Marketing Strategy to Improve Brand Awareness: Case Study of a Cloud Service Provider in Indonesia

The World Health Organization classified Covid-19 a global pandemic, its effects have rippled across every aspect of society, including the economy. Firms are shifting their objectives and concentrating on their information technology capability to deal with the unpredictability that this pandemic has brought onto the economy. Cloud and colocation will be required to support company operations with digital infrastructure. Many of the world’s largest cloud service providers are thinking about creating cloud regions within its boundaries as a result of its tremendous development potential. Cloudgear as one of local Indonesian cloud service provider wants to take this opportunity to grow their business. Cloudgear has a comprehensive service portfolio consisting of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Professional as a Software (PaaS), professional services, and multi-cloud services. However, based on the initial interview with ten cloud engineers and specialists in different companies, most of them are not aware that Cloudgear is a local Indonesian cloud service provider. Therefore, the next challenge is how to improve brand awareness of Cloudgear by formulating the right marketing strategy. Because it will strengthen the brand and develop Cloudgear competitive advantage for the company’s future growth. This research is objected to analyse Cloudgear internal, external conditions, analyse the factors that influence the brand awareness, and propose the most suitable marketing strategy in building Cloudgear brand awareness. Brand awareness is affected by advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity. In this research, advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity are being analysed whether it has significant positive influence to cloud service providers brand awareness or not. The hypothesis are that each of these factors have positive influence to cloud service brand awareness by performing customers analysis. Questionnaire was distributed to two hundred samples. Then, the data were processed by SPSS using multiple linear regression method. Several tests were conducted consisted of validity test, reliability test, normality test, and linearity test. After the data were valid, reliable, normal, and linear, analysis continued by doing multiple linear regression. The results are there is significant effect of each advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity to brand awareness of cloud service provider. Determination test is resulted these variables have 50.1% influence. When F Test was conducted, the result was these variables if tested simultaneously or simultaneously have an effect on cloud service brand awareness. Therefore, the proposed marketing strategy for Cloudgear is related to improvement in advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity in order to increase their brand awareness as a local Indonesian cloud service provider.