the advertisement was successful in spiking emotions for marketing travelling services.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) Digital Marketing Case Study
Data analytics and its utilisation is a vital facet for promotion and advertising. However, many businesses still suck at doing so; taking a leaf out of KKR’s IPL team for brand awareness can help them skyrocket their viewership.
The Kolkata Knight Riders is an IPL team that works extensively towards creating its brand image across digital platforms. Today, each team has their own promotional channels for showcasing what happens between matches, the dressing room secrets and other aspects.
However, the trend was started by KKR’S YouTube video blog- “Inside KKR”, which aims to increase brand awareness, stay connected with fans, and keep them updated with the latest developments, news, and other insights.
Moreover, they built an app explicitly to engage with fans and keep them updated with the latest player news. It also has organised a digital live screening at Facebook at its Hyderabad Headquarters.
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KKR also utilises Twitter for running their “Cheer for KKR Campaign”, which is a first for any sports team in the world.
Digital Marketing Campaigns: Campaigning for a Cause
The several brand campaigns highlighted above showcase how a company leverages different creative and innovative styles for marketing its products across channels.
The different types of social media platforms at the marketing agencies disposal can create a more comprehensive presence, visibility, awareness, and understanding of marketed goods, services, and products.
Each of the brand campaigns described above brings its own unique rendition for promoting its services and goods through different means. The utilisation of nuanced technologies such as business analytics and big data can be used to make reformed and better decisions about advertising services across various domains.
Marketing using digital platforms allows companies to take the real-time consensus of their strategies, plans and other action steps for things to come and help them in attracting audiences using proven techniques.
As seen from Kitkat, Swiggy, OnePlus, Linkedin, and others, using a creative hashtag can assist managers in setting their product apart from others and driving organic traffic that interacts and engage with these goods.
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Moreover, as depicted by KKR, Amazon Prime, and Airbnb creating a multitude of online activities on social media platforms can help in churning out leads, conversions and other revenues for organisations.
They have shown that creating a robust online presence can lead to more opportunities for consumers to notice their content. They have mastered the art of brand visibility by developing terrific marketing arrears for their end products, goods and items.
British Airways has gone on a different path of binding and hooking up passengers with their ideated vision and mission statements. They took on the emotionally based marketing path to create their Indian customers and set up active measures for the same.
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From all the above-defined marketing procedures, it’s evident that businesses need to ring their A-game while creating strategies that concern involving and bringing in more consumers on board for increasing their target audience and delivering goods across a vast network.
With the help of social media, marketing agencies can achieve their branding objectives.
The Alignment of Brand Reputation with Social Media Mechanisms
Social media for brands is more than just engagement through likes, comments and shared features. It has a lot to do with how brands utilise this marketing tool for creating a brand value that beats the competitors.
The essence of building and sustaining brand reputation each day helps branding companies to stay abreast with the latest developments and challenges taking place in markets.
Social media is a tool that is at the core of any successful business today since it renders a holistic view over different operations, offers a variety of options for viral content and brings in more leads and prospective buyers.
Today, there are several lucrative careers in marketing and branding domains that can assist new and emerging professionals in creating a name for themselves in these job roles.
A plethora of brand management courses online offers well-formulated perspectives about different aspects that govern the branding world and teach about concepts that lead to better management of brands and their reputation through social media presence.
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