4. RESEARCH FINDINGS
4.8 Requirements and challenges of brand building and social media in new businesses
Brand building process has naturally required investments and resources from both companies. Brand building has been seen as a continuous effort that has posed challenges along the way. Finding the core of the brand and testing methods to discover the ones that work for the created brand are essential if the company wishes to succeed on the highly competitive market where new businesses and brands are emerging constantly. Since social media has had an important role in the process, entrepreneurs believe that it continues to be necessary tool for the companies in the future as well.
(Entrepreneur A; Entrepreneur B)
In the Company A’s case human resources were having an important role in the brand building process. As the founders were doing everything themselves, it required a lot of learning and challenging. Trying to find the right focus took some time when the brand was build from nothing without prior experience. Limited financial resources restricted the company from investing in sizable marketing activities and obliged to build the brand step by step. Learning social media marketing firsthand and being active have led to the growth that the Company A has achieved. Carried out hands-on actions, know-how and courage have made the difference when advancing growth and raising awareness.
(Entrepreneur A)
“It has required a lot of studying and questioning things, so for sure if now we would start to create another brand, it could be done much more efficiently and do the right things and
with control take things towards the right direction but when it was started from nothing so there wasn’t straight away that right focus but a lot has been learned along the way and the aim is to all the time educate ourselves, develop and challenge so we can build better
[their brand] for tomorrow, so that’s an endless road, there’s always room for improvements and developments.” – Entrepreneur A
Building a brand has posed challenges for Company A, as it is demanding to build a coherent entity and plan the communication around it. Brand building is an on-going process that continues after the creation of the brand. Even though Company A’s brand is build based on the entrepreneurs’ values, it has started to live as its own person whereupon its identity is also forming and developing free from the entrepreneurs.
(Entrepreneur A)
“Perhaps it is just that what the brand should be so crystalizing the meaning and core message and how it will be communicated and with what money and through which
channels and with what kind of visual means so harmonizing the whole palette and understanding it so that it can be turned to that kind of process that can be managed and
developed. So it is still, it is never ready, but indeed we have went forward and in the near future hopefully we are going big steps forward again concerning that.” – Entrepreneur A One of the challenges of social media that Entrepreneur A mentions is that since it is fairly effortless to advertise through social media, it has brought a lot of competition to those platforms. Basically anyone can build a brand and start a business. The prices for advertising are increasing when many companies are moving their advertising on social media and competing the ad space of the same target audiences. However, he sees that the competition can be overcome with good content, great campaigns and well-optimized ads for the right target audience, which makes social media marketing a valuable and cost-efficient marketing tool. It is necessary to find the unique feature that can be emphasized to stand out from the competitors. Nowadays also the amount of ads on social media, that was created to communicate with your friends and family rather than as a marketing platform (Fournier & Avery 2011), has been increasing. It is left to be seen when consumers will become disgusted with all the ads they are seeing on social media on daily basis and whether they remember the ads they have seen when the amount of ads becomes overwhelming. (Entrepreneur A)
In the future when the business is growing, Entrepreneur A sees the benefits of adding traditional marketing like print ads or television ads to their marketing mix in order to achieve multichannel advantages. He believes that it increases credibility of the brand when ads can be seen not only on social media but also in traditional channels. However social media’s role as a most important marketing channel will hold in the future. The entrepreneur mentions that social media is also useful considering their goal to internationalize as it offers a way to try marketing and gain awareness and site visitors with small efforts. (Entrepreneur A)
Entrepreneur B highlights that building a brand is an investment that requires financial assets and patience. Knowing what you want to do and what you can bring to the table are beneficial when building a brand. As a branding agency was hired to assist in the brand building process and the founder had a clear view of the brand, which were covering the human resources needed, the main resources required were time and money. Entrepreneur B also mentions that brand building demands continuous effort.
Encapsulating the brand to more coherent entity requires evaluating regularly whether the brand still represents what is said it to represent and if the elements can be defined even more precisely. Returning to the brand personality is highly important throughout the process in order to avoid meandering when more people join to the brand building
process. Being true to the brand values is essential when the brand develops and more demands are raised towards the brand. The brand and its values are also in a central role when it comes to decision-making in the company. When important alignments are made they have to be endorsed by core brand values. (Entrepreneur B)
According to Entrepreneur B, one challenge with social media is that it is not seen as prestige as print media. However the entrepreneur sees it as a good thing that people have gotten more cautious and critical of what they read online since a lot of false information about skincare has been published. By testing different methods, it is possible to find what measures work for each brand on social media. The courage to keeping on testing is highly important in order to find out what the consumers prefer. Even though, being true to the brand is essential, changes have to be made if the brand response is not positive. For example changing pictures of the landing page or testing different content on social media are cost-efficient ways to evaluate the consumer responses. Entrepreneur B mentions that they have worked with multiple consultants to find methods that work for them. She sees that using external specialists when similar expertise is not found internally is beneficial to get external evaluation whether the company is doing and measuring the right things. (Entrepreneur B)
Entrepreneur B is confident that social media is an important part of especially increasing their brand awareness in the future as well. Even though there is a lot of potential to sell cosmetics online, it is still important for the consumers go try the product at a store after getting to know the brand on social media. Then perhaps the first purchase will be done at the store and after this first successful try, products can be bought online in the future.
Company B has found beneficial to add the possibility to click an Instagram picture and purchase the product directly from the web shop. All in all, social media has offered the way to be seen as a small business, which makes it beneficial marketing and branding tool. (Entrepreneur B)
“Well the possibility to be seen if you compare 15 years ago, thus there’s probably so many small businesses or a lot of those are coming up and cosmetics brands especially, because just 15-10 years ago if you didn’t have money to buy that Forum’s one side then
that was it, you didn’t get any of that visibility, and on the other hand now you are competing with everyone but despite of that it is in my opinion the biggest possibility and
benefit is that you can get that visibility.” – Entrepreneur B