Social media has become a current trend in marketing metrics for many enterprises around the world. Some of the main social media platforms that have been used include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp. There has been the growth of social signals that aid in marketing perspectives (Cant, 2016). The search engine optimization attempt has been enhanced largely by social signals. When most people talk about a certain brand on social media, there are higher chances that customers are likely to buy due to influence. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of social media and internet advertising on the success of a brand.
Social media has promoted a company’s branding and awareness through the users who always have retentive memories to remember about a certain brand they frequently see on social media. For example, Facebook has pages with options to share information on accounts’ timelines (Cant, 2016). Therefore, it means there will be the creation of awareness about a product being offered which eventually will have several buyers. Research shows that social media has become a major requirement for many brands because most consumers tend to spend a minimum of an hour on various platforms (Mokhtar, 2017). That means there will be a likelihood to capture many people’s attention in the process, hence developing brand recognition.
One of the key impacts that social media brings in business is the visual display of a product. For example, YouTube has various ads that appear before the content is opened (Timke, 2017). There is a display of the product on YouTube showing the brand name, symbol, texture, and color, among other visual perspectives (Mokhtar, 2017). When viewers have an image of a certain product, they are likely to buy it when they see it among other similar products. Therefore, it is essential to figure out that the buyer’s awareness is catalyzed by the image displayed on various internet sites in marketing a given product.
The proper use of social media enables firms to offer tough competition to other similar but popular brands. It means that social media can be used for competitive advantage as companies put efforts to have an advert at least on one of the social media sites (Tritama & Tarigan, 2016). For an effective social media implementation, firms must do some metrics to benefit from the social media. First, it is important to know the goals of your brand advertising. Second, using analysis and insightful discoveries helps to understand the audience, tastes, preferences, and activities they like to engage in their space-time (Tritama & Tarigan, 2016). The third aspect is to show the message to the target group so that it becomes relevant. Messages can inform of texts, images, videos, and other customizations
Social media enables a company to know the audience because of tools, such as Facebook that help one to find out the dominant languages of the selected group. Through Facebook, companies can also check the probability of effective selling to consumers. Other tools, such as Geo, help a marketer in reaching a given audience depending on their location (Yang et al., 2016). For example, if a company wants to send posts to people speaking French in Mexico, it should utilize Geo-targeting (Timke, 2017). The advantage of social media is that a marketer can receive instant feedback about their products. Customers may be willing to enquire more about a particular item or the substitute products if they have a different preference for the specific item being advertised (Cant, 2016). Additionally, platforms, such as LinkedIn, allow customers to post their complaints and express grievances about the use of a given product.
Many companies have customized their pages on the internet and linked them to other frequently opened pages, such as music download sites. Today, most internet users have been exposed to frequent ads when searching for information through search engines such as Google. A company, through the technology department, links the firm’s information with the online pages that offer various adverts (Yang et al., 2016). For example, when a user opens sports pages such as Livescore123, many pop-up notifications show different brands for various companies (Tritama & Tarigan, 2016). Hootsuite, for instance, helps users to create searching streams that offer insights about competitors. The knowledge obtained is helpful in marketing because it gives an edge over rival firms since there is the liberty to make effective business strategies that base methodologies on what other firms are doing (Yang et al., 2016). Therefore, through such strategic action, brand recognition is enhanced for many users.
It is faster to share content via the internet, with a user being required to have a single click, and the link to that product information is opened. A single click enables brands to reach millions of users in different regions of the world. Marketers have found a way of enticing and alluring the audience with good content to be motivated to share on other connections. That means a brand can be recognized more easily and quickly hence increasing the chances of reaching the customers (Cant, 2016). Creating awareness of a given product has become easy because it reaches different groups such as professionals, entrepreneurs, and researchers who can help discover more about a brand.
Another important factor that is likely to prevail is cost-efficiency. When a marketer is operating on a fixed budget, social media is one of the cost-efficient ways that can be used to market and promote the brand of a given company. Most social media and internet platforms have options to share information for free (Timke, 2017). Therefore, brand awareness is established, and potential customers are converted to actual buyers. Social media is an effective way because there are users who keep on increasing by the day. For example, Facebook has over two billion users in a month, and there is a forecasted increase of 16% per year (Timke, 2017). The networking that the site can provide creates more chances of increasing sales.
There are real-life examples of the impact of social media in developing a brand. Shari Academy, a photography institution that conducts workshops and provides certified courses, wanted to increase its brand recognition (Mokhtar, 2017). The company had some financial issues, and therefore, they decided to use Facebook and blogs to meet the branding objectives in their business. The school created a page titled ‘Photography Tips’ and made efforts to make users aware of it. Currently, their page has more than 1.5 million fans, and the school has managed to have one of the major photography pages on Facebook. The Shari Academy blog gets more than 30,000 visitors monthly (Mokhtar, 2017). From the information, it is easier to influence people through social media since it is widely used.
However, the use of social media has adverse effects such as increased client power. People have online freedom to express their views concerning a given brand (Timke, 2017). It might be an easy way for rival firms to conspire with other users and troll a given company’s brand. The other effects are that some personnel can present to be speaking on behalf of the company’s website without authorization from the company (Cant, 2016). It is a challenge for a company to control what employees can say about a brand since they can share anonymously with a target of making the company appear to be providing non-quality products.
From the analysis above, social media has impacted brand recognition in various ways. First, through the internet, brand awareness is enhanced, and there is a chance of improving sales. Secondly, the internet and social media platforms share information faster and effectively in a wide coverage that guarantees more brand recognition. Additionally, using social media to market a brand is cost-effective with an assurance of selling more to a wide range of clients. Internet and social media have become useful since they are frequently used by many customers every day.
References
Cant, M. (2016). Using social media to market a promotional event to SMEs: Opportunity or wasted effort? Problems and Perspectives in Management, 14(4), 76-82. Web.
Mokhtar, N. (2017). Social media communication and its contingency impacts on the sustainability of organization performance and practices. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 7(11), 14-31. Web.
Timke, E. (2017). Social media and advertising. Advertising & Society Quarterly, 18(2), 13-15. Web.
Tritama, H., & Tarigan, R. (2016). The effect of social media on the brand awareness of a product of a company. Commit (Communication and Information Technology) Journal, 10(1), 9-14. Web.
Yang, S., Lin, S., Carlson, J., & Ross, W. (2016). Brand engagement on social media: Will firms’ social media efforts influence search engine advertising effectiveness? Journal of Marketing Management, 32(5-6), 526-557. Web.