The explosion of online shopping has made e-commerce become more competitive than ever. Consumers now expect brands to be everywhere-social media, search engines, email, not just offline anymore. This article explores how and why the multi-platform brand awareness works and how to get it in your business.

What does Multi-platform Brand Awareness mean?

Multi-platform brand awareness refers to a brand’s consistent and strategic presence across various digital (and sometimes offline) platforms to increase recognition, trust, and engagement of customers.

Key platforms:

• Social Media (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Content Marketing (Blogs, Videos, Podcasts)
• Email Marketing Channel
• Paid Advertising (Google Ads, etc.)

Trending Customer Behaviors in Vietnam

With a population of about 100 millions and average age is 32, Vietnam has had a great potential to develop in e-commerce in recent years and it still continues in many next years. Vietnamese online shopping behavior is also characterized by a growing preference for social commerce platforms, an increasing in intention to purchase daily necessities online instead of visiting traditional markets or supermarkets and moreover, they have a focus on brand loyalty and price sensitivity.

Source: Vietnamese consumers spend $35M a day online shopping

“Why”: Benefits of Multi-platform Brand Awareness for E-commerce

In another article from FeedForce Vietnam, from perspective of performance marketing, we emphasized the importance of “proactively build, optimize and focus on your website” before joining others e-commerce platforms to build a sustainable brand. Website, with social platforms can be the best to begin with when you start business. A multi-platform brand awareness offers numerous benefits that drive e-commerce success, particularly in building trust and credibility, expanding reach, and fostering engagement.

Source: Unlocking Growth: Digital Strategy to Win the Market for SMEs in Vietnam

1. Enhance Trust & Credibility

Consumers today expect brands to "show up" in more than one place. When a customer researches an interested brand and finds a well-maintained website with active social media accounts, constantly posting content, it builds a multi-layered perception of credibility in their mind. It becomes harder for customer to dismiss the brand as unreliable or untrustworthy when it’s clearly visible, engaged, and providing value across platforms.

In addition, verified accounts (using check marks) and visible engagement from other users (likes, shares, comments) all contribute to a sense of legitimacy - acts as a form of social proof. When people see others interacting positively with these brands, it reinforces trust through community validation.

2. Increase Brand Visibility and Diversify Traffic Sources

Customers often interact with brands across several platforms before visiting e-commerce store or website. A consistent e-commerce branding on social media, search engines or email ensures a brand appears at various stages of their journey, driving more traffic through repeated exposure (More customer touchpoints means more recognition).

Each platform will attract a unique demographics. For example, Instagram, TikTok is more appeal to younger users, while LinkedIn targets professionals. Therefore, by being active on multiple platforms (e.g., social media, email, blogs, ads), you’ll reach varied audience segments, increasing overall traffic.

In addition, relying on only one or very few platforms risks visibility loss due to algorithm updates, unwanted incidents such as the ad account is banned or organic reach drops suddenly. A multi-platform strategy will ensure stable traffic and brand presence across multiple channels.

3. Foster Customer Engagement and Customer Loyalty

As being mentioned, since multiple-platform brand awareness increase traffic by repeatedly exposure to customers. This also reinforces recognition and builds a mental shortcut: when the customer needs a product or service in that category, your brand might come to mind first and they will actively engage in the brands’ activities when they continue to meet next times.

Therefore, a brand familiarity will boost the CTR (Click-through Rate) and traffic, especially when supported by a cross-platform presence. This means customers whenever encounter your brand multiple times (in different contexts), they’re more likely to recognize instantly, trust it enough to click and the best case is that they’ll be converted when they see a retargeting ad. Therefore, strong brand awareness fosters loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and brand advocates.

“How”: Strategies for Building Multi-platform Brand Awareness to increase E-commerce business’s performance

In the competitive world of e-commerce, establishing a strong brand presence across multiple platforms is crucial for driving visibility, trust, and sales. By strategically leveraging various digital channels, you can connect with diverse audiences, foster engagement, and build lasting customer relationships. This comprehensive guide outlines key strategies for building multi-platform brand awareness, supported by industry insights and data, to help e-commerce businesses thrive in 2025.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a foundational strategy for e-commerce, centered on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and retain target audience. The key is to tailor content to the unique characteristics of each platform. For example, short visually engaging videos are ideal for TikTok, capturing attention with quick and trend-driven content, while long-form blog posts optimized with keywords drive organic traffic through search engines like Google.

To succeed, businesses should conduct competitive research to identify high-performing topics, set short-term and long-term ranking goals, and use analytics tools to track performance and refine strategies.

2. Social Media Marketing

Next, social media marketing is a cornerstone of e-commerce brand awareness, with TikTok is the top platform for product discovery among Gen Z, as reported in a 2024 Sprout Social survey.

Source: 80+ Must-know social media marketing statistics for 2025

Each platform requires a tailored approach to maximize impact. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok thrive on visually compelling, trend-based content, such as product demos or videos, which resonate with younger audiences. LinkedIn, by contrast, is ideal for B2B e-commerce, offering opportunities for thought leadership through industry insights and company updates. Engaging directly with followers through comments, direct messages, stories, and live sessions foster a sense of community and loyalty, encouraging repeat interactions.

In addition, collaborations with influencers, both micro and macro, amplify brand visibility and credibility. For example, according to Statista survey, 79% of Vietnamese survey respondents stated that they had purchased an item because it was endorsed by an influencer

Source: Share of people who purchased a product due to influencer endorsement Vietnam 2023

3. Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is also a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses to rapidly expand their traffic and drive conversions in a competitive market. Paid Ads campaigns on platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok allow businesses to place product ads at the top of search results or within social feeds, targeting specific demographics, interests, and behaviors.

In cases, paid search advertising has a more positive effect on sales compared to offline advertising, attributed to its proximity to purchase decisions and enhanced targeting capabilities

Source: The impact of online display advertising and paid search advertising relative to offline advertising on firm performance and firm value - Abstract

Data-driven insights from paid advertising tools like Google Ads, Meta Business or TikTok allow you for continuous optimization of ad campaigns, ensuring that marketing budgets are allocated efficiently. So considering on this section, the brand should focus on creating compelling ad creatives, including strong calls-to-action and optimized landing pages, to maximize return on investment.

It’s also true that the fees of platforms for paid advertising is gradually increase annually. Therefore, for new business, not to fail in the social media advertising, you should notice on these factors: inefficient campaign structure, excessive ad duplication, not having performance dashboards in place and no pricing strategy. For more information, you can follow our article about Social Advertising in Vietnam.

Source: Why New Businesses Usually Fail with Social Advertising in Vietnam

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing also remains one of the most cost-effective channels for e-commerce, offering a direct and personalized way to connect with customers meanwhile also returning a measurable performance and real returns. For every €1 spent on email marketing, the average return is €42. This has made email marketing consistently outperforms paid ads, social media, and even SEO in terms of ROI.

Source: Why Email Marketing Still Works: B2B & E-Commerce Strategies That Convert

Effective strategies involve a mix of promotional emails (announcing deals or new products), transactional emails (such as order confirmations and shipping updates), and lifecycle emails (designed to nurture long-term customer relationships). Moreover, automation tools streamline this process, enabling timely delivery of emails like abandoned cart reminders or post-purchase follow-ups, which enhance customer experience without requiring manual effort from customer service activities.

5. SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for driving organic traffic to e-commerce websites, ensuring they rank higher in search engine results. This involves optimizing product and category pages with relevant keywords, focusing on both informational, such as “how to choose a washing machine”, and commercial, “buy washing machine online” search terms. Targeting long-tail keywords, which are less competitive and more specific, can attract users with high purchase intent.

In addition, the appearance of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, has changed the searching behavior of customers rapidly. Even Google, who dominates the the search queries, but AI- driven tools are already handling an estimated over 4% of searches, and obviously that it still increases in the future. This has raised discussions of GEO (Generative Engines Optimization) for AI-driven search engines and large language models.

Source: Hành vi tìm kiếm thay đang thay đổi mạnh mẽ - SEO truyền thống liệu có còn chỗ đứng?

In 29th April 2025, Open AI announced to release a shopping features within ChatGPT Search, which allow users find the right product for their query with the recommendations link directly to webpages for users to buy products.

However, despite the participating of AI in searching or content creation, we believe that SEO still remain fundamentally core role in the industry, at least when Google still dominates the searching and they also featured with AI, called featured snippets, knowledge panels or Google’s new SGE AI snapshots.

Google also had a spam update targeted things like cloaked sites, scraped or AI-scraped content (maybe for manipulating ranking in search results), which create a punch that caught many off guard. They also updated on “Google Search’s guidance about AI-generated content”, advantages for sites with strong authority in a specific niche or those that doubled down on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in their content. This is the time when you have to focus on the quality of the content, instead of quantity.

Source: Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content

6. Partnerships & Collaborations

Strategic partnerships and collaborations offer e-commerce businesses a powerful way to expand their reach and enhance credibility in a market where consumer trust is critical. These alliances can take various forms, including affiliate marketing, where partners earn commissions for promoting products, and joint ventures, where businesses co-create products or campaigns. There are high chances to tap into each other’s customer bases and share resources, creating unique value. So, by carefully selecting partners that align with brand values and goals, you can build trust and foster long-term growth.

Conclusions

Building multi-platform brand awareness is important for every business and it requires a strategic combination of content marketing, social media engagement, paid advertising, email marketing, SEO, and partnerships. Each approach leverages the unique strengths of different channels to create an impactful brand presence. By considering and knowing how to blend on those strategy, your e-commerce businesses can enhance visibility, foster trust, and drive sustainable growth in a competitive digital landscape.

Especially, as Vietnam’s e-commerce market continues to grow, with projections reaching VND 387.5 trillion by 2025 and still significantly grow by 2030, you must prioritize multi-platform brand awareness to stay competitive. This strategy not only builds trust and credibility but also expands reach, increases engagement, and drives sustainable growth.

Source: E-commerce 2025: Growth Driven by Technology

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