Paper Title
ROLE OF DIGITAL MARKETING IN BRAND AWARENESS

Abstract
Abstract - Due to the relatively cheap cost of digital ads and the high conversion rates of performance digital marketing targeting and strategy, many brands have relied too much on only targeting the bottom of the funnel online. They continued to cut “wasted” spend that did not lead to immediate results. This caused many upper funnel and brand awareness campaigns to get decreased funding or be cut from their strategy altogether. Brands are recognizing that strong competition is driving up costs at the bottom of the funnel while awareness of them as a brand is not as strong as when they were doing wider advertising, leading to lower click-through rates on search ads and organic search listings, and fewer direct visitors to their sites. They are testing and adopting a more full-funnel advertising approach and using a substantial part of their marketing budget to grow their presence in their industry and fill the top of the funnel. The role of social media marketing activities in increasing the brand awareness and creating a positive brand image, which in turn affect consumer loyalty has been investigated in a number of studies. However, these studies either focused on the luxury fashion industry or the tourism sector. Also, only a few studies investigated the direct impact of digital marketing activities on consumer responses and how it can change user’s behaviour. Keywords: Digital Marketing, brand awareness, Consumer behaviour