SocioBranding is an approach to brand management that integrates traditional advertising creative strategy and tactics with those utilizing social networking vehicles. The process allows companies and their brands to reach both business and consumer targets not only on the external level but also on a lifestyle level, allowing the brand to become part of the social fabric of the customers’ lives.
Contents
Traditional media speaks to a target audience in a one-way fashion. This allows the brand to build awareness and convey its messaging to help shape and define its image. However, the advent of social media has provided brands with the ability to massively interact with their target audience and create a fan base of customers willing to champion the brand. The brand moves beyond shouting at the audience to interacting with them in a more casual and trusted manner.
The approach is strongest for consumer targeting but is also a valuable tool in developing and managing B2B relationships as well. Professional networking sites have created access to what amounts to virtual conferences or trade shows. Brands can connect instantly with industry peers nationwide or even globally. The result is a powerful integrated method for managing the brand across customer types.
Approach
This strategy requires an adaptive communications process. The various media vehicles each require a different tone and focus in order to be effective. Consumers react differently to various media vehicles. The outward corporate approach that works for broadcast ads will need to be repurposed for the highly personalized social media. Social media requires a more humanized approach that applies a persona to the brand and fosters a friendly connection. Blending the two provides a means for the target audience to quickly identify the brand with the corporate message but also to connect with it in the more interactive environment.
Differentiation
SocioBranding is a cumulative concept reflecting the convergence of traditional marketing and advertising approaches with powerful new media. It does not embrace any one media vehicle or delivery type over another. Instead it is an approach that leverages the strengths of various tactics and actually utilizes both traditional as well as social media. The goal is not simply to make the brand known, but to connect with the target audience at the social level.
Historically, marketing and advertising approaches focus on the company pushing their brand and messaging out to the consumer communicating in a very generic way via public forms of media: radio, television, magazines, billboards, etc. SocioBranding, however, combines those tried and true efforts with newer media to support communications at the more social level. Social media, while lacking the broad reach of traditional media, allows companies to interact with customers (business or consumer) on a peer-to-peer or peer-to-group basis. The added social aspect becomes a highly targeted means of communication for the brand, providing the ability to reach targets all at once quickly and cheaply. In effect, by utilizing all media available the company is better able to integrate the brand with the social activities of the targets, in essence, becoming a part of the customer’s social life.