Brand awareness enhancement through social

media for a Chinese smartphone brand in

Vietnam
Khanh, Luu

2019 Laurea
Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Brand awareness enhancement through social media for a

Chinese smartphone brand in Vietnam.

Khanh LuuError! No text of

specified style in document.
Degree Program in BIT
Bachelor’s Thesis
February, 2019Error! No text of
specified style in document.
Laurea University of Applied Sciences Abstract
Degree Program in BITDegree Programme in Business
Information Technology
Bachelor’s Thesis

Error! No text of specified style in document.Khanh, Luu

Brand awareness enhancement through social media for a Chinese smartphone brand in
Vietnam.
Year 2019Error! No text of specified style in document. Pages 58

This thesis project was commissioned by the author’s employer, a Chinese smartphone brand.
The main purpose of the thesis project was to enhance the brand awareness of the company
by using a social media strategy. Although the company is active on social media, their
activities did not have enough impact to enhance brand awareness in the Vietnam market.
The author’s mission was to deliver suggestions to help the company to develop a proper
social media marketing plan. The social media marketing plan will include suggestions to
improve the use of the client company social media channels. The suggestions will focus on
Vietnam’s most popular social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

The theoretical framework of this thesis project introduces concepts related to branding,
social media and developing a social media marketing plan for the client company. The
analysis part analyzes every aspect of the target market which are company analysis, market
analysis, competitor analysis and finally SWOT analysis. These analyses support the case
company in defining their place, gaining insights from the target audience and learning from
competitors.

The type of research used in this thesis project was quantitative research. The research
target is Vietnamese between the ages of 10 to 40 years old. The survey comprised 26
questions targeted to gain insights about the target market. The purpose of the research
survey was to help the company to map out the target audience’s social media behavior and
learn their content preferences. The survey received more than 100 responses and provided
valuable insights for the author to deliver meaningful suggestions to improve social media
marketing plan.

The concluding chapters combine informative theory from the theoretical framework
together with the analysis and survey result to provide useful suggestions for the case
company. These suggestions will help the company to recognize the impact of social media
on branding and enhance the company’s brand awareness on social media platforms. By
implementing these suggestions, the case company will be able to leverage their brand
appearance on social media and popularize the corporate image to the target market.

Keywords: brand awareness, social media, marketing plan, branding, content marketing
Table of Contents

1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 6
1.1 Thesis background ............................................................................ 6
1.2 Thesis’s purpose ............................................................................... 7
1.3 Objectives and outcomes .................................................................... 8
1.4 Project’s limitation ........................................................................... 8
1.5 Company’s introduction ...................................................................... 9
2 Theoretical framework .............................................................................. 10
2.1 Branding ...................................................................................... 10
2.1.1 The concept of branding ........................................................... 11
2.1.2 Brand awareness ..................................................................... 12
2.2 Social media ................................................................................. 13
2.2.1 Social media marketing ............................................................. 14
2.2.2 Content marketing in social media ............................................... 15
2.2.3 Brand awareness in social media.................................................. 17
2.2.4 Build a social media marketing plan.............................................. 17
3 Analysis aspects ....................................................................................... 19
3.1 Company analysis ........................................................................... 19
3.2 Market analysis .............................................................................. 24
3.3 Competitor analysis ......................................................................... 29
3.4 SWOT analysis................................................................................ 32
4 Research & data collection ......................................................................... 34
4.1 Quantitative research method ............................................................ 34
4.2 Implementation.............................................................................. 35
4.3 Limitation .................................................................................... 36
5 Research result ....................................................................................... 36
5.1 Demographic result ......................................................................... 36
5.2 Social media usage and frequency ....................................................... 38
5.3 Branding activities on social media ...................................................... 42
5.4 Smartphone brand awareness on social media ......................................... 43
5.5 Client company social media appearance ............................................... 46
6 Social media marketing plan suggestions ......................................................... 48
6.1 Goals .......................................................................................... 49
6.2 Target audience personas.................................................................. 49
6.3 Research competitors ...................................................................... 50
6.4 Social media audit .......................................................................... 51
6.5 Social media content calendar ............................................................ 54
 6.6 Evaluation .................................................................................... 55
7 Reliability and validity ............................................................................... 56
8 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 56
9 Thesis reflection ...................................................................................... 57
Reference ................................................................................................... 59
Appendixes .................................................................................................. 68
 6

1 Introduction

Over the past decade, digital technology and social media has been flourished and booming
all over the world with automation systems, AI technology and social network platforms. As a
matter of fact, according to an article by HubSpot (Alexander 2018), modern days business
has the tendency to reach their current and potential customer through social media
platforms such as Facebook or YouTube instead of only using traditional media channels like
magazines or TV commercial. Hootsuite conducted a study which illustrates that the number
of internet users was over 4 billion people in 2018, and among them, there are 3.1 billion who
are social media users (Kemp 2018). These statistics help to explain the reason why business
should focus on digital media channels to enhance their brand awareness, especially when
entering a new market. As mobile phone and social media use increases, digital and social
media marketing has become an essential part in any marketing plan. Especially for
businesses that just entered a new market, social media is the best channel to introduce the
brand to new customers and open new opportunities for easier market entry. According to the
Global Digital suite report 2018, by We Are Social and Hootsuite, 57 million Vietnamese are
active social media users, takes up to 57% of the nation’s population which are 96 million
people. The report also stated that Vietnam has surpassed Thailand and Turkey and take the
7th place in the number of Facebook users worldwide. Vietnamese consider social media is
their primary source of daily news. Therefore, content is essential when it comes to doing
digital marketing campaign in this country. Social media has become an indispensable activity
to Vietnamese daily life, and that gives business the golden opportunity to utilize these
channels to understand their target market.

1.1 Thesis background

The topic of this thesis is to improve the brand image of the client company through social
media and establish an effective digital marketing strategy that will benefit the case com-
pany in their future marketing plan. The client is a Chinese technology company which pro-
duces technology devices and it is one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Re-
garding some legal issues, it is necessary to sign a non-disclosure agreement not to reveal the
company’s real name, therefore in this thesis project, the company will be mentioned as a
client company or client brand.

The client has entered the Vietnam market for almost 2 years ago and ever since the com-
pany has stumbled on several obstacles concerning brand awareness in this market due to
some objective reasons. Though the brand is known worldwide for its durable but cost-effec-
tive product, Vietnamese are still prejudiced over the brand because of China – Vietnam po-
litical issues and other perceptions like Chinese’s product are often fake and not good for
 7

use. Vietnamese preferred the brand that is trustworthy and famous for a long time like Sam-
sung and Apple over the client. Moreover, due to the lack of creative content and poorly con-
ducted digital campaign on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the company
has failed to build their brand image and change consumer’s perspective about the brand. Re-
gardless of their effort to change the consumer’s perception by running paid media and Face-
book advertisement, their digital campaign has usually failed due to lack of creativity and vi-
rality. Their Facebook page only consists of poor content and their Instagram account is rarely
posting any content. The lack of social listening and interaction with customers bring bad ex-
perience to potential customers. The author wishes to enhance the brand awareness of the
client company on social media platforms. Together with the support of the author’s supervi-
sor, the Marketing Manager, the author decided to create a long-term digital marketing strat-
egy to help increase the client company brand awareness in the Vietnam market.

1.2 Thesis’s purpose

The problem rises after the company launches their main focus product in this market, called
N. The company has invested a significant amount of budget into this product in the hope
that N will become everyone’s “dream smartphone” because of N’s exceptional features in
such reasonable price. They predicted that the sale of product N would be booming and cre-
ate a blast in the mid-range smartphone segment. Unfortunately, the sales dropped gradually
since the launch, and the campaign backfire. Customers suspected that the product could not
be exceptional and durable when the price is that cheap.

On the other hand, several conspiracies regarding the brand’s security problem were raised
due to political reasons between China and Vietnam causing bad brand image in the public
eyes. Additionally, the brand’s social media accounts are loosely managed with poorly
conducted content and service which create a bad impression for potential customers. Ac-
cording to McCue (2018), people have the tendency to follow and research brands on social
media before they decide to purchase the product. Therefore, it is crucial to take good care
of the brand image on social media if the brand wanted to survive in this market.

The author was aware of the situation and shared her concerns with her supervisor, the Mar-
keting Manager. After some discussion, he decided to appoint the author to come up with a
long-term digital marketing strategy to increase the client brand recognition on digital plat-
forms. The reason why the author was chosen is that the author has been managing the brand
digital aspects for six months and also a target audience of the brand in this market. With her
knowledge, skills and help from the supervisor, the author accepted the task and thus, the
birth of this thesis project.
 8

1.3 Objectives and outcomes

Objectives need to be set for the project to develop and help reach the final result. In this
project, there are three main objectives that the author wanted to accomplish through this
thesis project. The first objective is to create a social media marketing plan for the client
company. The author wanted to create a social media marketing plan that the client company
can modify and implement in their future marketing campaign. The second objective is to
help improve the use of the client company social media channels. In specific, the author
wishes to adjust the content, activity, post frequency, visual and online customer’s services
of these social media channels. For example, determine which content is the best fit to post,
when to post to get the most engagement rate, how often the service team have to reply to
comments, and inbox messages. The third objective is to support and help the client to
enhance the brand awareness in the Vietnam market. The author hope her strategies in the
social media marketing plan would help the client company to improve their brand awareness
in this new market.

The final product of this thesis project will be a digital marketing plan in the form of Power-
Point presentation. The plan will consist of the goals that the client wanted to reach,
competitor analysis, research about the target market social media usage rate, company
current situation and suggestions for further improvements.

1.4 Project’s limitation

Regarding limitations, there are a few noticeable ones which need to be mentioned. The au-
thor’s knowledge is the first challenge the author has to face. Despite the internship period in
the field, the author is not yet an expert in creating a digital marketing strategy as the au-
thor’s speciality is social media managing and creating content. Building an entire digital
marketing strategy can be a bit out of reach but also can be an opportunity for the author to
gain more knowledge and insights for her future career. On the other hand, as the author is
an insider who currently works for the company, being “too close” to the research settings
may jeopardize and causes the author to have subjective views during the research process
(Saunders et al. 2009, 151). Nevertheless, the author will try to be as objective as possible in
the research period and collecting data to ensure that this thesis’s transparency. (Saunders et
al. 2009, 194).

Resources limitation is the second challenge the author has to overcome, as mentioned above
in the background part; the author has signed a non-disclosure agreement with the company
about information security. Therefore, any documents and information that might affect the
company’s business will not be mentioned in this thesis paper to prevent any legal or ethical
issues that might occur in the future. Additionally, the author will only present the numbers
and data that can support her research process, but the full research document from the
 9

company is off limited and will not be mention any further. Furthermore, regarding personal
privacy right, the research group information will be confidential, and it is the author’s duty
to protect their personal information. The research group participants will be named in let-
ters A, B or C instead of their real identity to ensure their privacy. (Saunders et al. 2009, 189)

Time-limitation is the final obstacle the author has to subdue. This project is based on the
time frame of a Bachelor’s thesis, and it is expected to complete in February. The author’s
supervisor also expects to implement this digital marketing plan in the company’s next cam-
paign which starts in March. Ergo, the author will only have four months to research theory
and collecting data to complete this digital marketing plan for the company to put in use.
This thesis project will prove the author’s ability to the company and a big step to support
her career path in the digital marketing field.

1.5 Company’s introduction

The client company is a Chinese global enterprise leading in providing ICT solutions, telecom-
munication equipment and technology devices. The company is one of the largest manufac-
turers regarding telecommunication products and technologies equipment in the world. They
own a broad business sector, and its client spread widely across multiple industries. Their
customer segment can be identified into three main categories. First category is general con-
sumers which consist of public consumers, which various technology devices are offered by
the company, for example, smartphones, smart wearables, tablets and accessories through
the company’s authorized retailers and distributors. This category belongs to the company
B2C segment. The second category is commercial and corporate enterprise (B2B), it consists
of diverse companies across many business sectors to which the company provides specialized
commercial services to. (corporate enterprise, power supplier, financial firm, etc.…). And the
final category is government and public institutions which include government bodies and
public social organizations. Their customers are multinational and located across the globe
like the United State, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. However, its primary mar-
ket is China where the company received the most significant profit.

The main focus of this thesis is the Vietnam division of the client company which specialize in
providing technology devices such as smartphones, headphones and other technology device
accessories. The Vietnam division belongs to the General Consumer sector of the enterprise.
Their main job is to deliver global products to the local Vietnam market and act as a local
representative. Regarding human resources status, globally, the brand has over 180000 em-
ployees scattered around the world, and most of them worked in the Research and Develop-
ment sector. In the Vietnam division, the company has over 1000 staffs across the country.
The author's office is located in the Ho Chi Minh City office, where there are about 200 staffs
in total.
 10

2 Theoretical framework

The theoretical framework in this thesis project will consist of theories regarding branding,
social media marketing and building a marketing plan. These theories will act as the base
knowledge to gain insights and support the author in the process of creating the marketing
plan. Understanding the basic theories is the key to initiate a proper suggestion to enhance
the brand awareness of the case company. The first part of the theoretical framework is
about branding and brand awareness. The second part explains the importance of social
media and its effect on increasing brand awareness. The final part talks about the theory of
marketing plan building. Every single part of the theoretical framework connects with each
other to form the marketing plan for the case company.

2.1 Branding

Finding an accurate definition of the word “brand” is rather difficult since it contains
multiple layers of meaning behind a single word. Originally, the word “brand” was used by
farmers in the older days when they apply a hot branding iron to imprint initials to distinguish
their livestock from others. However, that definition drifted as society developed, the word
“brand”now acts as an important part in business and marketing rather than farming. The
core definition of a brand in modern days is that it is a unique combination of name, symbol,
term, logo, word or feature that a company’s product or service and differentiate them from
others competitors in the industry. (American Marketing Association 1960; Mishra 2012).
According to Clifton, Simmons and Ahmad (2003, 14), a brand acts as a “guide to choice” to
assist consumers in choosing the product that they find better than its alternatives.

Yet, the concept of brand has transformed through time as branding evolved. Though it is still
understood as the elements above, there are ideas opposed to that core definition. Neumeier
(2005) declared that a brand is not a logo, name or any form of identity but is “a person’s
perception of a product, service, experience, or organisation.” Brand conception has become
more emotional, more subjective and makes it complicated to define in a single statement.
Brands nowadays are no longer just served as a representative of products and its feature,
but also represent the values, experiences and emotions of companies and consumers.

When thinking of a brand’s definition, the majority will think of famous, well-known brands
such as Apple, Google, Louis Vuitton, Channel, etc. However, it is not enough to clarify the
definition of a brand based on those big names (Lloyd 2017). A brand’s success can be
measured through the consumer’s experience with the product. A brand is considered
successful when consumers instantly think of that brand when mentioned about a particular
product category. An easy example is when asked to consider to purchase a smartphone, the
majority of people will think of Apple or Samsung. The link between these brands with the
product category is undeniable and often perceive as the representative of this product
 11

industry. A brand is a useful tool for companies to communicate and build relationships with
consumers. Also, as social media and digital platforms become more and more popular,
consumers are able to share their voice and opinions with the company which elevates the
brand to become more customer-centric.

2.1.1 The concept of branding

Branding is the process of advertising a brand to consumers through a consistent theme

marketing campaign. The purpose of branding is to help a brand “stand out from the crowd”
and attracts potential customers (Business Dictionary n.d). A book titled Building A Brand
clarifies that branding is about providing an exclusive offer through creating tangible and
intangible distinctive to differentiate a product from its competition (Ghodeswar 2008).
Kotler and Keller also state that branding is a combination of using product and service to
power a company’s brand (Kotler & Keller 2015).

In branding, business needs to deliver the brand’s purpose to the target audience and endow
the brand’s identity by utilising positioning and differentiation (Kotler, 2016). Brand
positioning is when a brand tries to differentiate itself from competitors in the market by
defining the brand’s unique values, qualities and goals (Geelhoed, Samhoud & Harmucu,
2013, 125).

In order to conduct a successful branding strategy, a company must set their brand’s purpose
before others (Kotler, 2016). Kotler has developed a conceptual model regarding the six steps
a company needs to follow when starting a branding campaign.

Figure 1: Branding conceptual model (Kotler 2016)

Setting the brand’s purpose is the first step for any company when started their journey in
branding. The brand purpose reflects the promise that the company will deliver to buyers.
Additionally, brand purpose also gives customers answers surrounding the brand and its
product. Among the same product category, brands have to position their product and
differentiate the product from other competitors. These two stages will perform at the same
time and complement each other. An easy example is that imagine a smartphone brand like
Apple, promised maximum safety smartphone to their customers. Apple positions its product
as a safe smartphone and establishes a sub-category within the smartphone industry.
However, there is another brand also identify its product as a secure smartphone. Apple will
need to move on to the diffirentiation stage, to make it product stand out in that sub-
 12

category. After positioning and differentiation stages are finished, the brand identity will be
established. Brand identity is where the company express the brand’s purpose to the target
audience. The brand’s ideas, product and message will be delivered to the target audience at
this stage. This stage is where marketer makes the brand desirable for the target audience.
Building brand trust is the next stage of this branding model. A brand needs to build a
trustworthy image for customers in order to shape a viable, attractive and sustainable brand.
Customer needs to see what a brand can deliver what it claims to be. A common way to build
trust is to gathers customer’s opinions about the brand and its product. The last stage is
brand beneficence, this stage relates to how the brand contributes to society and its
customers. At this stage, brands will usually use emotional strategy to attract its target
audience (Prithiani 2017).

2.1.2 Brand awareness

Brand awareness is an obscure concept that means different things depending on the point of
view. Overall, it is a scale to illustrate the popularity of a company’s product and brand to
their target audience. A brand which is recognised and acknowledged by their target
consumers means that the company has done their job in raising brand awareness. In the
early stage of a business, building brand awareness is crucial for companies to promote the
brand and its products. (Decker 2018). Rossiter and Percy define brand awareness as the
ability to recognise and memorise a brand of consumers. (Rossiter & Percy 1987). Within the
brand awareness concept, there are five distinct types that are worth mentioning: brand
recall, brand recognition, visual branding, top of mind and brand dominance (Fan 2018).

Brand recall is when the customers link your brand to a specific product category. Like when
mentioned soft drink, consumers are more likely think of CocaCola or Pepsi than others.

Brand recognition, also known as aided brand recall, is when the consumers recognise your
brand's features (a logo, slogan or patterns). A good example is when consumers see a half-
eaten apple image on any phone, they will immediately know that product is from Apple.

Visual branding tells your brand’s backstory and differentiate the brand from competitors
without using any written word. A well-design logo or image can do the trick to help with
visual branding. For example, McDonald’s golden arches are recognised by even toddlers who
cannot read or write yet.

Top of mind is the first product that pops up in consumers mind when asked about a specific
product category. This depends on the consumer’s personal taste. Such as when mentioning
sneakers, the author will immediately think of Addidas over other brands because she
preferred Addidas’s design over their competitors.
 13

Brand dominance is when a brand which is strong enough to overpower other brands in the
same industry. Consumers can only remember that one single brand and rarely think of
others. This brand is connected with consumers at a strong level that it has dominance
competitors completely. A clear example is when asked to name search tools/search bars;
Google is the only thing comes to the consumer’s mind. It is used as a verb replacing the word
search nowadays. There is a saying: “If you want to know something, Google it”. (Fan 2018)

There are a few methods can be used to measure brand awareness, among them, conducting
an online survey/questionnaire or doing an interview with a focus group is the most common
way to measure brand awareness (Smith 2018). Companies usually will reach out to their
customers via e-mail, phone, face-to-face or online survey and ask how did people find out
about their brand. Conducting a brand awareness survey is the easiest path to measure brand
awareness; however, it is not the only approach, especially in this digital era. Set the “old
fashion” method asides, tracking the company’s website traffic (direct and referral) is
another efficient way to track the customer’s awareness of your brand. By study the
website’s traffic data, business will be able to learn the customer’s behaviour and how well
the brand is doing on digital platforms. Business can utilise existing tools such as Google
Analytics or Google Trends to track how often the brand or product was mentioned at a
particular time. The most effective way to measure brand awareness is using social listening
tools which allows companies to get a deeper understanding of the consumer’s mind. (Chia
N.d).

2.2 Social media

Social media is a combination of technology platforms operate on the internet that allow
users to generate content and communicate with each other via the web or mobile-based
technology (Cite 2012). Users are able to share their content, ideas, interest and information
in real-time, quickly and efficiently (Hudson 2018). Social media can be considered as a mini-
society where people with common interest interacts and make friends. (Turban et al. 2015,
18). Users can create their profile on the website or mobile application and start networking
by connecting with other individuals or groups that share the same interest (Obar & Wildman
2015).

Social media is a broad term and quite challenging to define due to its continuous
development. People often equate social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp,
Twitter, and Youtube as social media. However, those application and platforms are only
social networks, a small part in the world of social media. Overall, experts classified social
media into the following categories: blog/microblog, business/enterprise social networks,
forums, microblogs, photo sharing, products review, social knowledge, video sharing and geo-
location. (Aichner & Jacob 2015, 57; Cite 2012).
 14

Users on social media sites are not bound by time, location or number of users. Users have
the freedom to express their thoughts, ideas, feelings, and goals within the platforms to
strangers from all over the world. Social media is one of the best and quickest paths towards
expanding user’s circle of relationships through creating user's profile (can either be private
or public depends on user’s choice). Those are the reasons why social media have to develop
drastically in recent years (O’ Brien; Sturgis; Tyree; Langmia 2013, 10).

The social media era has open the door to significant opportunities for business to generate
insights on the consumer’s mindset, behaviour and habit. Social network platforms like
Facebook, Instagram or Youtube obtain an enormous amount of data based on billions of it
users which business can utilize from. According to Gaitho (2018), by exploiting the analytic
tools in these platforms, brands can stimulate consumer’s demand, targeted product offers
and gain consumer’s insight to raise revenue and maintain the relationship with customers.
Neti (2011) stated that there are two main benefits which business can obtain through
utilizing social media in their strategy: cost reduction and increase the possibility of revenue
generation.

2.2.1 Social media marketing

Social media marketing is where business benefits the use of social media to promote their
products and services (Felix; Rauschnabel; Hinsch 2016). Social media marketing is a smaller
division under an umbrella term called, digital marketing, which contains SEO (Search Engine
Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), influencer marketing, social media marketing,
e-commerce marketing, social media optimization, email-direct marketing and content
marketing (Techopedia, n.d). Social media marketing takes advantage of the built-in data
analytic tools to track traffic and engagement of a campaign or website of a business. These
data can also support business to tailor their campaign/product message to the target
audience.

Social media acts as a communication tool in marketing which allows companies to approach
customers who are interested in their products and target potential customers who do not
know about their product (Neti 2011). Neti (2011) also stated that there are three advantages
business will obtain when making the use of social media. First, social media is the window
not only for companies to promote their product/services but also for customers to express
their thoughts and suggestions. Second, social media supports marketers in selecting the peer
groups of target audiences and determine appropriate influencers to become the brand’s key
opinion leaders. These targeted groups can promote the brand through word-of-mouth
marketing and increase the brand’s organic growth. Third, the cost of using social media
marketing is significantly less than traditional marketing since most of the social network
platforms are free. Even when a business chooses to advertise on these platforms, it will still
be much less than an advertisement of TV, magazine or billboards. (DeMers 2014)
 15

Tuten and Solomon (2014) describe the rapid development of social media: “It took radio 38
years to reach 50 million listeners. TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet
took four years to reach 50 million people. In under 9 months, Facebook has already added
100 million users.” With the popularity of social networking, reaching target audiences and
differentiate products from competitors is easier than it has ever been. Facebook, the biggest
social network in the world, has over 2 billion users as of September 2018 (Statista 2018)
which means there is one-third of the world’s population are using Facebook.

Figure 2: Digital Statistic 2018 (Hootsuite, We Are Social 2018)

These numbers prove that social media is currently the best option for a business to reach
more customers through social marketing than any other forms. Being on social media makes
the brand image trustworthy, accessible and recognizable in the public’s eyes. Through social
media, brands can educate their target audience about its product and increase brand
awareness when entering new markets. Dukart (2018) stated that through the data obtained
by social media marketing, business is able to monitor competitors, research customer
insights, and support making marketing decisions.

2.2.2 Content marketing in social media

Content marketing is the use of content for marketing activities. The Content Marketing
Institute defines content marketing as a strategical approach of marketing through focusing
on creating and sharing meaningful, engaging and valuable content to captivate the brand’s
target audience (Content Marketing Institute n.d). Standberry (2017) also state that the key
to content marketing is to reach new customers, turn them into repeat buyers and enhance
customers relationship by sharing and updating valuable free content. Brands that utilize
content marketing well have a higher opportunity to convert leads into customers and
customers to promoters.
 16

Content is the message that the brand wanted to deliver to their customers, visitors, leads,
and promoters. Content is provided through a variety of social channels like blogs, emails,
websites, social media, print ads, and beyond. Content marketing revolves around content, a
statement or message that brands wanted to distribute to the world. Overall, content
marketing is the art of communicating between the brand and their prospect without having
to sell to them (Champion 2016).

DeMers (2014) have synthesized the positive effects of utilizing content marketing in business
as follows: attracts new traffic, build brand reputation, build brand trust, influence
conversion rates, and increase revenue. Company will be able to achieve these benefits when
conducting a good content marketing strategy. Brand’s content must be original, simple,
audience-focused, validated and valuable for the target audience (Moore 2017). If the
content does not meet the requirements above means that the business did not exploit the
full potential of content marketing. A recent study by Content Marketing Institute has found
that around 93% of marketers choose social media as their most preferred marketing tactics.
However, each social media platform all have different format, tactics and analytical tools to
determine the best perform. Digital marketer’s job is to research and understand how each
platform operate in order to generate the appropriate content (Lua 2017).

On Faceboook network, the goal of Facebook’s content is branding and engaging with the
brand’s target audience (Lua 2017). Research from Buzzsumo (2019) in figure 3 has clarified
that video type post has higher average engagement than any other formats. The content in
these video and photo post types are usually simple, creative, and deliver informative
messages.

Figure 3: The success of different post types on Facebook (Buzzsumo 2019)

Instagram, the primary form of content on Instagram are photos. Instagram is the best
platform for visual storytelling content. The Instagram story is also a good approach for
content marketing to reach the target audience. Brands will usually focus on posting the
product photo and create viral hashtags to stimulate a viral campaign. The brand’s Instagram
feed needs to be in a consistent theme (visual, mood, and tone) to create a clean, creative
 17

feeling for the target audience (Alexandra 2018). Plus, taking advantage of the users-
generate content and repost it on the brand’s account is one great way to interact with the
target audience and promote the product. On the other hand, Youtube platforms content are
all in video format. Brands usually use Youtube to tell a more in-depth story about their
product. Additionally, content related to product usage, tips and repost user-generated
content is a great choice to build an excellent Youtube channel for a brand (Mediakix 2017).
Social network platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat also have different content format
and metrics to measure a brand’s content marketing strategy. However, these platforms will
not be mentioned in this thesis since it is not familiar with the market’s target audience.

2.2.3 Brand awareness in social media

According to Roy (2016), the aim of social media marketing is to get the consumer involved
and make them pay attention to the brand. Consumers are more likely to trust a brand that is
well-established on social media than others (Sjöberg 2017). By continually and repeatedly
exposure the brand to the target audience, brand awareness could increase drastically. Figure
4 illustrates the result of the survey conducted by Sprout illustrated that 80% of social media
marketer’s biggest goal is to increase brand awareness by using social media channels. This
study shows the fact that the road towards brand awareness enhancement correlates with
social media.

Figure 4: Social marketer's biggest goals (Sprout 2018)

2.2.4 Build a social media marketing plan.

Duermyer (2018) defines a marketing plan as a document used in business for a specific target
market. A marketing plan usually contains all the campaigns that will be executed over a
period of time. The plan supports the business operation in certain ways such as supporting
 18

decisions, tailor messages to different location and audience, setting up goals, select promote
platforms and measures the campaign with specific metrics (Chen 2018).

A social media marketing plan is the smaller division of the marketing plan; the plan will
revolve around promoting products on social media channels rather than traditional media
like TV commercials or billboards (LePage 2016). A good social marketing plan needs to be
specific and have a purpose in every action; the more clear, the more effective the execution
will be. There are six important steps in creating a successful social media strategy.

The first step is to set a specific goal for the plan. The goal will be select due to the
S.M.A.R.T criteria. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant,
and Time-bound. Specific meaning the goal must be as explicit as possible. A specific general
goals will help provided sufficient directions towards the plan’s success. The second element
is measurable which means that the goal must include precise numbers, dates for future
measurement. Attainable refers to the fact that goals must be achievable as in business needs
to find the right person to execute the plan to make sure the goal will be achieved. Next is
realistic element which make sure that goals are relevent and alligned with the brand’s
purpose. Time-bound refers to setting a specific deadline help track the progress of the plan
in order to ensure reaching its targets (Doran 1981; Mind Tools 2016).By setting goals through
the S.M.A.R.T framework, businesses can be confident that goals can be achieved and lead to
real business results.

The second step is research the target audience. Brands will need to create personas that
include the feature of the target audience. By creating buyer personas, brands are able to get
inside the mind of the potential customers so that brands can tailor offers to them. (LePage
2016)

The third step is to look into the competitors in the market. Conducting a competitive
analysis to learn and understand competitors is an excellent path towards undiscovered
opportunities. Brands will be able to spot what their competitors have done right and wrong
and adjust the plan accordingly. Brands that have resources should engage in social listening
services to help monitor competitors. (LePage 2016)

At step four, conducting a social media audit is necessary for brands to evaluate their
achievement and what the brand has accomplished until now. The review will help brands to
find out which action is valuable, which strategy is valid and which purpose the plan should
follow. Within this stage, brands should also improve its profiles on social media channels,
updating new information in order to help customers to keep track of the brand’s activities.
Find an inspiration like an award-winning or a viral campaign so that brands can adjust the
plan to reach better end result.
 19

In step five, a social media content calendar must be made in order to keep track of the
schedule and content. A social media content calendar is vital when creating a social media
marketing plan. It allows marketers to have a full picture of the campaign, identify suitable
content, and makes your plan consistent. The calendar could be in week or month depends on
the length of the campaign. The calendar usually includes everyday activity, everyday
content, posting time, tailor message for each material (Clayton 2017).

Figure 5: Social media content calendar example (Clayton 2017)

The sixth step is about evaluating and adjust the social marketing plan. The plan needs
constant update and re-evaluating depends on the situation and time. Testing different type
of posts, contents and strategies allows brands to refine their strategies in real-time. The
above information is a guideline to produce the social media marketing plan for this thesis.
The social media marketing plan will be built according to the aforementioned steps.The
author will try at best to develop suitable suggestions in order to help improve the company
brand awareness on social platforms.

3 Analysis aspects

Conducting an overall analysis of the company internal and external environment is

undoubtedly an integral element when building a marketing plan. Through this analysis,
brands are able to see where the company stand, have a deeper understanding of the
business environment, market, and consumers (Wikipedia n.d). The marketing plan often
consists of different analysis such as company analysis, market and consumer analysis,
competitor analysis and SWOT/PEST/Porter’s five forces analysis (Wikipedia n.d).

3.1 Company analysis

First is the company analysis, Ready Ratios (n.d) defines company analysis as a process to
evaluate and collect information regarding the company’s current situation, profiles, product
and services. Company analysis is also known as internal analysis since this analysis will
 20

support the marketing plan by review the strengths and weaknesses of the company through
its current resources.

The company analysis will analyze four aspects regarding the client company profile, their
current situation, and the company pros and con. The client company is the Vietnam division
of a global enterprise, that specializes in selling technology devices such as smartphones,
laptops, tablets and other accessories. The company has entered Vietnam for more than two
years, and the Vietnam division focus is about smart devices such as smartphones and tablets.
However, the company has been struggling in this new market despite their good reputation
in Europe, China and America. The reason behind this issue come from both internal and
external factors which will be elaborated further in the next paragraphs. The company is a
technology company and is strict with their internal information; therefore access to the full
data on the company's current situation is not available. Nevertheless, the author will try her
best to distribute the number and information as many as possible to help readers have a
clear picture of the case company.

The company analysis focuses on six aspects of a company: goals, cultures, focus, strengths,
weaknesses, and its market share which are illustrated in figure 7. Analyzing each element
deeper will allow the company to understand better about itself and determine the next step
in the company business journey.

Figure 6: Company analysis mindmap (niftymillionaire 2017)

The first thing to do in this company analysis is to understand the current situation of the
company by looking into the market share of the company in the Vietnam market. According
to the statistic combine by Statcounter, the client company now has around 3% of the mobile
vendor market share in the Vietnam market. The number is significantly less compared to its
competitors like Apple who take 41% of the market share, Samsung is 27%, Oppo is 8%, and
 21

Xiaomi is around 5% in November 2018. The market share is illustrated in the below figure to
help readers and the company have a clear picture of where it stands in the market.

Figure 7: Mobile vendor market share in Vietnam (Statcounter 2018)

As shown in the figure above, it is clear that the company takes only a small piece of the
smartphone industry in Vietnam. However, considering the fact that the company just
entered the market for only two years, the number is still relatively positive with stable
growth percentage. The company’s goal is to reach 10% in the next three years replacing its
competitors like Xiaomi and Oppo to become the most popular smartphone brand in the
middle price range. The brand started to focus on investing in the Vietnam market at the
beginning of 2017 by launching eight new products for consumers in a various price range
from affordable, mid-range to high-end smartphones. The company market share increase
from approximately 2% to 4% in 4 months. As the number shows, the company still has a long
way to go, but it is starting to get recognized by consumers in the Vietnam market. According
to a survey conduct by the company in June 2018, there are about 3300 people knows the
brand over 3800 people who did the survey. The number means that there are more than 80%
of people know the brand and heard about it, which is a high number considering the brand
just entered the market for two years (Client company ROI survey 2018).
 22

Figure 8: Mobile vendor market share in Vietnam 2018 (Statcounter 2018)

Nevertheless, the company still need to put more effort and investment into the market if
they wish to compete with the top competitors like Samsung and Apple. Apple does not even
enter the Vietnam market officially; they only distribute their product through local sales
vendor. However the brand is widely known by Vietnamese consumers; therefore, Apple is
still the leading brand in the smartphone industry in Vietnam. Following Apple is Samsung,
currently is the biggest smartphone/technology brand in the world. In Vietnam, Samsung is
the second biggest and obtain approximately 27% of the smartphone industry pie. Despite
being the second biggest mobile vendor in the market, Samsung’s market share has decreased
in the last quarter of 2018 because of Apple new product launch. Another fierce competitor in
this market is Oppo, also a Chinese based smartphone brand. However, Oppo has entered the
market since 2010; therefore, it is not a surprise that Oppo owns 8% in the market share. The
last competitor is Xiaomi, the brand also comes from China and started to enter the market in
2016. Xiaomi market share is almost equal to the company, but since Xiaomi has a different
approach and target audience in this market, therefore it is not a big threat to the company.

The next stage is to focus in the company’s goal. Through an interview with the press, the
client company’s CEO share the goal and ambition that the brand wanted to achieve in the
next five years. The CEO stated that the goals of the brand is to become one of the three
biggest smartphone brand in Vietnam in 2020 and in 5 years to become top 2. The brand is
currently in the top 5 of most popular smartphone brand in the market and is one of the
fastest growing brands. Hence, the possibility for the brand to head toward higher ranking in
the market is visible.

The third stage is the company’s main focus. The company currently owns 3 product line
belongs in 3 different price range from cheap, mid-range to flagship high-end products. The
cheap/affordable product line price is from 3 million – 5 million VND (~100-200 EUR), the
price of the mid-range product line is from 5 million – 10 million VND (~200-500 EUR), and
 23

finally the flagship product line’s price is over 10 million VND (>500 EUR). Through market
survey and research, the company learns that Vietnamese consumers tend to prefer the mid-
range product line over the others. Vietnamese population is dominant by young age group,
which are technology savvy, like to try new technology, prefer flagship device’s features but
the price has to be cheap and affordable. More details about the consumers habit in this
market will be explained in chapter 2.6.2. Therefore, the company decided their main focus
product line is the mid-range smartphone. The mid-range product line key point is that it is
the product line designed for young people with colorful design and newest technology but
still affordable to the company’s target audience.

The primary focus target audience is young Vietnamese in the age of 15-30 (students and
young workers). More than half of Vietnam’s population belongs to this age group which
proves that the company is heading towards the right path when focusing on this young age
group. People that in this age group can also be educated to become loyal with the brand
when they grew up and help the company earn a significant number of loyal customers in the
near future.

The next aspect is related to the company’s culture. The company’s culture affects
enormously on how customers see the company. The company mission is to fulfill the needs of
their customers through innovation, technology and excellent services. The company wanted
the staffs to learn about the company’s vision so that everyone can work towards the same
goal. Customer privilege is the company top priority, and every work in the company is there
to serve its customers. Additionally, the company also educates their employees by
establishing an employee handbook contains the brand’s policy about morality, mission and
values to support employees learn about boundaries and encourage the staffs to follow these
rules. Regarding the marketing culture in the company, there are still some issues that the
brand needed to fix and align with the whole marketing department. Currently, the company
still consider traditional marketing over social media marketing since the executive directors
are not familiar with the new social media marketing metrics and tools. Nevertheless, they
are open to learn more and receive any ideas that can help them understand the importance
of social media to marketing plus enhancing the current marketing’s culture.

Finally, the author decided to add another part to analyzing the company current digital
situation. The company digital situation is weak due to the lack of focus on digital channels.
The company’s digital accounts have poor interaction and engagement rate. The post on
Facebook and Instagram is miscellaneous and messy due to poor creative content which lead
to low level of engagement rate. The company’s Facebook page is a regional page, a part of
the global, therefore, it obtains an enormous amount of likes and followers. Nonetheless, the
percentage of local Vietnamese follower is relatively low, below 5% of the total number of
likes which are 54 million likes. The average engagement rate per post on Facebook is around
 24

100-200 likes (for organic post) and 1000-3000 likes (paid ad post). For Instagram platforms,
the brand has a separate Vietnam regional account, which owns approximately 800 followers
and the number of likes per post is around 10-30. Comparing these data to the competitors,
the brand is perceived as a weak brand on social media from the customer’s point of view.

3.2 Market analysis

Market analysis is used to gain insights on a specific target market, assess in the quantitative
and qualitative aspect of that market in order to shape the strategy accordingly. There are
three essential parts that a brand must do when conducting a market analysis which are
demographic characteristic, “psychographic” characteristic and consumers behaviour of the
target market. (Christ 2017)

First is the demographic characteristic of the market. Based on the data collected by
Worldometers (2018), Vietnam’s total population is around 96,8 million people by December
2018. According to the World Ultra Wealth Report (2018), Vietnam ranked third in the top 10
countries that have the fastest wealth growth in the world which makes the country a
goldmine for foreign investors. The dominant age group in Vietnam is the 25-54 age group
which owns 45% of the country’s population, followed by the 0-14 age group with 23% and 15-
24 years age group with 16%. This domination shows that over 90% of the population familiar
with technology devices and digital services ever since they were born. The numbers also
prove that the company and this social media marketing plan are aiming at the right target
audience age group.

Figure 9: Vietnam's population age structure (Population Pyramid 2018)

 25

Regarding the market's digital landscape, Hootsuite’s (2018) study illustrated that 67% of the
total population are active internet users which means more than half of the population
knows how to use a computer to access the internet. The number of social media users in
Vietnam is enormous with more than 50% of the total population.

Figure 10: Digital landscape in Vietnam (Hootsuite 2018)

Additionally, the research also describes the number of mobile users and active mobile social
users in this market, which is 73% and 52% of the total population, respectively. The study has
illustrated the whole digital landscape of Vietnam. Plus, it shows that Vietnamese depend
significantly on technology devices and social media. These digital devices and platforms are
becoming an indispensable part of the consumer’s daily life. Due to this data, it is clear that
Vietnam is the best market for investing in technology and social media marketing is the best
way to approach potential customers in this market.

Second is the “psychographic” characteristic of the market. Vietnamese enjoy the

comfortable, exciting, friendly lifestyle and they depend on technology. The data in
Hootsuite’s research announce that 94% of the population uses the internet every day. The
country also spends 52% and 21% of their online times to visit a social network platform on
their smartphone and computer, respectively. The number of active social media users are
57% of the country’s total population (Hootsuite, 2018). When spending time on social media,
most of their content is related to daily life update, selfies, hobby, and personal thoughts to
interact with their friends.
 26

Figure 11: Social media use in Vietnam (Hootsuite 2018)

Furthermore, the country’s attitude towards technology and digital aspects are crucial in
order to prove that this thesis project is in heading to right direction. The reason for choosing
social media to enhance brand awareness is because of the country’s point of view over
information on digital platforms. Almost half of consumers research and know about the
brand through online platforms compare to traditional media. Notably, 43% of consumers said
they first aware brands and ads via online channel like social media and website. Moreover,
Vietnamese have a positive view of new technologies and social media and believe it brings
more opportunities for development than risks.

Figure 12: Advertising media first awareness (Hootsuite 2018)

Regarding hobby and activities, young Vietnamese generation uses smartphones on a daily
basis. Young users in this market like to share their life, chatting and making friends on social
media. Appota Group report (2017) shows that 95% of users are accessing social networks
while they use their phone. Some other notable activities are playing games, watching videos
and use the search engine to search for information. The list of activities supports the brand
to produce the right content for potential customers. Selfie and camera use is counted as a
part of social media activities because people tend to use cameras when they wanted to
share their photo/selfies on social media. Content that related to video, selfie, camera, and
 27

gaming are always received high engagement rate by the customer because it refers to the
things that customers care about.

Figure 13: Vietnam top smartphone activities (Appota Group 2017)

Vietnamese depends on technology to communicate and work throughout the day. It is clear
to say that technology devices are now a part of their daily life because of the significant
hours of usage rates, utilizing social media tools can help the brand determine what time of
the day is the best to publish a post on social media. The prime time to post according to
Appota’s research (2017) is from 8PM-12AM, the time when most Vietnamese use social media
to relax. Publishing post in this period can ensure high engagement and interaction with
followers.

Figure 14: Impression by device through a daily time (Appota 2017)

Regarding consumer’s behavior, research by Hootsuite and We are social clarifies the e-
commerce growth of Vietnamese categories. Vietnamese spend roughly 840.7 million USD a
year on electronics and physical media in 2017, increases 16% compared to 2016. This is the
category that Vietnamese consumers spend the most money on. Hence, it is inevitable that
the market is fond of technology devices and equipment.
 28

Figure 15: E-commerce spend by category (Hootsuite 2018)

The shopping behaviour of Vietnamese is relatively similar to others in the world. The process
mostly started by researching about the product, 57% of people searched online about the
product or service before deciding to buy. The next step is to visit the online retail store of
that product to get information about pricing and details, 54% of e-shoppers visited the online
retail store to research the product than going to an actual retail store. The percentage of
people purchasing a product or service online also increase compared to last year. In 2017,
the survey shows that 39% of people tend to make a purchase online (Figure 17). However,
the rate increases to 47% in 2018 asserted the growth of e-commerce in this market.

Figure 16: Vietnam’s e-commerce activities (Hootsuite 2018)

Vietnam has a competitive economy with various brands that offered a variety of products
within the same product category. Therefore, pricing is one of the most crucial factors that
effects on the customer’s purchase decision. However, the behaviour changes over these
recent years due to globalization and the market is getting familiar with the concept of brand
loyalty. Research by Nielsen Vietnam (2017) pointed out that Vietnamese consumers
preferred high-quality product and that the product is environmentally friendly. Additionally,
 29

75% of Vietnam consumers stated that they tend to purchase products from the brand that
they trust, hence the forming of brand loyalty.

3.3 Competitor analysis

In the competitive analysis, brands need to look into when research the market for the
marketing plan is to conduct a competitive study about the competitors . The analysis should
include information on the competitor’s products/services, benefits offering, the key factor
to success and the pros and cons of their strategies (Christ 2017). In the Vietnam market,
there are three fierce competitors that the brand has to surpass which are Samsung (Korea),
Oppo (China) and Apple (US). Gathering and analyzing information for a competitive analysis
could support the brand to know and learn from their opponents.

The first and biggest competitor is Samsung. Samsung is a South Korean multinational group
based in Seoul and is the biggest technology in the world currently. Samsung has a diverse
commodity that spreads from household devices, entertainment unit to personal devices like
smartphones and tablets. Samsung is the biggest competitor in the Vietnam market because
of the similar product categories. In Vietnam, Samsung owns 27% of share in the mobile
market with many product lines that are suitable for a variety of audience (Statista 2018).
Their product lines are favourable by the public from affordable to flagship smartphones.
Among those products, the Samsung Galaxy J line makes the most sales in Vietnam. Samsung
Galaxy J7 Pro also ranked first in top 5 best selling phones in the first half of 2018 (Dantri
2018). Samsung owns a variety of product line that targets different age group in the market.
Galaxy J and A is considered as the line for the youth with a colourful, trendy design and
affordable. Galaxy S and Note is called the flagship line that aims to professional users.

Figure 17: Samsung social media account insights (Samsung Facebook 2018)

Samsung has a strong social media appearance with an enormous amount of followers and
likes. The data above is collected by the author by studying Samsung’s social media accounts.
The author calculates the average engagement rate of Samsung’s ten latest posts. First,
started with the number of followers on the Samsung Facebook page, the total followers are
 30

159 million, globally. Data regarding follower’s location are unavailable since the author is
not authorized to access that information. Samsung Facebook page has two primary type of
post: organic and paid. Samsung Facebook page implemented various types of post format
from photos, video, carrousel to interact images which make the page more diverse and
creative in the public’s eyes. The caption on these Facebook posts usually contains a unique
hashtag create by the brand to help spread the product’s message and create a viral
campaign. For example, for Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the hashtags are #BoldTrademark and
#NewPower. For Samsung Galaxy A9, its #SamsungGalaxyA9, #SuperzoomCamera,
#First4cameraphone, and for Samsung Galaxy A6/A6+ is #SamsungGalaxyA6 and
#CapturingYourYouth (roughly translated). Samsung Vietnam encourages the fans to use these
hashtag in their post. In addition, Samsung take care of their followers carefully by
responding to their fans comments, interact with them and quick respond when the author
send a message through Messenger. This act show that the brand values their customers and
fans which help build brand loyalty.

Oppo Electronics Corporation is a Chinese electronics and mobile communication company.

Oppo is known for their technology devices such as smartphones, and it is a child company of
BBK Electronics. The brand is one of the leading smartphone brands in China and was ranked
no.8 worldwide. Oppo is the company second biggest threat in the market behind Samsung.
Their product lines are not similar; however, their design, features and future vision are quite
identical. Oppo entered the market in 2013 and currently owns 8% of the mobile market share
in Vietnam (Statisa 2018). Oppo positioned their brand as the smartphone for young people.
Their smartphones contain features that young generations preferred such as beautiful selfie
cameras, long-lasting batteries and innovative designs. All of Oppo’s product are targeted to
the young generation from the age of 14-25, hence the low and affordable price. Oppo’s main
product line is Oppo F which is meant for high school and college students. Oppo F line’s
slogan is Selfie Expert which highlight the feature of this product line, Selfie. A feature that is
loved by the young generation in Vietnam and Oppo currently own the best selfie camera
smartphone in the world. Moreover, the price is only from 6 – 8 million VND (~150–250 EUR)
makes it affordable for young consumers. Besides the affordable smartphone line, Oppo
recently launched two flagship line which is Oppo Find and Oppo R target to more
professional, fashionable users.
 31

Figure 18: Oppo social media account insights (Oppo Facebook 2018)

Oppo, also owns a strong social media background with a significant number of followers and
likes in Vietnam. Oppo’s Facebook account achieved 38.4 million followers worldwide.
However, the author was unable to access the data regarding the follower’s specific location.
Oppo also uses paid advertisement by Facebook; therefore, the brand Facebook posts are
divided into two type: organic and paid ad. After browsing Oppo’s Facebook page, the author
discovered that the brand did not implement any kinds of formats in their post. Oppo’s
Facebook page mostly use photo format for their posts and sometimes use video. Oppo
focuses on the content of the post more than using many formats. Oppo chooses to make
trendy content and use paid advertisement to deliver their post to the target audience. This
is an intelligent approach to the target audience since it makes Oppo’s Facebook page look
more clean, consistent and in sync. Similar to Samsung, Oppo’s captions always include a
special viral hashtag for their product to make it unique and easier to spread the campaign.
For instance, the Oppo R17 Pro hashtag is #CaptureTheColorfulNight (roughly translated). The
brand encourages fans and followers to use these hashtag and frame in their posts and profile
pictures to make it become a trend on social media. A glance through Oppo’s Facebook page
reveals that the brand also takes care of their follower’s comments regularly. However, the
response time is longer than Samsung.

The final competitor in the market is Apple. Apple Inc. is a worldwide famous multinational
technology company from the United States. Apple did not officially enter Vietnam and have
yet open any Apple store in the country. Most Apple products come from local distributors or
local businessmen. Apple is a compelling case to learn when talking about branding on social
media. The Apple brand alone is now the most valuable brand on the planet and the company
brand worth 170 billion dollars (Badenhausen 2017). Apple themselves do not believe in using
social media for branding. The brand has only 11 million followers worldwide with no specific
interaction or content. Apple is not active on any social media channel and believes that
social media is unable to drive sales or do any good to the brand’s reputation. The situation
of social media is it is not only a place for brand and customers to interact, but it is also a
 32

place for anti-fans and haters comes to insult and downgrade the brand. Therefore, Apple and
any other luxury brands believe that social media will only hurt the brand’s image than
enhancing it. The brand is indeed an interesting case to learn the story behind their anti-
social media actions.

3.4 SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic analytic technique used to support the company to analyze the
different aspects of the business environment. SWOT is an acronym to the four parameters of
this method - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. SWOT is a powerful analytic
technique which allows companies to exploit and discover new opportunities, plus identify
their weaknesses and understand the existing threats in their target market. (Mind Tools
2016). Figure 20 summarized SWOT analysis based on previous analysis and the company owns
research survey.

Figure 19: Client company SWOT analysis

Regarding strength, the most power strength are things surrounding its products. The brand’s
product is trendy and suitable for the target market. The client’s smartphone products are
outstanding from cheap to flagship line. Their designs and features are innovative and create
a trend in smartphone design in 2018. Understand the market’s requirements and needs; the
brand also makes the price in this market more affordable and appropriate for the target
audience to purchase. Upon launching, a series of valuable promotion gifts are hand to the
buyers to attract tech-savvy customers. Plus, the brand’s service center are trained to give
the best service to the company’s customers in order to maintain relationships and acquired
brand loyalty. The brand is heading toward the right path with its sales strategy. However,
their marketing strategy is in a weak spot that could later damage the brand. The SWOT
analysis will discover four aspects (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of the
brand. The study will help the author analyzing the current situation and deciding appropriate
future marketing strategies. Throughout the company, market and competitor analysis, the
 33

author is able to see the SWOT situation of the brand, and it will be explained in the
following paragraphs.

In contrast, the weaknesses of the company lies upon their marketing and branding strategies
in Vietnam. The brand wishes to obtain public recognition and make their brand popularize,
however, the company did not choose the right approach. Instead of making their product
popularize with the market, the brand only focuses to tech-savvy customers and uses TOLs
(Tech Opinion Leaders) instead of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Additionally, the brand weak
appearance on social media makes their products become unfamiliar with the young target
audience. The weak and poor quality contents that the brand currently has on their Facebook
page must change if the company wishes to reach more audience. The result of such action
leads to weak branding strategy and the product become unknown by the public. Lastly, the
weakness that comes from the origin of the brand. Due to many years of war between China
and Vietnam, Vietnamese own hatred attitude towards Chinese brands. The brand name itself
has become its weakness in this market.

As for the opportunities, it is not long since the brand entered the market, hence, there are
rooms to develop in order to reach the brand’s goals in the future. The decrease of old
competitor’s market share like Samsung opens the door to claim and expand the company’s
market share. Samsung’s products were known to be excellent in the luxury line, but for the
mid-range and affordable, their products are not good enough to meet the consumer’s needs.
The lack of new feature and poor design of Samsung’s recent products shrink Samsung’s
market share from 29% last year, to 26% in 2018 (Statista 2017-2018). Hence, leave the room
for the brand to expand in the future. The market itself is also an opportunity because of its
demographic characteristic. Half of the population are the generation born in the technology
era; therefore they are all tech-savvy and quickly adopt new knowledge through social media.
The significant development of social media in this market becomes the most crucial factor to
help raise brand awareness in this market. Vietnamese tend to research the brand through its
social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and Youtube to look for reviews and what
others think about the brand’s product. Brand awareness, therefore, can be obtained through
investing money and strategy to social media platforms.

The final aspect is about threats. New entry and local competitors are two strong threats to
the brand’s market share and future goals. The fast development of Vietnam has turned it
into a potential market that new competitors wish to enter. Brands that have not yet
officially entered the market are already started their plan to make the entrance. On the
other hand, the rise of local smartphone brands can become a big threat in the future.
Vietnam currently has two brands that start making and producing their own smartphone.
Local Vietnamese will have a tendency to support their own local products if it meets their
requirements. Local brands use local resources and workers, therefore, increase the
 34

employment rate of the country which creates more reason for Vietnamese to choose their
local brand. The plus side is that these local brands have not yet produced a product that
acquired the need of the market. Secondly, political issues between China and Vietnam
creates an enormous threat to the brand’s reputation and future business activities. The
territory dispute situation gets bigger every day and causes a wave of anti-Chinese brand in
the country. These problems may lead to future boycott actions of Chinese brands. Thirdly,
social media have a dark side which is the anti-brand community. They are the people who
have personal hatred towards the brand, and these people will leave bad reviews and
comments on social media that could damage the brand’s image. Some of the times, these
anti-brand people are social seeders whom competitors hired to discredit their opponents.
Lastly, the spy chip claims by the United States is a significant disadvantage of the brand.
These claims have damaged the company credibility and image. In a result lost a massive
amount of customers that value their privacy. Even though the brand has issued a statement
to refute these claims, the bad news travels faster.

4 Research & data collection

The term “research” refers to the process of using research methodology in order to collect
data to discover new knowledge or gain insights about a certain matter (University of the
Witwatersrand Johannesburg 2018). There are two type of research: qualitative and
quantitative. Researchers can choose the most suitable for their topic depending on their
preferences. Qualitative research collects verbal, text data to discover the social relations of
the respondent with their real-life experience (Adams 2014). Data in the qualitative research
is usually collected through interviews or observations. On the other hand, quantitative
research is used to collect numerical data in order to support and confirm a hypothesis
related to a particular theory. In the quantitative research, data is collected through surveys
or questionnaires (CIRT n.d). Ojasalo et al (2009, 17) emphasize that it is essential to
understand basic knowledge between the two types so that researchers are able to utilize
each method correctly in the research process. In this thesis project, the most appropriate
research to collect data is quantitative research. The reason behind choosing this approach
was to help collecting real-time data from the target market and beneficial the social media
marketing plan. Additionally, quantitative research will help provide information about the
target consumers social media behaviours such as the preferred type of content, social media
channel, research before purchase behaviors, and other questions related to social media-
brand awareness that can support this study.

4.1 Quantitative research method

Burns and Bush (2014) state quantitative research uses structural questions survey to collect
data from a large number of respondents. Data in quantitative research is specific, formative
and easier to compiled and support to create a social media marketing plan. In quantitative
 35

research, vast scale research is needed in order to gain accurate data for further analysis. On
the other hand, data collected in quantitative research are easier to control in comparison to
qualitative data which can be biased due to the respondent preferences (McLeod 2017).
Moreover, quantitative research is more efficient regarding time and effort. By using
quantitative research, researchers are able to collect and analyze much more respondents
over a similar amount of time than qualitative research. Additionally, quantitative research
can help collect data from different target groups which can be useful to adjust future plan
(Burn & Bush 2014).

4.2 Implementation

Collecting data from target audiences in the market is the key to create a social media
marketing plan. In order to collect data for this research method, an online
questionnaire/survey will be designed using the theoretical framework and analysis on
chapters above. Burns and Bush (2014) define survey meaning using structural questionnaire
to approach a large number of respondents in order to collect data. The goal of the survey is
to research the target audience’s opinions about social media effects on brand image and
brand awareness. The online survey method was chosen because of its advantages of
standardization and easier to control. Moreover, using online survey can help reach more
potential audience and a higher chance of finishing the survey since it requires minimal effort
and is less time consuming. Data later on will be analyzed by summarising the pattern and
connections between variables to study the consumers behavior on social media and their
attitude towards branding on social platforms.

The data was collected through an online survey. The survey has a total of 25 close-ended
questions (Appendix 1) that tackle the consumer's technology brand awareness and their
social media behavior. The target for this research was Vietnamese consumers from the age
of 10 to 40. This age group takes around 46% of the total Vietnam population. The total
population was 96 million, hence, the target respondent will be around 44 million people. The
target sample size was calculated using sample sizes calculator (Survey Monkey). The target
sample size was 97 based on the calculation with a 95% confidence level and 10% margin of
error, calculated using normal distribution (Survey Monkey). However, there is no limited
number of respondents, the more sample the better for data analyzing. The survey was
collected by using Google Forms and distribute through social media channels, mostly
Facebook and posted in Facebook groups. A few notable groups that the author target is
Vietnamese technology/smartphone enthusiast Facebook group (2.2k members), Vietnamese
photographer Facebook group and share with her friends and family.
 36

4.3 Limitation

During the data collecting period, there are several limitations that the research might
encounter such as time and quality limitations. Firstly, the time period to collect data for the
survey is two weeks. Therefore, it could cause problems like not gaining enough data or
respondents for further analysis. This problem could be fixed by actively sharing the survey
through social media channels and emails to collect as many respondent as possible. The
second limitation is about the quantitative data quality. Data collected by using quantitative
method may not be accurate in describing a complex context. Additionally, using a
quantitative method such as surveys means that the respondent has limited answers options
which may not express their true feeling about the situation. This action leads to low-quality
data and affects negatively on the analysis (Black 1999). Denscombe (2010) considered small
scale quantitative research leads to unreliable data due to the low quantity of respondent.
Madrigal and McClain (2012) also stated that quantitative data may not provide enough
insights to explain a certain topic or behaviour, hence, even a well-designed questionnaire
still cannot tackle every aspect of the problem.

5 Research result

The research survey was open to collect responses for 7 days starting Monday 21st of January
and ended on Sunday 27th of January. During the time period, the survey collected more than
100 responses, 102 responses to be exact. The number exceeded the original plan which was
to collect 100 responses from the target audience. Due to this success, the main concern
regarding the reliability and validity of the research was avoided. The number of respondents
provides more than enough data to represent the target audience of the company. The
following data is exported and treated by Google Form and Excel to make it readable and
understandable.

5.1 Demographic result

Figure 21 illustrates the respondent gender distribution, the majority of the respond-
ent are mostly female, which took around 59.8% of the total number of respond-
ents. The other 40% is taken by male respondent and 1% choose “other” option.
 37

Figure 20: Survey gender distribution

There are 4 main age groups which the company wants to target. The company’s main target
age group is Vietnamese young adults that are in their 20-30s. As mentioned in the demo-
graphic analysis above, this age group is currently the backbone of the economy and the main
consumers in the Vietnam market. During the survey period, this age group also owns the
largest number of respondents and took part of 72.5% of the total number of respondents.
The young age group which is Vietnamese student consumers from the age of 10-20s. This age
group will best fit for the youth product line with affordable pricing. Figure 22 shows that
there are approximately 13% of the total respondents belong to this age group, which took
the second largest portion of the pie chart. The 30-40s and over 40s age group took 9.8% and
4.9% of total respondents, respectively.

Figure 21: Survey age distribution

By combining figure 21 and 22, the charts indicate that the dominant group of respond-
ents are mainly female consumers in their 20-30 years of age. The personal data col-
lected shows that the survey was heading towards the right path by collecting data from the
case company’s main target audience in this market. The given data might be beneficial for
the author in the content creating phase of the marketing plan. Through this piece of infor-
mation, it is visible that creating content that focus on female 20-30 years of age like and dis-
like could help enhancing the brand awareness and increase the engagement rate on social
platforms.
 38

5.2 Social media usage and frequency

Data from the social media channel usage and frequency will provide valuable information for
the marketing plan in terms of focus social media channel, posting time and post fre-
quency. The results in figure 23 show that a considerable number of the survey respondents
use Facebook as their main social media channel. 99% of the total respondent use Facebook,
as mentioned in the market analysis part in chapter 3.2, there are nearly 50 million people in
Vietnam using this platform as of October 2018 (Statista 2018).

Figure 22: Social media platform preferrence

On the other hand, the second most popular social media platform in Vietnam is YouTube
with 95.1% of the respondents are using this platform in their everyday activities. The
third place belongs to Instagram with 84.3% of the survey respondents using this chan-
nel. The number of users is relatively big which means Instagram could become a potential
channel to focus on. The last two places belong to Zalo and other social media platform like
Reddit, Twitter, Tinder, TikTok and etc. with 4.9% and 13% of the survey respondent, respec-
tively. The majority of Vietnamese only uses three main social platforms to communicate and
update information which are Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Therefore, the marketing
plan will focus primarily on these three channels than other social platforms.

The next category belongs to the usage rate of the respondant on social media platforms. By
learning about the social media platform usage rate of the target consumers can support the
company to depict the number of content to publish on each platform within a day. And from
there, company can provide quality content without causing any disturbance to the target
audience (Daoud 2016).
 39

Figure 23: Social media channels use frequency per day

Figure 24 describes the number of hours that survey respondents spend on each social media
platform. There is four possible options for the respondent to choose from which were: under
1 hour/day, 2-5 hours/day, 5-10 hours/day, over 10 hours/day and last was not access at all.
Facebook and YouTube take the first and second place as expected with around 77.5% and
65.7%, respectively, of the total respondents spend more than 2 hours on these platforms per
day. To be specific, there are 22.5% of Facebook users spend less than one hour per day on
the platform, 52% spend 2-5 hours, 16.7% spend 5-10 hours and 8.8% spend over 10 hours per
day using Facebook. For Instagram, the specific amount is 48.1%, 33.3%, and 4.9%,
accordingly. No Instagram users spend more than 10 hours per day on this platform. On the
other hand, there are 13.7% respondents who do not use this platform. YouTube, however, is
a different story since the platform only focuses on video content, therefore users have the
tendency to spend more time on YouTube than other platforms. Specifically, there are 34.3%
of YouTube users spend less than 1 hour on the platform. The percentage of users spend 2-5
hours using YouTube is relatively large with 53.9%, 8.8% spend 5-10 hours, 1% spend more
than 10 hours and 2% do not consider YouTube in their daily activity. The other small platform
like Twitter, Tinder, TikTok, Reddit, Zalo do not own many users and 46% of the respondent
state that they do not use it at all, 36.3% spend less than 1 hour per day, 15.7% spend 2-5
hours, 1% spend 5-10 hours and 1% spend more than 10 hours.

Figure 24: Content display frequency

 40

For content display frequency, five options were given for the respondent to choose from
were: more than once a day, once a day, 1-3 times/week, once/week and rarely. The
dominant option in all platforms was more than once a day. Hence, it is clear that users
prefer to see more content in a day, however not too many which could cause disturbances.
64.7% of Facebook users wish to see more than one content per day, 19.6% wish to see
content once in a day, 8.8% want to see it 1-3 times/week, 4.9% choose once a week and 2%
choose rarely. For Instagram, the percentage is 42.16%, 24.5%, 12.74%, 2.9% and 17.64%,
respectively. On the other hand, 43.1% of YouTube users prefer to see more content in a day,
17.64% want to see new content once a day, 15.68% choose 1-3 times/day is ideal for them,
18.62% choose to see new content once a week and lastly 4.9% rarely care about new content
on this platform. For other social media channels, the data differs from our three main
platforms because it is mixed between many different platforms. Therefore, the percentage
for each option is 24.5%, 9.8%, 8.8%, 2.9% and 53.9%, accordingly. From the given data, the
results are surprisingly different from Ellering (2017) suggestion more than one content per
day could be suffocating for users. Vietnamese like to see more content and news in a day so
they can catch up with the trends and latest information, hence the reason for the more than
one content a day option dominant the chart.

Figure 25: Social media online timing

Figure 26 illustrates the time in which social media users are usually online. For this target
market, users have the tendency to use social media in the afternoon and night time which is
from 2-6 PM and after 6 PM. The given data is beneficial to the company and brand in term of
posting time, by knowing the specific time that most users are online can maximize the
engagement rate in each post. The most efficient posting time would be after 6 PM, where
90.2% of users are online. Plus, night time is the time for relaxing and update every news on
that day so users are more free to engage in a conversation on social media. Therefore, users
are more likely to engage in a content that is posted in this time period.
 41

Figure 26: Social media activities

Next, is learning about users activities on social media. Figure 27 shows the activities that
social media users carry out over the past 30 days. A significant number of users like/follow a
brand (56.9%) and like/follow an influencer/celebrity (61.8%) in their monthly activities. This
information is valuable to the brand as they know there is a great possibility to make the
potential audience to become a part of the brand’s community. Additionally, the concern of
users about celebrities and influencers social life prove that sponsorship with popular
celebrities/influencers (KOLs) could increase the brand awareness of the company
significantly.Target audiences in Vietnam market care about the life of KOLs greatly and
there are a majority of people start using things that these KOLs use. Hence, investing in
those KOLs could enhance the brand’s popularity and image in the public eyes. Another
noticeable activity is users like to use hashtags on social media (45.1%) and participate in
minigame/contest (19.6%). Due to that, creating a unique hashtag combine with a
minigame/contest to initiate a trend that users can follow (28.4%) might be an excellent way
to make the brand become memorable to the potential audience. Other than branding
related activities, there are a surprising number of users use social media to directly interact
with the brand like requesting customer service (19.6%), purchase a product (24.5%) and
leave feedback/review (16.7%). This information proves social media not only affect on
branding aspect but also on other aspects of the company.

Table 1: Content preference

 42

Last and most importantly, social media users content preference. The respondent was asked
in a matrix question form to rate different types of content on a Likert scale with 1 - being
least interested and 5 - being most interested. The question was given to collect insight into
the target audience preferred content. Table 1 represents the type of content is most
preferred by users when they are on social media. From a glance, it is clear that
entertainment (4.02), lifestyle tips (3.77), discount/sale (3.56) info and how-to-use (3.3) are
the most interesting content from the user’s point of view. Users do not like advertisement
content when they are on social media due to its interruption characteristic which explain the
low score of 1.9. Content that follows trends and seasonal/holiday is only slightly interested
from the public eyes which mean they like to see it but it can be overwhelming sometimes.
Data from the table support brand to choose suitable content to deliver on its social media
page. Since entertainment is the most likable content, sponsorship for TV show or concert is
also a way to imprint the brand in the consumer’s mind. It could be a combination between
the best and the worst which are entertainment and advertisement. The downside is that
brand needs to consider the amount of time the brand/product appear on each episode/show
because too much exposure can cause backlashes from the market (Inbound Marketing Agents
2015).

5.3 Branding activities on social media

In this section, the respondents were asked three different questions that tackle different
aspect of branding activities on social media. All questions are in matrix form and the
respondents were given the option to rate each reason with 1 – being the least important and
5 – being the most important reason.

The first question asked the social media users about the possible reason that affect their
decisions to follow/like a brand on social media. Five primary reasons were offered for the
respondents to rate it according to their personal preference and experience. The reason that
greatly affects social media users ‘like’ decision is because of their own interest in the brand.
This reason was rated the highest with the point of 4.27 (very important). Three reasons were
rated around 3 points – somewhat important. The three reasons are ‘to receive discount/sale
information’ (3.6), ‘to update information’ (3.3) and ‘recommendation from someone they
know’ (3.16). These data confirm the study conducted by Synscape (Scissons 2013) that the
most three popular reasons for consumers to like a brand was ‘to support the brand I like’
(49%), ‘to receive coupons/discount’ (42%), and ‘to receive updates from the brand I like’
(41%). The least primary reason from the user's point of view is a friend also like/follow the
brand (2.41). Henry (2013) mentioned people might come to be annoyed by their friend's
social media activities. Hence, the friend likes/follows page reason was picked as their least
important reason.
 43

Table 2: Branding activities on social media

The second question tackles the reasons that make a brand trustworthy from the consumer’s
point of view. Ten reasons were brought up for the respondent to rate. Between the ten
reasons, four options were rated at 4 points scale – very important. The options are to ‘take
care of customers’ (4.48), ‘listen to feedbacks’ (4.46), ‘good reviews’ (4.34), and ‘good
security’ (4.06). All of these options verify the statement from Zendesk (Hinz 2015) that the
customer factor is the key to building trust. All of the highly rated options were related to
customers and their rights. On the other hand, ‘media appearance’ and ‘active online’ are
the least crucial factor with the lowest score of 3.37 and 3.38, respectively. This means too
much exposure on media/online does not make the brand more trustworthy from the public
view. The three options ‘admit mistake’, ‘clarify product/work’ and ‘brand collaboration’ all
receive a score of 3.68. The offer gifts/discounts option was rated 3.79. These four factors
are all classified as somewhat important but not the most crucial reason to make the brand
become trustworthy.

The third question invites the respondent to rate the potential activities that can make a
brand become popular on social media. The responses are quite interesting as the
respondents rate the most important way for a brand to be popular is to establish a trend
(4.0) instead of following it (3.29). Additionally, activities that related to sponsorship and
visual investment also receive high scores, like ‘TV show sponsorship’ (3.59), ‘celeb
sponsorship’ (3.59) and ‘visual investment’ (3.57). The rating shows that the target audience
in this market preferred entertainment content that can later set a trend for everyone to
follow over actively posting tedious content (3.32), bland advertisement (3.17) or create
minigame activity (3.13).

5.4 Smartphone brand awareness on social media

Within this section, five crucial questions were ask to learn the impact of social media on
smartphone brand and the consumer’s content preference on brand pages.
 44

Figure 27: Smartphone brand recognition and social media follow rate

Figure 28 describes the answers to the first two questions which are smartphone brand
recognition and its follow rate on social media. The survey respondents were given a list of
smartphone brand and were asked to choose the brand that they are familiar with. Through
the smartphone brand recognition bar chart in Figure 28, 41.2% of the respondents only know
Samsung. The second most popular smartphone brand in Vietnam is Oppo with 38.2% of the
survey respondents know this brand. The client company ranked third in the popularity chart
with 30.4% and the last place belongs to Xiaomi (14.7%). The majority of the survey
respondents know all 4 brands and lead the chart (66.7%). Finally, there are 19.8% of people
chose that they know other brands (Sony, Nokia, Apple, HTC,…). The second question was
provided to gain data about smartphone brand social media follow rate. Among 41.2% of
people that know the brand Samsung, 33.3% of them follow Samsung on social media. Oppo
have the save follow rates as the client company which is 20.6%. Xiaomi and other options
also ranked last in this section with only 5.9%, 5% of the respondents follow this brand,
accordingly. Nevertheless, the dominant option is not to follow any brand on social media
with 58.8%.

Figure 28: Brand marketing channels

 45

Figure 29 illustrates the channels that people know the smartphone brands, the options social
media, traditional media, digital advertising, and recommendation. In this category, social
media obtain the lead as the most popular channel for brand marketing with 69.6%. This
piece of information confirms the impact of social media on brand awareness. Social media is
the key to enhance brand awareness and image for this target market. However, a channel
like traditional media and digital advertising should be unneglected since they also have a
great impact on brand awareness. There are 65.7% of the survey respondents stated they
know these brand from traditional media (TV commercial, newspaper, billboards,…). The
number is 64.7% for digital advertising (web banners), 62.7% for recommendation
(friends/influencers). There are only 8% of the respondents chose other option and said they
know the brand from previous experience or store display.

The following question was asked in a matrix question form where numerous options were
provided for the users to rate their most preferred content when following a brand’s social
media account. The purpose of these questions is to know the content type preference of
smartphone brand’s target audience so that the brand can adjust their content accordingly.
The rating is from 1-5 with one – being the least interest and five – being the most interesting
option.

Table 3: Brand page content preference

Table 3 represents the answers of the survey respondents for smartphone brand content
preference on different social media platforms. The most compelling content on Facebook
from the customer’s point of view is photos about product/feature (3.98), promotion info
(3.79), short videos about product description/feature/tutorial (3.69) and articles/reviews
(3.28). Interestingly, minigame/contest or long video (commercial, promotion, viral clip)
contents are least interested according to the target audience. This can be explained through
the fact that there are too many people in this market. Therefore, the chance for them to
win a price in a minigame/contest is relatively low. For long videos, it can be time-consuming
to watch, hence, the target audience finds its tedious and barely finish watching. For
Instagram, most preferred contents are visually attractive photos (3.88), videos (3.74) and
Insta story (3.23). Ever since Instagram launches their story feature, more and more people
prefer using it than posting on their own feed. The worst contents for Instagram users are
article/review (2.87), minigame/contest (2.67) and blogs (2.39). As a result, it is visible that
Instagram users do not like content that includes long captions, they like it to be cohesive and
 46

tend to not read the caption on photos. For Youtube users, the contents were rated as
follows, review video receives 4.02 points, how-to-use (tutorial) video have 3.8 points,
promotion video receives 3.17 and lastly product commercial video with 2.17 points. Videos
that have product reviews and feature tutorial content is popular among users. Plus, YouTube
users equally enjoy watching promotion video like small entertainment viral clips. However,
the users are unfond of things related to advertising like product video.

Table 4: Reasons for brands to be active on social media

The last question asked the respondent to vote the result of brands being active on social
media. The question was also in matrix form with the same likert scale as before. By being
active on social media platforms, brands can become more memorable (4.21), positive image
(3.88), and attractive in the consumer’s eyes. However, being active on social media does not
mean that the brand is more reliable (3.35). Additionally, many respondents consider that
being active on social media can increase positive image to the brand than negative (2.87)
which means that active on social media can bring more good than harm to the brand. Hence,
it is a good sign for brands that choose social media as the main focus marketing channel.

5.5 Client company social media appearance

Reaching toward the final section of the survey, the client’s social media appearance. Within
this section, respondents were asked about the client company brand image and appearance
on social media and share their opinions about the brand.

Figure 29: Brand recognition and follow rate

 47

Figure 30 describes data in two pie charts. The respondents was asked wheter they know the
brand and follow it on social media. Over 90% of the survey people know or heard about the
brand and very few that did not heard about the brand. Much to your surprise, this is actually
not a very good sign since the brand is actually famous for its spy chip scandal rather than a
positive image. Furthermore, the majority of people who heard about the brand do not follow
the brand on social media with the percentage of 76% which shows that they are not
interested in the brand.

Figure 30: Brand media channel exposure

Luckily, figure 31 shows that the brand investment on social media has slowly paid off. As a
result, 65.7% of respondents stated that they recognize the brand through social media. The
number seems to be significant but still, fail to significantly increase the actual engagement
rate of the brand’s social media account. However, social media marketing is a sustained
investment and an increase in brand exposure represent a promising start. In addition, digital
advertising also has a high recognition percentage with 52.9% of the total respondents
recognize the brand from this channel. Friends/Reviewers recommendation has 49% and
traditional media is 36.3%. Plus, there are few people who do not hear of the brand on any
channel (7.8%).

The three last questions will be combined into one table for easy summarization and
interpretation. The scale of the question is also from 1-5, one being strongly disagreed and
five as strongly agree. The respondents have to rate the reason why they know the brand.
Table 5 describes the result of this question. The respondents agree that the brand is famous
for its good/cheap price (3.86), various price-range products (3.51) and good smartphone
product (3.33). The downside is many people disagree that the brand is trustworthy (2.38),
have good security (2.17) and good reputation (2.54). The respondents also agree they know
the brand from too much advertising (3.39) and spy chip issue (3.41).
 48

Table 5: Client company branding and social media activity rating

For the second question, the scale was different since the rate will be from 1-4, with one
being poor and four being excellent. This question asks the brand social media followers to
rate the brand’s social media activity. All five aspect falls in the scale fair (2) to somewhat
(3). Content is the highlight of the brand social media activity (2.89), followed by advertising
(2.79), customer service (2.68), brand image enhancement (2.68). The worst activity is
conducting minigame/contest (2.53). All things considered, followers are relatively satisfied
with the content and the way the brand imprint its logo to enhance the brand image on social
media. On top of that, advertising does not seem to bother followers much. However,
customer service is the aspect that needs much more care since it is the crucial key to help
the brand acquire good reputation. With customer service option only lies in the fair zone (2
to 3), suggestions that related to customer service must be included in the marketing plan.

At the last question, the respondent was asked to rate the activities that could help the
client’s brand to increase its popularity in the future.The scale for this question will be from
1-5, one as not useful and five as most useful. It is no surprise that the most effective activity
is to focus more on customer service (4.18) and focus on customer’s opinions (4.09). The
company biggest problem lies in the customer service related activities. On top of that, due
to the brand quality product, respondents suggested the brand should embrace and exploiting
more content related to the smartphone product (4.01) such as hidden features, smart
gesture, etc. Activities like investing in advertising (3.67), create viral campaigns (3.64),
sponsorship (3.61) and creative content (3.61) could be useful but will not bring a huge
impact to enhance the brand’s image. In conclusion, pleasing the brand’s current customer
can secure the company's eventual success in this market.

6 Social media marketing plan suggestions

Based on the theoretical framework in chapter 2, the aspect analysis from chapter 3 and the
research survey result from chapter 4, the author is able to collect enough knowledge and
data to develop a proper social media marketing plan for the client company. This chapter
will cover the general suggestions that could be done by the case company to enhance their
brand awareness within this year. The social media marketing strategy as mentioned in
chapter 2.5 has 6 main steps and in this chapter, the author will explain specifically about the
things could do in each step.
 49

6.1 Goals

The first step is to set up specific goals according to the S.M.A.R.T. framework that was
mentioned in chapter 2.5 by LePage (2016). The goals must follow the characteristic of the
framework which is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. The goal that
the author suggested for the case company ensures to have every aspect of the framework,
and these goals can be optimized for future use.

In specific, the goal will be different for each social media platform and will be divided as
follow. For Facebook, the author suggested setting the goal to increase 5000 followers on the
case company Facebook page and the will be from the target market audience, excluding
foreign market followers. As for the engagement rate, the case company expected to have
the same engagement rate as their biggest competitor Samsung. In detail, the case company
goal was to increase their like and comment per organic post from 100 likes, 5 comments to
~500 likes and ~20 comments/organic post. By increasing the number of followers and organic
post engagement rate, advertising on social media will cost less but more effective in the
future. For Instagram, it is quite unrealistic to reach to gain similar followers and likes as the
competitors. Therefore, the goal for Instagram will be adjusted to accommodate with the
current situation of the case company. The case company current Instagram account has over
13 thousand followers and the goal is to increase this number to thousand. On top of that,
Instagram engagement rate is expected to reach 500 likes/organic post. The goals can be
measured by using Facebook and Instagram insight tools to track the progress of the strategy.
The goal will be to increase 400 followers and 50 more likes monthly. YouTube, on the other
hand, is not the primary platform that the case company chooses to raise brand awareness
therefore there will not be any specific goal at the time, but this could change in the future.
The main goal for YouTube is to actively share the link on Instagram and Facebook could also
help the account to get more subscribers and view. These goals can be reached since in the
past the company has already achieved significantly in establishing a solid social media
branding activities. By increasing these tactics on social media, the company will be able to
spread the brand image to more audiences and therefore enhancing the brand awareness on
social media. Lastly, timing, all of these goals must be achieved by the end of 2019. The plan
will be for 10 months and will be review carefully each month to make sure the strategy is
still succeeding and adjusted it in time. These goals have consistently achieved all the
required aspects in the S.M.A.R.T. framework, hence, it can be adjusted for the future social
marketing plan.

6.2 Target audience personas

Within the second step, the author will guide the case company to some suggestion to support
building a target audience persona. A persona should be built based on the main target
audience for each social media platform. The author suggested building four personas
 50

(male/female, different age group) representing Facebook users, one Instagram and one for
Youtube. As mentioned in chapter 2.5, building an audience persona help the brand to
understand their target audience and exploit potential detail for future usage. By having a
users persona, businesses are able to understand their customers perspective and preference.
Companies that build detail persona of their target audience tend to attract more customers
and more popular. These personas can be built based on the data collected from the research
survey.

For the sake of this social marketing strategy, the author will create one persona sample by
using the free tool Xtensio. Through the research survey, it is clear that the company should
focus to create personas to represent the target audience. The persona will represent the
case company main target audience on Facebook which is Vietnamese from the age of 20-30
years old, especially female. The following personas can also be created using this tool based
on these two examples.

Figure 32: Target audience persona 1

6.3 Research competitors

The third step is competitors research, was already done by the author in the competitors
analysis in chapter 3.3. The research result added more information regarding the popularity
of these competitors. Samsung and Oppo, ranked first and second in the brand recognition
chart, as expected. These two main competitors also have the highest follow rate on social
media. The primary reason to conduct a competitors analysis is to learn from your
competitors and optimize their paths to fit the company’s goal. By analyzing the competittors
action and campaign on social media platforms, the brand will be able to spot the effective
things that their competitors did and the things which are not so effective. And from these
learning, the social media marketing plan could be modify to fit different occasions or to
create creative campaign to compete with the brand’s rivals. The author suggested to study
 51

the pattern from their key competitor Samsung on social media account by using social
listening services to monitor competitors such tracking brand mentioned rate on social media
or customer’s thought about the competitors viral trend/campaign. A part from researching
competitor’s social media account, the brand could initiate a survey that specifically target
competitor’s followers and loyal customers in order to understand the reason for customers to
choose your competitor instead of you. Additionally, learning from your competitors viral
campaign and create a rival campaign could help initiate discussion on social media which can
result in increasing the brand popularity on these social platforms. For example in the past
there was two campaign related to selfie cameras from Samsung and Oppo. Each brand keep
releasing new teaser and statement that oppose to the other brand’s statement. Such rivalry
in the marketing world make the brand more noticeable and attract customers by creating a
mystery rival between you and your competitors. Consumers are eager to see whether their
favorite brand is winning or not. By sharing those competitve message from their favorite
brand, consumers will unintentionally promote for the competitor as well.

6.4 Social media audit

Step four in creating a social media marketing plan is to conduct your own social media audit.
This is the most important step to help brand realizing the things that they have done and its
effectiveness on building brand awareness. Evaluating the brand’s achievements could
support the brand to determined valuable strategies for future adaptation. The author has
also done the social media audit of the company briefly in the company analysis in chapter
3.1. In addition for this section, the author will give detail suggestions for each social
platforms.

The first platform is Facebook. As mentioned in the company analysis, the majority of the
brand Facebook followers are foreigners since the brand is famous amongst European
countries. However, the number of Vietnamese followers are significantly low which cause
weak brand appearance on social media and result in low brand awareness. Among 54 million
followers on Facebook, there are only 5% of the followers are Vietnamese. The brand
engagement rate on Facebook is also low compared to its competitors like Samsung or Oppo.
Additionally, according to the research survey result in chapter 4, Facebook is the platform
where the majority of the brand’s target audience use most often. Based on this result, it is
visible that the brand needs to direct all of their social media effort towards Facebook. As for
content, the brand should examine the things they accomplished in the previous year to
determine the most effective type of post and content within that month. For example, in
February 2018, the most effective content is the holiday-related content (Valentine’s Day,
Tet’s Holiday). As for the most ineffective content, the author finds out that for one month,
the brand’s contents focus too much on one feature which is the infinity screen display on
their smartphones. Introducing new features of the product are good, however, it will
 52

become annoying when that information keeps repeating itself because followers already
know this information. The company has the budget to run paid content on Facebook,
however, a meaningful content could spread further with fewer budgets. Therefore, investing
in quality content is the main focus for the brand to do on their Facebook page. In addition,
adding the brand’s logo on every piece of content could help imprint this image into the
consumer’s mind and enhance brand awareness. On top of that, since the majority of people
like to use hashtags when they post on social media, creating a unique hashtag for special
content is also an effective action to help increase the content display rate on Facebook.
Regarding the amount of post per day, the survey results show that over 84% of Facebook
users like to see at least one update per day from brands. On the other hand, there are 64%
users like to see the content more than once a day. Ellering (2016) suggested the best was to
keep it simple to one content per day. However, from the author’s previous experience with
the brand’s Facebook page, two posts per day are the best for this target market. The
optimal time to post on Facebook can be found on the Facebook Insights in the Audience tab.
The survey shows most of the social media users in Vietnam tend to use Facebook in the
afternoon and night time, over 90% users stated that they use social media only after 6 PM
since its the time when they can relax after a long day of work. The author suggested that
the brand could establish two posts per day with one release at noon and the other at night
time. Plus, the company should utilize the scheduled post feature from Facebook to prepare
the content beforehand and avoid missing contents. Customer interaction on Facebook can
also contribute to enhancing brand awareness. All of the survey respondents agree that
focusing on customer’s opinions and listen to feedback is a great way to help the brand
become more popular in the market. People who followed the brand on social media rated
the brand’s customer service activities are only fair and nowhere near the scale of excellent.
Actions should be taken to change the current situation of the brand’s customer service on
social media. According to Smith (2017), responding to customer’s demand quickly can
directly effect on gaining or losing customers. More than 56% of users will never use the
company again if the brand does not respond quickly enough. Customer service team should
be educated to handle crisis and act promptly when incidents occur. The service team needs
to know which information could be handle publicly and privately. Utilizing Messenger
Chatbot would be a great way to leverage the brand’s customer service since the tool is fast,
mobile and efficient. Chatbot also allows customers to resolve basic problems quickly without
having to wait for the real customer support team. Another plus side is the brand can reduce
labor cost by 30% by adding Chatbot to handle simple requests from customers (Smith 2017).

Instagram is the second platform should be focused on. If Facebook is where the brand
expresses their professionalism then Instagram is where the brand can show their creativity to
potential audiences. The company analysis on chapter 3.1 mentioned that the brand do not
have a significant number of followers on Instagram compared to their rival like Samsung or
 53

Oppo. This leaves the opportunity for the brand to strike through and improve in the next
years to come. The company’s Instagram account currently have over 13.6 thousand followers
and the average engagement of 100-150 likes per organic post. Samsung has over 100
thousand followers on this platform but the engagement rate is reachable with around 500
likes per organic post. The goal is to reach 20 thousand followers by the end of 2019 and have
the same reach the engagement rate as Samsung. Here are a few suggestions from the author
after conducting the survey and research. As for content, survey respondent rated that they
preferred to see photo content, especially content with quality visuals. Therefore, investing
on visual content is one of the most effective ways to gain more followers. Rearranging the
brand’s Instagram timeline is also an effective way to express the brand’s creativity in public.
This means posting three photos with the same theme, mood and tone to make the timeline
look organized and neat. Moreover, organizing a contest to encourage customers to share the
photos that they took by the company’s smartphones could also help in generating creative
content and increase the brand awareness on Instagram. There is one thing the brand must
beware which is not to write long captions. Instagram is a place to express their visual
aspects so simple would be the best for a platform like Instagram. Unique hashtags should
also be created so that the brand would have a trademark on Instagram and users can easily
follow the brand’s posts. Video type content is rising on Instagram and feature like Insta Story
and IGTV could be utilized to run video advertising. Regarding post frequency, over 60% of the
survey respondents like to see at least one content per day on Instagram. Also, for the sake of
an organized timeline, the author suggested the brand to post three photos at the same time
so that the overall visual of the timeline will be unaffected. Photo content can be divided
into small 1:1 scale photos to make the timeline synchronized. Different product line content
should be put in different Insta Story Highlight so to help customers find product information
easier. The most sufficient time to post on Instagram according to Aynsley (2018) is Monday to
Friday at 12 to 1 PM. Instagram currently do not have any built-in customer service tools,
hence there will be no suggestion for customer service actions on Instagram. The most crucial
thing to remember when generating content for Instagram is to always put the brand’s logo
on the image before release.
 54

Figure 31: Instagram content example (Samsung Vietnam Instagram account)

Lastly, the author will suggest action for YouTube activity to enhance brand awareness. Due
to its unique characteristic, YouTube is not a place for brands to interact with their
customers but in reverse. It is where consumers share their thoughts about the brand in video
form content. According to the research survey, over 50% of the respondents visit YouTube on
a regular basis and expected to see new content weekly. YouTube is a place where brands
can run video advertising effectively using YouTube masthead (Homepage ads), TrueView
video ads (Ads skippable after 5 seconds) and Bumper ads (Non skippable ads last for 6
seconds). Aside from advertising, the brand should focus on the quality of video content. The
most interesting content on YouTube is review product and product tutorial videos. Hence,
posting about product reviews could help the brand become noticeable in the eyes of tech-
savvy users. The brand currently using YouTube for advertising purpose only, and contents are
posted whenever the company launches a new product. However, the important thing to
remember that YouTube content is more about quality than quantity since video link can be
cross-promoted to many other platforms. The author suggested the brand to try producing
their own content instead of just using global ads so that the content will be more relatable
to the market. For example, the company could use their smartphone camera features to film
a short clip about Vietnamese Tet Holiday to make the channel more relatable to Vietnamese
audiences.

6.5 Social media content calendar

Stage five of the social media marketing plan is to create a social media content calendar. A
clearly mark calendar with schedule content in each day could support the brand to keep
track of their content and determine the right content for posting in a month. A social
content calendar should be prepared 1-3 months ahead together with content ideas for
special occasions in that month. By creating a social content calendar, marketers will have
the broad picture of the marketing campaign and help to keep the message consistent during
 55

the campaign. Figure 33 is an example of a social content calendar for March 2019 made by
the author by using Word and template from Calendarpedia. The social content calendar
could also be made using Excel instead of Word depends on the marketer preference.

Figure 32: Social media content calendar (March 2019 – Facebook)

The author makes a Facebook content calendar example for March 2019 to illustrate the way
of creating a social media content calendar. Additionally, the content calendar includes all
the above suggestions for Facebook including post frequency and timing. The special
occasions should be marked and create special content related to the theme. If the brand is
planning to launch a new product, teasers should be posted continuously until the launching
day. For example, if the brand wanted to announce their new product on March 29th, they
will have to start teasing 7 days before in order to initiate online discussion and attract
customer’s attention. Special events or minigame content should also be marked clearly with
different colors to distinguish them from other unimportant contents. When preparing to
launch a new product or feature it is best to keep every content in that period about the new
product and avoid posting about other product lines. This keeps the timeline in sync and
focuses audience’s attention to the new product. The content calendar could be an example
for the brand to create future content calendars based on this one. The author suggested that
there should be two distinctive content calendar for Facebook and Instagram to avoid any
mixed up.

6.6 Evaluation

Finally, the last stage of the social media marketing plan is to test the strategies and track its
progress. The strategies will run for 3 months and get testing after that period through social
media insight tools like Facebook Insight, Instagram Insight, and YouTube Insight.
Additionally, Google Analytic and Google Trend can also be used to track the brand digital
mentioned rate and image after the campaign to compare with the pre-campaign data.
 56

Tracking tactics like mentioned rate and brand’s popularity on Google Trend help the brand
to identify their position in the market after a campaign. Testing the strategies and
comparing it to similar cases in previous years help customers to identify the most effective
strategy for this particular market. Records of the evaluation should also be stored and save
for next year strategies comparison. Utilizing built-in tools like Facebook Insight and
Instagram Insight, the brand will be able to track the tactic in real-time and handle quickly
when problems arise. The social media marketing plan can change over time, however, the
basic six steps will always be included in any successful marketing plan.

7 Reliability and validity

The most significant concern for this thesis project in terms of reliability and validity was to
find reliable sources and material. Since social media and marketing are a broad subject, it
was challenging to identify reliable sources. Book sources that write about the topic of social
media marketing might be outdated since social media marketing is the topic quickly change
every day. Most of the resources in the theoretical framework were found online through
Google scholar and e-book libraries, however, it still does not ensure the validity of every
source. Another concern is about the research survey in chapter 4. It was concerned that the
survey will be unable to collect enough data to serve the thesis’s purpose. However, this
concern was avoided, and the survey had collected enough respondents to represent the
target audience in this market. The other concern is the survey is quite long to fill in every
detail, hence, it might cause some respondents to choose mindlessly and get it done. These
actions could distort the result of the survey. Nevertheless, no discrepancies were detected
in the single respondent’s responses. Additionally, the number of respondents is relatively
moderate to represent the whole population of the target market since Vietnam is a densely
populated country. Even though the number of respondents was reached, it still cannot
represent the whole country’s population but only a portion of it. However, the end results
seem to align with the theoretical framework and the research subject, therefore, it could be
perceived as a success.

8 Conclusion

The main goal of this thesis project is to enhance the brand awareness of the case company
through social media by building a social media marketing plan. The research results show
that social media has a real impact on brand awareness. Therefore, encourage the author to
learn and develop the social media marketing plan and strategies to enhance brand
awareness. Through the research result, the author was able to acknowledge the current
situation of the brand and the target audience opinions about effective branding activities on
social media. Information like active on social media will help the brand become more
attractive to the customer’s eye help the author to suggest the post frequency and the level
of activeness the brand has to be to meet the audience’s requirements. The author also
 57

learns to produce quality content that captures the audience’s attention according to the
research result. The audience preferred quality over quantity content, however, it is still
necessary to post at least one post per day on social media platforms to keep the audience
interested in the brand. These are valuable information that the author gets to learn over this
thesis project. The author realized that the impact of social media to brand awareness
nowadays is significant due to the research results above. However, depending on different
age groups, the company will have to produce suitable strategies for each age group.
Moreover, social media companies nowadays like Facebook has developed many useful tools
to support brand tracking their audience and target their content to the right target groups.
By utilizing these tools to its full potential, the company will be able to discover their
customer’s preferences and determine the appropriate strategies for eventual development.
Ultimately, customers remain the key to resolve everything and companies that provided
good customer services always better from the public point of view. Hence, the author
learned that branding activities will also need to be customer-centric. Action like a quick
response to the customer’s request with a kind attitude would go far and led to good reviews
on the company’s social media page and attract more customers to believe in the brand.
Utilizing Chatbot technology is an extraordinary way to instantly connect your brand to the
target audience and even decrease the company’s labor cost in the future. From the
theoretical framework to the research results prove social media is a crucial part to promote
the brand in the future instead of traditional media. Therefore, the author is assured that
building a specific social media marketing plan apart from the overall marketing plan (which
includes digital and traditional media) would support the company to fix their low brand
recognition issues and increase the brand awareness of the company in the Vietnam market.

9 Thesis reflection

By working on this thesis, I was able to learn more about social media marketing and how to
utilize it to increase brand awareness. Through researching and practical experience from the
internship period, I have earned much valuable knowledge about digital marketing in general
and specifically about branding and brand awareness in social media marketing. The thesis
provided me insights to enhance my professional skill for further development when I start
working in the marketing field. Exploring different aspects of marketing make me realize that
this field changes almost every day and I have to try my best to obtain new knowledge. This
study is also an exercise to test my time-management skills. I have struggled to stick to the
initial plan, however, I have conquered it in the end and finish everything on time. The
deadlines and schedules help me to become more discipline as I write better under pressures.
In addition, the research process enlightened me with so many new information and make me
realize that everyone has their own opinions which you can never guess if you do not ask
them. Designing the survey was a stressful but valuable experience for me since I was forced
to research different surveys before finishing my own. However, that effort helps me to
 58

design the perfect survey for my research and collect more than enough data for me to design
the marketing plan.

In conclusion, over the thesis writing period, I feel that my skill in writing and time
management has enhanced significantly compare to before. The thesis process was stressful
but needed in order to shape me to become a good marketer in the future.
 59

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Figures

Figure 1: Branding conceptual model (Kotler 2016) .................................................. 11

Figure 2: Digital Statistic 2018 (Hootsuite, We Are Social 2018) ................................... 15

Figure 3: The success of different post types on Facebook (Buzzsumo 2019) .................... 16

Figure 4: Social marketer's biggest goals (Sprout 2018) ............................................. 17

Figure 5: Social media content calendar example (Clayton 2017) ................................. 19

Figure 7: Company analysis mindmap (niftymillionaire 2017) ...................................... 20

Figure 8: Mobile vendor market share in Vietnam (Statcounter 2018) ............................ 21

Figure 9: Mobile vendor market share in Vietnam 2018 (Statcounter 2018) ...................... 22

Figure 10: Vietnam's population age structure (Population Pyramid 2018) ....................... 24

Figure 11: Digital landscape in Vietnam (Hootsuite 2018)........................................... 25

Figure 12: Social media use in Vietnam (Hootsuite 2018) ........................................... 26

Figure 13: Advertising media first awareness (Hootsuite 2018) .................................... 26

Figure 14: Vietnam top smartphone activities (Appota Group 2017) .............................. 27

Figure 15: Impression by device through a daily time (Appota 2017) ............................. 27

Figure 16: E-commerce spend by category (Hootsuite 2018) ....................................... 28

Figure 17: Vietnam’s e-commerce activities (Hootsuite 2018) ..................................... 28

Figure 18: Samsung social media account insights (Samsung Facebook 2018) ................... 29

Figure 19: Oppo social media account insights (Oppo Facebook 2018) ............................ 31

Figure 20: Client company SWOT analysis ............................................................. 32

Figure 21: Survey gender distribution .................................................................. 37

Figure 22: Survey age distribution ...................................................................... 37

Figure 23: Social media platform preferrence ........................................................ 38

Figure 24: Social media channels use frequency per day ............................................ 39

Figure 25: Content display frequency .................................................................. 39

Figure 26: Social media online timing .................................................................. 40

Figure 27: Social media activities ....................................................................... 41

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Figure 28: Smartphone brand recognition and social media follow rate .......................... 44

Figure 29: Brand marketing channels ................................................................... 44

Figure 30: Brand recognition and follow rate ......................................................... 46

Figure 31: Brand media channel exposure ............................................................. 47

Figure 32: Instagram content example (Samsung Vietnam Instagram account).................. 54

Figure 33: Social media content calendar (March 2019 – Facebook) ............................... 55

Tables

Table 1: Content preference ............................................................................. 41

Table 2: Branding activities on social media .......................................................... 43

Table 3: Brand page content preference............................................................... 45

Table 4: Reasons for brands to be active on social media .......................................... 46

Table 5: Client company branding and social media activity rating ............................... 48
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Appendixes

Appendix 1: Survey questions

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