Raising Brand Awareness Through Internet Marketing Tools
| Site: | Saylor Academy |
| Course: | BUS602: Marketing Management |
| Book: | Raising Brand Awareness Through Internet Marketing Tools |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 8:54 PM |
Description
You read this article in Unit 3, but it might be helpful to review it in context of the impact on brand awareness using internet marketing tools.
Abstract
This article analyzes the opinions of different authors on raising brand awareness. It also describes and analyzes the concept of internet marketing and its implementation. The article provides analysis investigation of the most urgent and the most effective online marketing tools in developing brand awareness. The article analyzes websites, internet advertising, social networks, and search engine optimization.
Keywords: brand, brand awareness, internet, advertising, internet marketing
Source: Margarita Išoraitė, http://www.ijmp.jor.br/index.php/ijmp/article/view/391/509
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Introduction
Brands in the world are ranked by a wide variety of criteria, such as: awareness, monetary value, consumer affection, love appreciation, loyalty, etc. If you measure the success of brands like speed, during which the mark reaches the incumbent
necessary strength parameters of the previous decades, and the world really has successful brands.
A list would likely include the following top contenders: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Every year the importance of the internet is increasing. For every brand it is important to create brand awareness.
The aim of the article is to assess brand awareness through the internet marketing tools. Brand awareness is The research object - brand awareness.
Research problems arise from research investigative questions "Are internet marketing tools raising brand awareness?"
Research Methodology
Scientific literature analysis reveals theoretical aspects of raising brand awareness, internet marketing concepts, and internet marketing tools.
The Concept of Raising Brand Awareness
Hoffman, Fodor, (2010) stated that traditionally brand awareness is measured through tracking studies and surveys. Online, however, marketers have a number of ways to track brand awareness. In the social media environment, the company gains increased
exposure to its brand, often in highly relevant contexts every time a person uses an application created by or about the company.
According to Keller (2009), the concept of brand equity and the important intangible value that brands bring to organizations has been the most popular and potentially important marketing topic, emerging in recent years.
Homburg, Klarmannn, and Schmitt (2010) argue that brand awareness informs us about this product. Branding campaigns have a unique goal to increase the value of the product, service or other matter, advertising awareness and visibility.
Pikturnienė (2009) admits that brand awareness (memory, vision, decision-making environment) is a necessary condition for selection.
Černikovaite (2011) argues that brand awareness can be a prerequisite to buy the product. The high quality of the goods or services encourage users to buy and produce means an additional profit. Brand associations are typical consumer attitudes to brand,
the company delivers their advertising. Such associations can enrich the brand by new features, perceived by the creation of added value, providing consumers with a positive impact on safety or exclusivity, increasing the value of the brand.
Urbanskienė et al (2006) asserts that brand awareness indicates whether this brand raises the consumer's mind and his thought of a certain category of goods and whether it happens quickly. This is one of the main dimensions of the value of the brand.
Incidentally, it is important that brand evaluation of the individual user's position is useless, if the user does not know the whole analyzed brand.
Thus, the new original target of the brand is well known, but it maintains a high level of awareness on the market. It also states that the user's aspect on the brand's image can be analyzed through associations, arising when the user analyzes the brand in
mind. Association assessments may be: brand association prototypes (features, benefits, common position of brand terms); loyalty, strength, and uniqueness. Apart from that, the brand must not be limited to the superposition that brand name's recognition
is very important and this causes the association with trademark, when the user attempts to grasp it.
Probably the most important part of the company's strategic plan is to attract new customers and keep them loyal to the business. Loyal customers increase the company's turnover; the increase of company's awareness is a great tool to increase customer's
loyalty. Raising awareness among the young people is particularly important for every company for successful expansion of their business in the future, because if the business is not done in time, no new clients grow older existing loyal customers,
that ultimately result in the general decline in customer volumes.
Every day a variety of messages come to us; various manufacturers want to tell us about their products or services. Their main goal is to acquire the advertised product or service, and also increase the company's visibility. Hsiao (2011) mentions several
authors' opinions: "this is the buyer's ability to recognize and distinguish the brand so that he immediately understands the goods category owned by the trademark. For example, if someone mentioned the well-known theater name, most people immediately
recognize it, and think it is the cinema".
Table 1: Concept brand awareness
| Author | Concept |
|---|---|
| Somayeh Shojaee and Azreen bin Azman (2013) | Concept Brands awareness could be raised through marketing communication channels, which notify, remind, and convince customers about their brands, products or services. |
| Kelly (2015) |
Brand awareness is one of the most commonly cited goals of marketers today. |
| Arora and Sharma (2013) |
There are three strategic roles that help to build the brand. Marketers must use social media to serve their brand building objectives. It can help the brand to:
|
| Vukasovič (2013) |
Brand awareness is created through advertising, promotion, selling, public relations, and direct marketing. The company needs to communicate the values of the brand and then reinforce brand associations to start the wheel of usage and experience, and keep it turning. Through the combination of the stimulus of consistent communications and satisfactory usage and experience, brand awareness, confidence and brand equity are built. |
| Neti (2011) | Benefits of social media include: brand reach and awareness, consumer interactions through transactions, referrals and reputation management. |
| Chi, Yeh, Chien, Yang (2009) | A product with higher brand awareness will have higher market share and better quality evaluation. In addition, while consumers select a product, they care about perceived quality and brand awareness. |
| Aaker (1996) |
Brand awareness means the ability of a consumer could recognize and recall a brand in different situations. |
| Hoeffler and Keller (2002) | Brand awareness can be distinguished from depth and width. Depth means how to make consumers recall or identify a brand easily, and width expresses infers when consumers purchase a product, a brand name will come to their minds at once. If a product owns brand depth and brand width at the same time, consumers will think of a specific brand when they want to buy a product. |
| Percy and Rossiter (1992) | Brand awareness can help consumers to recognize a brand from a product category and make purchase decisions. |
| Ghodeswar (2008) | Different sources and levels of knowledge such as awareness, attributes, benefits, images, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and experiences get linked to a brand and its understanding by the consumer. |
| Hong-Youl, (2004); Aperia and Back (2004) |
Brand awareness can also occur without any actual involvement or relationship, for example people might recognize a brand and spread word of mouth (WOM) or have an opinion about it. |
| Sarangan, Ragel, (2014) |
Building strong brand awareness requires creating a brand that consumers are sufficiently aware of it. This involves designing of marketing messages and supporting marketing programs that capitalize on a well-convinced brand positioning. Marketing messages can be designed and delivered through both traditional media such as television, radio, newspapers and on-line media such as internet and social media. Marketers have found that interactive and targeted marketing are the keys to success and that traditional advertising is essentially a waste of money. |
| Zailskaite-Jakste, Kuvykaite (2013) |
In social media brand becomes dependent on the wish and will of a consumer. Consumers themselves decide how to interpret a brand, i.e. shared creativity between a brand and consumers. Companies seeking to expand brand awareness must learn to communicate in such a way when a message would spread among consumers like a virus. Word-of-mouth communication or viral marketing when used together with other marketing communications means can increase brand equity. Therefore companies have to prepare for communication with consumers. |
| Karam, Saydam (2015) |
Brand awareness has turned into an important variable that impacts customer's perceptions of a brand. Achievement in brand management arises from understanding and overseeing brand image and loyalty correctly to create strong characteristics
that will impact consumers when making their decisions.
|
Brand awareness can be divided into two main parts:
- Brand's recognition. People have heard or seen the brand, but their consciousness can be completely "locked", meaning that they are about this brand and will remember it only in the case if someone mentions it.
- Well-known trademarks. These are the brands that most people remember. Most often these are the trademarks of the services that people use most often.
Koniewski (2011) asserts that in total there are five levels of brand awareness: - Company's or brand's rejection and negative
associations. If somebody associates the company or brand with something negative, especially if they avoid the company's products or services provided. This can happen for the following reasons, such as: negative customer's complaints, product
defects, and other causes that may impair public opinion about the company or brand.
- Company's reputation. People were thinking about the company, allowing the decision, if they have not heard about your company, or know what it provides. In order to avoid this, the brand should be easy to remember, and become associated with something uniquely different from the others.
- Company's recognition. After reaching this level, the customer immediately recognizes the name of the company and knows what it is performing. This allows increasing the company's turnover, because people usually choose the company that
they know and have heard about, rather than any other about which they have heard for the first time.
- Priority. Potential customers have two choices between two different companies and they can choose where to set up their business. This usually happens due to differentiation. Consumers know which the company is doing in the other
way and best meets the needs of the users, the quality of services and communication.
- Loyalty. Users regularly choose your company, even if they occasionally suffer from poor service quality, or if a new product with much higher quality and more attractive price entered the market. In order to win the loyalty of
users, you need to give them a product that is clearly and strongly differentiated to customers. Visitors need to provide the highest service and its quality that they will not find anywhere else. And finally, companies have to constantly grow
together with the customers and adapt to their constantly changing needs.
Internet Marketing Concept
Davidavičienė (2009) states that internet marketing is the internet and related digital technologies marketing objectives and modern marketing concept support. One of the biggest mistakes in business development and the execution of internet marketing
strategy is the fact that they did not think forward at least five steps.
A lot of companies are constantly trying to develop and execute internet marketing as soon as possible, without any clear plan, but with the purpose or results to set targets for any guidance that after a certain period of time compared to the company's
fulfilled certain actions.
Perfectly planned and executed Internet marketing strategy makes it very easy to distinguish between companies that are committed to work on their long-term perspective, from other companies which carry out internet marketing simply because the market says
that it must perform.
The latter company can be very easily separated, there is a lack of information on websites, the shortage of images will be complemented, or will be updated, These are just a few examples of companies that still not fully understand the internet marketing
potential, how much it can help to expand their business, and reach a much larger audience of potential customers with relatively very low costs.
According to the author, one of the most emerging business people questions is how all planned internet marketing strategy corresponds nowadays to constantly evolving and changing technology. The best solution to this question is to answer this question:
"How do you plan to expand your business?".
If the business cannot answer this question, then it has an even bigger problem, and it should be resolved. If the company has the answer to this question, then the forecast should be set where they expect to be successful in six months, a year or even longer; and accordingly, to create a strategy that will cover both the company's product development and sales.
Internet Marketing Tools
Website
A website, dedicated to the brand, is potentially the most powerful brand building tool. A Company's website is the most important element of internet marketing of any online activity. This is the company's second home online where customers and visitors
can, at any time and from anywhere, to visit and see the latest news, offers, or products.
However, if the website is designed poorly or not appealing to the eye, slow and has unnecessary elements, or simply is unattended, it may bring more losses than benefits, because the website visitors will have a negative opinion about the company and
its activities, and it is very likely that in the future they might not attend such page and even avoid the real shop.
Hill (2011) distinguished the following five key points to create a beautiful and user-friendly website:
Bar. Perhaps the most important part of the URL, poorly designed it can make a website completely unusable and eventually scare away visitors. Very important not to overload the field of design, but at the same time to create something beautiful, colorful
and flickering. The simpler the design, the easier it will be to understand and manage the website.
Brand integrity of the company. If the company has developed and is developing its own brand, it is essential to move it into a website design, as customers and visitors share website design together with the company's brand. This result also creates
a single corporate brand integrity.
Text layout. Most people prefer reading a web page as well as a book from the top to the bottom, from the left to the right. During creation of a web page, the most important information should be made on the right top side, in order relevant and updated
information will be seen immediately and very easily.
Content. The creation of a short and clear message allows visitors to read information, understand and remember it simpler and easier. Visitors simply get lost, if the site is swamped with information, they do not understand where and what to read, they
will not remember the information they obtain, and finally get tired of reading and leave the website. When writing a text, one must remove completely unnecessary information and create more white space between rows, and make the text easier to read
on the screen.
Trust. Creation of a more beautiful, more attractive and appealing website that meets the needs of web design will facilitate the company to form a larger and stronger sense of mutual trust. It can also be extended and the return of goods guarantee to pay for the goods only after delivery of things to your home or reservation.
People will notice it immediately and positively assess it; the recovery will be felt in the enterprise. It is not enough to create a beautiful website; it is necessary to maintain a warm, pleasant and fast relationship between employees, the existing
and potential customers.
In summary, if the company has created a really beautiful and well thought-out web page, where everything is in place and a common commodity description integrity, the website guests will obviously visit it. Internet visitors will get more convenient
and eager to browse the website, which will definitely contribute to the improvement of the image of the company. Some companies are improving their public image when existing customers provide positive feedback.
Advertising on the internet
According to Adjugler (2008), almost 15-20 years ago, when the internet had just started to spread and gain its popularity, the internet advertising space can be compared with advertising in the media. Customers bought advertising space in a desired
site for a certain period of time and placed it without knowing whether the advertisement would interest visitors.
Advertising rates were determined by simply taking into account the advertising space and the average amount of site visitors, even without knowing whether they will see the ad or not. Media is following perhaps the same principle, only the price is determined
according to the market circulation.
Such advertising was and is very inefficient for attracting visitors and showing the prices, so the advancing technology improved advertising opportunities. Over time it appeared more modern and efficient advertising when changing a few ads in the same ad space, so it was possible to find out which ads are more interesting to visitors or completely uninteresting.
Still later it appeared in "cost per thousand advertising principle", a standard set of advertising cost per thousand website visitors, where the advertisement was displayed. Over time, more similar to modern times, payment models, "cost per click"
(pre-determined price for a click on an ad) principle emerged, and the number of clicks can be shown.
For a while, advertising became far more imaginative, with moving animations, etc. Modern software became so sophisticated that it is able to provide advertising exclusively in a particular region or population to provide advertising to different people,
based on demographic data.
Although there are a number of promotional tools, a perfect tool for all advantages and disadvantages still does not exist. Finally, the use of promotional tools varies widely from the advertiser to the objectives and the audience, so this should also
be taken into account.
According to Chan (2015), using internet and traditional advertising, both contribute to the company's brand promotion and awareness-raising. Author used the present literature, confirming that internet advertising is an especially effective tool to improve
the company's brand awareness.
According to him, the advanced modern internet technology allows internet users to apply only the most relevant and updated information on exactly what they need without any unwanted content. Using the latest and the most efficient analytical data processing
programs, Internet users can get ideas on certain issues as well as understand and investigate their deeds.
And most importantly, all of this information comes from social networks, online forums or discussions. This allows businesses to provide the most important and most relevant content to consumers that meets their expectations in order to increase their awareness of the society companies can "run noise" in the Internet space. This can be done by creating a viral video or advertise widely throughout cyberspace in order to promote positive public feedback "word of mouth".
Social networks
Social media marketing involves the use of internet social media tools, such as: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in order to reach consumers innovatively. Social networking helps to promote the company and its activities. Active social networks try to
attract more new customers or visitors. People are always much more interested in following corporate social networking, than just visiting their websites.
In social networks people can directly, very simply and informally interact with business, and create a much stronger two-way communication, which then enhances mutual trust and strengthens brand image, and finally, after a large and long work can be
seen increasing corporate visibility. In order to achieve this, business social networks have to be particularly active, as much as their users, or even more active.
Genslera, Völcknerb, Liu-Thompkins, Wiertz (2013) argue that the rise of social media and the associated possibilities of large-scale consumer-to-consumer interaction and easy user generation of content focus the spotlight on the importance of recognizing,
and if possible managing, the multi-vocal nature of brand authorship advocated by the cultural branding view. Consumers in particular are more empowered by social media, as these technologies enable consumers to share their brand stories widely with
peers.
Social networks are very popular. Several years ago only few people knew or used social networks (e.g., Facebook), nowadays almost everyone has and actively uses social networks.
Social networks are free. Visitors do not pay for their activities in social networks, and benefits can be much higher than from ads.
Social networks enhance two-way communication. Users much more conveniently and faster can communicate with companies via social networks, expressing their views and proposals.
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are the most popular social networks. However, only a few of them can be analyzed as the most popular social networks, because some of them have not gained great popularity in Lithuania.
Social network Facebook in Lithuania is used by 68% of the population, 46% of which use it on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the second largest social network Google+ is used by almost 27% of the population, only 8% of them use it regularly. Professional
social network LinkedIn In Lithuania is used by almost 6% of the population. Other foreign popular social networks, such as: Twitter, Pinterest, or Tumblr are not popular in Lithuania.
Facebook. The Facebook story began with a simple idea to create a single student's social network for high school students where they could easily communicate and share information. However, the situation has arisen that after the great success, Facebook
has become accessible to everyone, no matter where they lived, worked, or studied. After several years it experienced great success, presumably there were no persons who have not heard about this social network, although every fifth person in the
world had a Facebook account.
It is important to provide information about your business when creating a Facebook account, in order the people visiting your account would immediately be aware of what you do, know the company's working hours, etc. However, the simplest, though the
most important information should be mentioned: the level of prices and time, the information about the service, product's range and their groups, payment opportunity, phone number, and e-mail address.
Providing this information, it is important to arrange the following information about the company: its short history, the services provided, its goals and values. It is advisable once every three months to check whether the written information is
correct and whether it is still relevant for that period.
It may happen that the company has moved, changed its working hours and contact information. It is important to provide this information in a somewhat looser style, but it should be interesting to read. It should not be written in a very formal and boring
way, no one will read it and besides you might even lose potential customers.
For creating a good and attractive message, it is important to provide:
- photo and a brief description;
- few sentences about some recent events;
- good knowledge of your business or local community;
- special offers, discounts or promotions (briefly and clearly);
- information about the company's announcement in the press.
Table 2: Facebook Statistics
| Facebook Statistics | Data |
|---|---|
| Total number of monthly active Facebook users |
1,440,000,000
|
| Total number of mobile Facebook users | 874,000,000 |
| Increase of Facebook users from 2014 to 2015 | 12% |
| Total number of minutes spent on Facebook each month | 640,000,000 |
| Percent of all Facebook users who log on in any given day | 48% |
| Average time spent on Facebook per visit | 18 minutes |
| Total number of Facebook pages | 74,200,000 |
| Facebook Demographics |
Data |
| Percent of 18-34 year people who check Facebook when they wake up |
48% |
| Percent of 18-34 year people who check Facebook before they get out of bed | 28% |
| Average number of friends per Facebook user | 130 |
| Average number of pages, groups, and events a user is connected to | 80 |
| Average number of photos uploaded per day | 205 |
| Number of fake Facebook profiles | 81,000,000 |
| Global Facebook Reach Statistics |
|
| Number of languages available on the Facebook site | 70 |
| Percent of Facebook users who are outside the United States | 75% |
| Number of users who helped translate Facebook | 30,000 |
| Facebook Platform Statistics |
|
| Average number of apps installed on Facebook each day | 20 million |
| Total number of apps and websites integrated with Facebook | 7 million |
| Every 20 Minutes on Facebook | |
| Links shared | 1 million |
| Friends requested |
2 million |
| Messages sent |
3 million |
| Facebook Company Statistics | |
| Highest Facebook stock price |
$96.95 |
| Lowest Facebook stock price |
$18.06 |
| Total number of Facebook employees |
4,619 |
| Total Facebook revenue in 2014 |
$12,466,000,000 |
| Total Facebook revenue in 2013 |
$7,872,000,000 |
| Total Facebook revenue in 2012 |
$5,090,000,000 |
Google+. Google+ was created and managed by the company Google. Google is a California-based, multinational internet company, providing digital products and services, such as: online search and advertising, cloud computing, and software. In May 2015, Google
was ranked first amongst the most visited multi-platform web properties in the United States with 242 million U.S. unique visitors and a market share of 64.2 percent among the leading U.S search engine providers.
Google's market capitalization in February of 2015 was valued at 370.2 billion U.S. dollars. The same as Facebook and other social networks, Google+ allowed you to create your intended personal or business accounts. People could share and look for the content
as well as in all social networks. Google and creates your own miniversion of social network Facebook. Despite the existing similarities between these two social networks there are important further differences:
- Circles were considered as the most frequently mentioned and the largest Google+ advantages and differences, compared to Facebook. Just like in real life, people could create their desired groups (such as family, close friends, relatives, classmates,
co-workers, etc.) in Google+ network. They could also add the desired parties to one or more circles. This allowed you to share information only with certain individuals.
"1+" - this is equivalent to Google+ Facebook "like" button. People clicking on this button showed that they like the content. - Human mention. Writing a comment or message and pressing + sign and immediately without entering the person's or company name, they will be automatically informed about their commemoration. This made it very easy to share news or information to certain people, and companies can become much more active, more communicate with the public or customers.
- "Hashtag". Makes it easier to find messages with a specific theme or content. Users create and use hashtags by placing the hash character (or number sign) pressing the # in front or unspaced phrase, either in the main text of a message or at the end. Searching for that hashtag will present each message that has been tagged with it.
- Hangouts. Online chat with Google+ users, where up to 10 people could participate at the same time.
- Google: 67.5%
- Bing: 16.7%
- Yahoo: 11.6%
- Ask: 2.6%
- AOL: 1.7%
Conclusions
Brand awareness can be raised through internet marketing tools, which notify, remind, and convince customers about their brands, products, or services. The client may encounter the brand in various ways, for example, reviewing videos, playing games,
spending time on the site or by communicating with other customers, and watching advertisements.
In order to increase brand awareness it is necessary: to increase interaction with your brand, build positive brand associations, increase brand loyalty by linking it with the target audience, and motivate customers to get acquainted with your brand and
associated products.
Publication in various media channels strengthen its position in the consumer's mind as the brand becomes recognized. Brand awareness is created through advertising, promotion, selling, and public relations through the internet. Internet marketing includes
not only advertising on the websites, but also emails, and social networks.
Social media marketing involves the use of internet social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) to reach consumers in innovative ways and to increase brand awareness. Social networking helps to promote the company and its brand awareness.