Digital Marketing: A tool for raising brand awareness and a direct avenue for sales generation
By Ms. Sarina Menezes
The core principles of Branding and Marketing are timeless, and all marketing activities and strategies should always stem from these core principles. Nothing has fundamentally changed. What has changed is how we market, the range of channels and media we now have and the methods and tools we use to do that. Digital marketing has been considered the next revolution after the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century. It has completely transformed how we communicate to our customers and how our products and services are marketed today.
While CMOs are pounded by performance metrics and measures, the essence of marketing has remained untouched over decades; it is still all about the needs and wants of your consumers and customers. What has changed again is context. This is where marketers need to get real to stay relevant, to adapt to rapidly changing consumer behaviors influenced by global events, affluence, propensity to spend and to leverage technology to connect authentically by addressing societal and environmental concerns.
As India’s premium and leading real estate development company, Oberoi Realty believes in pioneering the extraordinary. Which is why brand building has been pivotal in positioning and establishing the brand to what it stands for today. Our focus has been to establish Oberoi Realty as a luxury and ultra luxury real estate brand with offerings in residential, commercial offices, hospitality, retail and social infrastructure.
Branding is important for any business. For the outside world a brand may seem like it consists only of elements such as logos and colours, but the brand is the identity of the business and also provides it with a personality. Branding has always been a vital part of any successful business, but it may be more important now than ever before. With social media, consumers are exposed to new brands every day. By creating a strong and differentiated brand and with strategic communication the business has impactful influence over how people perceive the brand and identify with it.
Branding can help build trust, create loyalty and build a strong customer base. With a strong brand, customers have an emotional connect which adds to the personalisation element. Branding allows you to build relationships with your audience, and act as an advantage over competition.
With a penchant to build aspirational developments, Oberoi Realty is an established real estate brand that applies distinctive designs, functional aesthetics and quality finishes that translate into landmark projects through its mixed-use and single-segment developments. This mix of innovative design, planning initiatives and use of cutting-edge technologies has enabled the company to successfully establish itself as a trusted brand that lives to its brand promise.
Digital marketing has proven to be a disruptor and game changer in marketing and as much as it sits alongside traditional marketing, the cost and reach of digital marketing is far superior as it becomes an enabling tool. It provides Marketers an opportunity to reach out and speak directly to customers on their handhelds and multiple screens that are used today. These cost-effective platforms provide opportunities for story telling – be it through thoughtful content like white papers, visuals, videos or real time experiences.
With advanced Digital marketing and adoption of Marketing Technology, today businesses can track customers’ online journeys and analyze their habits to target them with the right content at the right time. Also, paid social media advertising has broadened customer reach. Several key factors make digital marketing in lead generation effective.
- It involves content marketingthat encourages brand awareness.
- It helps understand the buyer persona with content engagement analytics.
- Paid ads enable the business to be on top of search engine results.
- Get more brand awareness with word-of-mouth promotion on social media.
Concluding the fact that businesses procure success due to their loyal customers, and digital marketing lead generation is the top way to grow a loyal customer list.
Digital platforms also serve as a powerful amplifier for brand propositions, by providing a multidimensional and immersive approach to connect with customers. For our newly launched project ‘Forestville by Oberoi Realty’ in Thane, we carefully developed strong brand propositions which seamlessly dovetail to the Oberoi Realty brand philosophy and also speaks for itself. This can be amplified on social media or through digital marketing opportunities that these platforms provide whether through testimonies, videos or other content marketing avenues. Brands that embrace the full spectrum of digital tools can cultivate a robust online presence, engage with their audience in meaningful ways, and continually refine their strategies based on real-time data and insights.
Simultaneously we felt the need to have a better presence online and go through a brand transformation exercise – first by revamping and refreshing our website which is the first touch point for the outside world. We incorporated the theme of New Urbanism across our website, which reflected our personality as a brand, practices as a business, and further cement our product offerings and our brand position as lifestyle enhancers.
(The author is Ms. Sarina Menezes – Head and Vice President – Brand Marketing and Corporate Communication, Oberoi Realty, and the views expressed in this article are her own)
