Brand Management

Module-8-9
IMT Nagpur

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Branding in the Digital Era
• Describe changes in marketing and consumer behavior in a digital era
• Define brand engagement and understand the brand engagement
pyramid and key drivers of brand engagement
• Understand digital communications and the various options available
• Understand the developments within mobile marketing
• Develop a broad understanding of influencer marketing
• Describe content marketing and its role in creating brand awareness
and engagement
• Describe changes in brand management organizational structure
Some new perspectives

• Ads can’t be ads

• Customer service is always on
• Traditional advertising, especially when used alone, is D-E-A-D
• Because marketing costs are substantially lower in digital, the playing field is
more level
• Emerging pay-to-play models mean digital advertising is no longer free

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Key Issues for Branding in the Digital Era
• There are many important developments with branding in this digital era

• Influx of consumer making online purchase

• Vital to have digital strategy enabling online sales effectively

• Online purchase process starts long before

• 80%+ consumers do some type of online research before buying

• Smartphones are always in the consumer’s hand

• Even if final purchase is offline, 2/3rd of purchase journey is online

Key Digital Era Trends with Implications for
Branding and Brand Management
1. Changes in the consumer decision journey
2. Sharp increase in buying via online retail channels
3. Shift in advertising and promotion expenditures toward digital channels
4. The rise of many-to-many communications
5. Dramatic increase in consumer touchpoints
6. Tremendous increase in data availability
7. The use of digital personalization
8. A loss of control over the brand message and the co-creation of brand
meaning
9. The role of user experiences
10. The growth of brands as cultural symbols
Changes in Consumer Decision Journey
• Digital marketing and social media has changed the consumer decision journey

Expanded Consumer Decision Journey

Changes in Consumer Decision Journey
• Journey of a consumer from initial introduction to a brand all the way through to the point of purchase.
• Moving prospects through your sales funnel involves multiple steps:
• engaging prospects,
• converting into customers,
• completing a sale,
• producing loyal repeat customers.

• Engage with customers at the top of the online sales funnel and keep them actively connected until
they decide to make a purchase.

• Keep a prospect’s attention through the sales funnel, align them with the brand in a way that feels
natural.
Growth of Online Retailing

Digital
ECom as % of
shoppers in
total retail
India 100mn
4%(2020) >>
(2020) >> 300-
8%(2025)
350mn (2025)

Retail ECom
CAGR >> Retail ECom
2024E 27%; sales 2020
57% from Rs.32 bn
online grocery
The emergence of
Millenials
• India will have close to 90 million
households headed by millennials by 2030.
• Country’s median age will be 31, making it
one of the youngest nations in the world.
• With rising levels of prosperity and
education and much higher levels of
smartphone and internet penetration, this
demographic group will fuel the expected
boom in the e-commerce sector.
Advertising and Promotions Using Digital Channels
• Advertising budgets are allocated differently now across online
and offline channels

• The growth in digital media is expected to outpace growth of

traditional media channels
• Online channels is ~ 50% larger than TV advertising for many
brands
Traditional Marketing: One-to-Many Communications
New Media Environment: Two-Way and Many-to-Many
Communications
Increase in Consumer Touchpoints
• Digital marketing and social media channels and the ability to
communicate with each other
• Has fuelled an increase in touchpoints
Blogs / Social
• Consumers are not looking only for product features; they want to email Media /
mktg website
know how your brand can help them improve their lifestyle
• High-quality content tells the story of your brand and paints a
picture of how a prospect can relate to your brand
Online Case studies /
events testimonials
• Content must keep a prospect engaged throughout the entire online
sales funnel
• Educational content positions your brand as thought leader
• It demonstrates that you’re invested in helping your customers
do and be better
Increase in Data Availability
• Data, data everywhere!
• Data from platforms like Google Analytics
• Get insights into brand engagement and the needs of your prospects
• Use this data to create a successful digital marketing strategy

• Know where prospects are joining or leaving sales funnel

• Analyze & optimize online sales funnel to improve your brand connection

• Understand how prospects are spending time online

• Drive productivity
• Streamline your marketing strategy effectively
Digital Personalization
• Targeting individual consumers with varying offers
• Dynamic pricing
• The same product can become available at different prices
based on expressed customer interest
• DATA, DATA EVERYWHERE LEADS TO HIGHLY PERSONALIZED
SHOPPING.
• Technology is embedded into daily lives, which means
hyper-connectedness
• Sensors and digital devices are everywhere— throughout
homes, in appliances
• Collected date drives personalized customer experience
• Companies provide hyper-personalized product and
service offerings
Loss of Control over Brand Message and
Co-Creation of Brand Meaning

• The digital age has created conditions

such that brand meaning is primarily
coproduced by three different forces:

• Firm-generated brand meaning

• Consumer-generated brand meaning
• Media and cultural influences
User Experience Is the Key to Digital Brand
Success

• A seamless user experience is crucial to a

success of a digital brand
• Needs an interface that consumers can
effortlessly navigate
• To maximize user experience
Brands as Cultural Symbols
• Brands have greater impact as cultural icons than ever before
• Brands help consumers feel a part of something
• Allows them to signal and connect with others Cultural icon “a
person or thing
regarded as a symbol,
especially of a culture
or movement; a
person, institution, and
so forth, considered
worthy of admiration
or respect”
Brand Engagement
Negative Brand Engagement
• Hatred and dissatisfaction with a brand
• Companies can redress customer grievances
• Brand ambassadors
• Boycotts or social movements
• Brands are more readily ridiculed and parodied due to the online nature of the
communication
Drivers of Brand Engagement

Brand Message
Characteristics Characteristics
Brands having more Relevance to
symbolic positioning consumer
Publicly consumed Arouse emotions
goods (like awe & surprise)

Medium Consumer
Characteristics Characteristics
Less crowded social Loyalty
media channels Identity goals
Improved ability to Consumers desire to
be heard express themselves

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Digital Channels
• Paid channel
• A marketer typically
runs paid advertising
• Owned channel
• Sources of
information for
consumers about a
company’s offerings
• Earned channel
• Review sites and
reviews posted
online typically at no
expense
Roles of Social Media
• Establishing a public voice and online presence
• Amplifying marketing message
• Helping monitor and obtain feedback from consumers
• Promoting customer engagement
Social media channel :
audience vs purpose vs business type

25 – 60 years 30-50 years All ages 25-55 years 18 -30 years 18-35 years

Building News & Search News & Building Scrapbooking

Relationship Articles ‘How to’ Articles relationships,
conversation conversation conversation
Lead
generation, Lead
Build brand PR, brand Brand Business Retail, Art, generation,
loyalty, lead achievements awareness, development; Food, Fashion, Fashion, Art,
generation Loyalty B2B Lifestyle, Travel
Food business
businesses
What do you say….
My skills
I like Donuts include Donut
eating

Here’s a
I am eating photo of my
a Donut half eaten
Donut

Here I am,
eating a Here’s a
Donut Donut recipe
Mobile Marketing
• Messaging services
• Short messaging service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS)
• Offer customers unique offers based on time and location
• Over the last few years, with larger screens and more apps, the smartphone has
started to take over a lot of the tasks that used to be done on desktop computers.
• Social Media Ads
• Mobile display Ads or Banners
• Interstitial Ads
• Video Ads
• In App ads
• Proximity systems marketing, or geo-fencing
• Involves particular advertising messages delivered to mobile users with a defined geographic
area
In App Advertising

• There’s a high level of personalization

available for mobile apps
• A variety of advertising methods, including
video, display advertising, and even
playable advertising
• In-app ads are scaled to fit the app, and
therefore look much more appealing to the
user

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Mobile Focused Marketing
Influencer Marketing and Social Media Celebrities
Influencer marketing involves utilizing key influencers
What is an Influencer
Someone who has the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others
because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his
or her audience.

Influencers have systematically built a keen and enthusiastic audience; the

audience follows influencers rather than a brand. The audience doesn't really
care about your brand. They only care about the opinions of the influencers.

Influencers, unlike celebrities, can be anywhere. They can be anyone. What

makes them influential is their large followings on social media. An influencer
can be a popular fashion photographer on Instagram, or a respected
marketing executive on LinkedIn.
 Company Websites

• Key brand asset & primary marketing

tool in online space
• Cos can tell their story
• Platform for engagement
• Generate leads
• Contact info
• Communicate & receive feedback
• Should be optimised to be easily
found in search

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E-mail marketing

• High ROI
• Requires minute level targeting & segmenting, else runs risk of being
irrelevant
• Timing
• Industry differences
• Quality & relevance of content

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Content Marketing
• According to the Content Marketing Institute
• “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating
and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and
retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable
customer action.”

• A key difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is that

• Consumers typically want to consume the posts that form part of a content
marketing campaign
Develop The buyer’s journey includes
awareness,
consideration,
the phases: decision/purchasing.
content
It is crucial that content serves as a resource for buyers
uniquely in each phase of their journey.

Content should answer questions and provoke critical thinking.

It should provide useful tips, define terminology and concepts,

suggest when to take action to solve a specific pain, how to
avoid mistakes

It must give buyers a reason to want to consume your content

because it’s helpful to their journey.

Valuable content answers the why, the how-to, the what-to,

and the when-to questions.
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Integrating Across Digital Channels
• The game is all about providing the user with an all-encompassing experience online

• Integration of multiple marketing strategies to form a cohesive online approach for

your business. Here’s what it typically entails:
• web development and design
• search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
• content marketing
• social media marketing
• local listings management
• paid advertising (or pay-per-click advertising) campaigns
Integrating Across Digital Channels
• Each module of digital marketing has a power of its own, but when they are put
together in a unique way it creates a snowball effect.
• All companies need to have an integrated digital marketing campaign in order to
maximize their potential of marketing efforts and reaching out to more customers.

• Understand the Target Audience

• Who is your target audience and how best to reach out to them?
• It is important to clearly identify your audience based on demographic and psychographic
attributes like age, location, attitude, interest or behaviour.
• This will help you to develop messages and identify the best digital channels to reach out to
them.

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Integrating Across Digital Channels
• Select your Channels
• It is not necessary to be everywhere. Pick out the best digital channels that help achieve your objectives
and stick to them.
• Each channel impacts the customer at different junctures in the path of their purchase.
• Maintain Consistencies
• Your visual identity in all those channels should be consistent and deliver the same brand message no
matter what.
• You should maintain the same look and feel – style of graphics, common colours or fonts, etc. Adopting
a coherent approach is very important in an integrated digital marketing campaign.
• Create Quality Content
• Content is king and has the power to make or break your marketing campaigns.
• Follow the rule of three C’s when designing your content – Clarity, Compelling and Consistent.
• Plan how to broadcast content in different channels. For instance, if it is a blog post, you can post an
excerpt on LinkedIn or tweet a series of informational pieces.

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Integrating Across Digital Channels
• Deliver Uniform Message
• Ultimate aim is to drive more traffic to your target whether it is a website to initiate a
purchase, a blog or social network like Facebook or Twitter for more engagement.
• Allow each digital channel to complement each other and convey the same message
everywhere.
• Use common phrases or keywords that the audience can immediately relate to. While the
general theme of each channel may vary, the message should be one.

• Track and Assess

• No customer buys a product in the first look. The general consensus is that it takes around 5-
7 impressions before a prospect turns into a customer.
• Important to assess how well your digital channels help you in this endeavour.
• Once you have the data, analyze the performance of each channel and see where you can
improve. Adjust your campaign with this data and maximize the conversions.

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Offline & Digital – How they complement one
another
• Offline marketing is considered passive. Digital marketing has a targeted consumer. The two
complement each other
• Television and print advertisements help bring core information and incorporate a call-to-action
• Digital marketing encourages engagement
• Customers are exposed via multiple media channels
• While some customers are attracted via social media, others are tuned into billboards or TV ads
• Building A Better Relationship With Your Target Audience
• Traditional media reaches a broader customer base, but digital is reaches the ‘target customer’
• Build your relationship and get on a more personal level
• Traditional advertisements to point customers to your site
• The site will then be what has the relationship-building properties - social media, blogs
• Digital feeds transition.

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Brand Management Structure
• Success factors for strategy-making:
• Senior management should be tasked with understanding how products
and brands are researched and viewed online
• Cross-functional coordination is increasingly important
• Data-driven decision-making will become standard operating procedure
• A brand or marketing strategy should be viewed as a part of an overall
strategy
• High-quality data can assist marketers to personalize a given message to
an audience
• Accessing data on consumers’ conversation can help uncover
information that can be useful
• Understanding how online and offline communications interact and
coordinating with a digital channels strategy is important
Measures
Digital Planning Document