Building Brand Awareness in the Digital Age: A Necessary Investment - Essay Sample

Introduction

Consumers are still in need of an apparent brand promise and provision, which are among the essential services that the clients demand. The internet has changed the time required for delivery, the degree of services, and has also provided a tool for influence among clients, has improved the interaction between the brands, and the communication with the clients has been made easier and possible. Previously, the marketing strategies entailed a substantial input of resources to build a brand's awareness and use of cash for the purchase was the most suitable way of business operation. The internet contact points have changed in nature and quantity, which requires critical adjustments to straighten dealer's strategies and budgets with the places where their clients are spending most of their time. The essay shall discuss the importance of utilizing the consumer decision journey (CDJ) to reduce the cost of marketing while improving performance.

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Dealers have, for a long time, used the known funnel metaphor to see through the contact points. Consumers often start at the broad end of the funnel, thinking about multiple brands, which then narrow down to the end choice (David 1). Firms have been utilizing the paid-media to thrust the market to a few distinct points along the funnel, which helps to build awareness, effort contemplation, and most importantly encourage purchase. However, this method of marketing fails to capture the changing customer engagement. In an attempt to understand the engagement between the client and the dealer, David Court and other three coauthors introduced a finespun of an issue of McKinsey Quarterly that investigates the methods through which a consumer selects a particular brand, "consumer decision journey" CDJ. In the process of investigation, the authors develop a study of purchase decisions across an approximate of 20,000 customers in 5 firms; insurance, skin care, mobile telecom, consumer electronics, and automobile industries. The study indicates that apart from analytically thinning their choices, present day's consumers take on a more iterative and less reductive journey of four stages which are, consider, evaluate, buy, and enjoy, advocate and bond.

Consider

The journey of making a choice begins with stimuli that are triggered from an outside force, or it might be from own interests. For instance, one might find a specific product in a friend's house to develop an interest in the commodity or see an ad on the television. The funnel model, the consumer, has the highest number of brands in this consider stage. This might confuse the client on what choice to make (David 1). However, today's customers, with the help of the media, have been provided with several decisions, which reduce the number of products considered at the beginning.

Evaluate

This stage involves seeking a comparison of the brand with its main competitors. The consumer usually checks up for new brands to the set that they had already formed in the first stage and discard others. This also helps the customer to know the originality of the product as well as the standard cost. Consumers' outreach for information helps to shape their resulting choices, and they would purchase the product due to their own will and not from marketer's persuasion. For instance, the millennials have become more affiliated to the trending sneakers, and it is at this stage that they use the digital platforms to compare different types of sneakers and chose their favorite. Thus, this stage is essential to ensure that the client makes the right choice before purchasing the product.

Buy

The customer is still not sure that they shall purchase a product until they are in a store, and they might be discouraged even at this point. Therefore, the purchase point is an essential and powerful contact point. It exploits situation, packaging, availability, and sales interaction with the client.

Enjoy, Advocate, and Bond

After buying a product, a link between the dealer and the consumer instigates as the customer intermingles with the product and the new online touch points. For instance, the McKinsey study shows that 60% of skin care products customers conduct researches online after buying the products, which are a contact point that is missing in the funnel model. If the customer is pleased by the purchase, they advocate for the product, which eventually boosts the market potential of the individual corporate (David 1). However, if the product is unsatisfactory, the customer would not build ties with the brand or even talk ill about the brand and might be a downturn for business. If the link formed becomes stable, the client enjoys and advocates for the product, which might help to skip, consider, and evaluate stages of CDJ.

Companies focus too much on media platforms such as TVs, online, and radios, among others, for marketing their products. However, marketers should target the stages of the decision journey. The study by David Court and colleagues finds out that there has been a gap between most marketing allocations and the contact points that greatly influence the consumers. Most companies spend 70-90% of spending on commercials and retail promotions, which convince the consumers at the consider and buy stages (David 1). However, consumers are more influenced during evaluate and enjoy, advocate, bond stages. Individuals are more probable to be influenced by advocacy from another person than the ads on media. Therefore, marketers should utilize these four stages to maximize their marketing potential. Best ads, viral videos, and best search buys may win consideration of a product, but have weak reviews which do not promise retention of the business competitiveness in the market.

Switch to a CDJ-driven strategy comprises of three essential parts which might need a redefinition of organizational relationships and roles to implement. These parts include understanding the consumer's decision journey, determining the crucial connection points and how to power them, and proper allocation of resources. For instance, one of McKinsey's clients, a global consumer electronics company got on the CDJ analysis after research reveals that though the customers are familiar with the brand, they dropped their consideration on approaching the buying stage (David 1). It was clear to the company that it was losing its customer. It was also clear that the media way of marketing was spending most of the marketing resources and could not take the discrete aims of different connection points into account and purposefully divert marketing funds to the company.

The company decided to experiment with a CDJ-based approach in one of its business unit, which aimed to open a new TV model. The chief marketing officer involved senior managers at the beginning to ensure buy-in and enable harmonization. The VP of the corporate drove his attention to the new experiment gathering a team that represented all functions of the organization and provided finances. The team investigated the market for three months to establish a detailed image of TV consumers when piloting on the decision journey. The team found out that word of mouth and of-line channels such as magazines and televisions only influences the consumer at the considering stage. At this stage, the consumer has numerous brands in mind with opinions about these brands shaped by previous involvements. On the evaluate stage, the consumers searched on Amazon, which provides comparison information and expert rating. Hey realized that visuals were relevant influencers at this stage. Amazingly, less than ten clients only visited the manufacturer's sites when most companies spent most of their digital spend. Customers visited the display ads if they had a discount offer (David 1). Although the company was still selling to customers at the stores, most of them opted for retail sites or direct shipping and unplanned in-store purchase. The investigation also revealed that the funnel model lacked the enjoy-and-advocate stage, which forms a relationship with the buyers. Most buyers spoke about their purchase on social networks, especially after being stimulated by the seller on post-purchase emails. They also utilized the review site for troubleshooting guidance.

The team launched a search on consumer's experience by hiring shoppers who used the online platform to follow reviews posted on particular TVs found in various houses. The results indicated that although the outlines of a selected brand were positive, they were scarce on retail sites (David 1). Moreover, on one-on-one interviews, the consumers reported that the model numbers, descriptions, and promotions availability seemed to change as one moves from sites to store. From the research, the company concluded that the marketing strategies had to provide a cohesive practice from considering to buy and beyond stages.

The last part of the investigation focused on the people's reviews on the company's brand. This involved a social media monitoring tool which revealed the main words used to describe the brand. The participants in the discussion group gave wrong responses since they misinterpreted TV jargons. Positive reviews and recommendations activated useful and broad discussions; in case of negative reviews and ratings, the conversation entered a self-reinforcing conversation. Although the company had gotten positive reviews, people said little about the brand.

After the research, the company took into action the use of CDJ strategy by shifting all the media spending and opened links that connected faultlessly. The click-stream analysis revealed that Amazon was the most crucial connection point in the evaluate stage. The company developed programs that included online community wits, contests, and e-mail promotions to build a post-purchase relationship (David 1). The team built a new content-development and management system to ensure consistency across all platforms to deal with inconsistent descriptions and other messages that discourage the customers at buy stage. Customers' experience is essential, and the assimilation of the CDJ model promises business improvement as seen in Apple Inc. after elimination of terminologies that were difficult for customers to understand.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the use of CDJ model reduces the market investment while increasing the overall sales. This shows that the creation of an excellent brand-consumer relationship is one of the best ways to improve a business. Unlike the funnel model, which disregards postpurchase follow-up, CDJ values consumers responses by ensuring enjoy -advocate-bond stage, keeping in mind that consumers advocacy is more influential than the media advertisements used by many companies. Therefore companies should utilize the CDJ since it is cheap, and has tremendous results.

Work Cited

David C. E. Branding in the Digital Age: You are Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places. Havard Business Review. [Online]. 2010. Available at: https://hbr.org/2010/12/branding-in-the-digital-age-youre-spending-your-money-in-all-the-wrong-places. (Accessed on 10th June 2019).