What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the comfort level your brand has with the audience you want to reach. It reflects how well your targets know you and how they remember your brand.
Being a "trendy" company gives you an advantage in being recognized by consumers, which could lead to sales.
It's essential to promote your business and brand online, especially if you do not have a presence in the market.
Why is brand awareness important
Brand awareness is an abstract concept that can't be precisely quantified.
But regardless, it's crucial for retailers and brands to recognize why their customers choose them over their competitors.
You can gauge brand awareness by tapping into a strong customer base or making consistent, well-targeted adjustments to your marketing campaigns.
Brand awareness fosters trust.
Today where consumers constantly research everything before making a purchase, brand trust is everything.
Once a consumer bonds with your brand, they're more likely to make repeat purchases without much forethought.
A convenient bridge between trust and loyalty is that customers are more likely to continue to buy with little to no thought.
Deceptive marketing tactics and unethical practices can ruin a brand's image, making it difficult for consumers to trust.
The best way to establish trust in your brand name is through valuable interaction with consumers online. Dynamic, engaging campaigns will put the consumer/brand relationship on a friendlier footing.
Brand awareness creates association.
When you put a face to your brand name, consumers can trust you more.
Brand awareness practices give your brand a personality and outlet to be sincere, receive feedback, and tell a story. The relationship between humans and brands is not any less important than the one between any two humans.
When speaking in brand terms, Band-Aid should be called bandage.
When referring to a specific product and company, Google should be called a search engine. And Xerox should be called a photocopier. But there is a bit more punch to refer to the brand itself, even if we aren't using their specific product.
It's all about brand awareness. Whether it's a paper cut or a simple picnic, we subconsciously associate the majority of words with particular brands.
It's best to use language that appeals to consumers who are in your target market, rather than wasting money and time on overpriced marketing campaigns.
Brand awareness builds brand equity.
The quality of a brand's value is determined by consumers' overall experience with the brand.
Experiences and perception equal the overall value of that brand.
Brands are valued for their qualities, and those values change based on what consumers say and how they behave.
Strengthen the actual underlying value of your brand and increase its value.
Customers shop based not only on price but also on how much they think the product or service is worth.
If you can get customers thinking about your brand in an entirely new way, you will achieve a level of perception that's both measurable and sustainable.
I have complied a few positives that derive from brand equity
When you have successfully integrated into the online space, build up consumer awareness by creating a strong brand image.
When consumers have become aware of your name, they will start to recognize it and seek it out to make a purchase.
They will begin to prefer your brand over other similar brands and establish a loyalty that will spur on future purchases and inspire recommendations to friends and family.
The more consumers talk about your brand, the more successful they'll be in building their own loyalty.
How Does Digital Marketing Increase Brand Awareness?
There's no doubt that the internet has become a powerful channel for brands to connect with consumers, promote their products, and grow their business.
It would be foolish for retailers not to leverage the power of the internet.
Brands must get in front of consumers today where they spend so much time––online. Take advantage of all the digital awareness opportunities available.
How to Establish Brand Awareness
It takes time to get your brand in front of your target audience.
It also takes a lot of work to earn credibility and recognition from your customers, which will swell the likelihood that they will buy from you in the future.
Other benefits of consistent brand engagement include increased exposure, positive feedback, word-of-mouth promotion, and loyal customer relationships.
If you're hoping to establish a strong connection with your e-commerce customers, you need to understand that the best products can only do so much on their own.
A solid online marketing strategy for a small business includes social media and search advertising. Small businesses can attract targeted traffic from Facebook and Twitter by promoting special offers, sales, or coupons on the platforms.
Here are some tools to help you establish a solid brand awareness foundation and make an impact with your audience:
Be a person, not a company.
When you connect with a customer, what do you like to find out about them? Learning about their hobbies, interests, and personal stories is extremely important.
Try to look at what they talk about online, how they communicate, and what energizes them.
Great businesses are created by thinking of ways to differentiate themselves from competitors.
To leave an impact on their customers, brands must define themselves in new territory. The best brands have a unique selling proposition (USP) that they used to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
That USP doesn't define the brand, but it does influence customers' perception and drives sales.
Socialize.
Introverts and extroverts should be seen as the same. We all want to have a place in the world, to be known by others.
It's how we keep connected, learn new things, and become known in our community.
Business success isn't a singular event.
If you try to connect only with people when you're looking for a sale or support, you'll only be seen as someone with a singular purpose. Being open and approachable is what truly separates great brands from the rest.
Even in the most cutthroat online world, social media is a great way to build brand awareness.
No other marketing tactic has so much reach and direct contact with customers. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn — these are all places brands must be.
Don't be afraid to post about things that aren't related to your product or services. Enjoy and fully chat with customers, ask questions, comment on posts, retweet content, or share it.
Your brand's reputation is more than 50% based on its social media connections.
Anticipating future issues, being proactive through social media engagement can build your customer's trust and assure them that they're in good hands.
Tell a narrative.
Storytelling should be the basis of all brand communication. By giving consumers something tangible to latch onto, they'll take your message seriously.
An excellent way to do this is to use customer stories, which show how your products and services are helping consumers.
Your brand's personality is established through your messaging. When consumers see your product name, they also see an image of you.
By putting a face to your brand's name, you can receive feedback, be sincere and tell a story. The human/brand relationship is just as much about personality as it is about the product itself.
You are not limited to telling a particular narrative. The most important thing is for your narrative to be accurate and resonate with your audience.
The truth of who you are matters more than the story you choose. Authenticity is crucial, as is staring down that inner critic and putting it to rest.
Make sharing easy.
By creating shareable content, brands can attract more customers.
A critical e-commerce strategy involves providing the best content possible to entice people into their site. In the age of social media, content sharing is a fantastic way to promote your brand.
From blog posts to YouTube videos, social media posts, and product pages, you should make sure you have something on your site that's shareable.
It doesn't matter if customers see their friends using a product or service. Right now, word of mouth is the most reliable indicator on which brands to explore.
Word-of-mouth is a potent form of marketing where trust and reliability are paramount. If someone praises a business they like, they'll notice that product and possibly brand themselves.
How to Increase Brand Awareness
What about expanding your existing product and collection and building on that foundation?
What new items can you add as a brand to grow existing awareness and build on that existing foundation?
A couple of tactics to improve your brand awareness:
Offer freemium.
Every company should have a freemium model as part of its business plan.
This pricing strategy's unsung hero is that it's highly effective at enticing consumers to try out new products.
In fact, freemium is becoming more and more popular in software companies as marketers realize that offering less might actually be better for attracting users.
Create free content
Content is a keystone for brand awareness because it reaches consumers in their natural language, providing them with a pleasant experience.
Easy-to-use and easy-to-digest content is a great way to share your personality and voice with the world.
If you've created great content, don't be afraid to use it as an effective marketing tool. It just makes sense.
Did you know you can create videos to show off your products?
Maybe you've seen the big names in electronics, like Apple, using video marketing to build their brand.
While it's true that written marketing is probably the most effective and enjoyable form of content, there's plenty of room for—and benefit from—using video, infographics, podcasts, and more as well.
If you're not producing content—especially engaging, interesting, and valuable content—you're missing out.
Content is the ultimate way to engage your audience. It brings you closer to your customers, it allows you to establish an authentic connection, and it allows your brand name to spread through word of mouth.
Sponsor events.
You may not believe it, but having your brand name in place at every sporting event, festival, and convention is a good thing.
Sponsorship is the quickest and most effective way to get your brand in front of potential customers. It doesn't have to be an elaborate advertising campaign; a simple sponsorship deal with the event host will suffice.
You may not believe it, but having your brand name in place at every sporting event, festival, and convention is a good thing.
Sponsorship is the quickest and most effective way to get your brand in front of potential customers. It doesn't have to be an elaborate advertising campaign; a simple sponsorship deal with the event host will suffice.
Give your brand a personality.
Treating your brand as a person, defining your narrative, and infusing it into marketing efforts are the essential first steps to giving your brand personality. The inescapable next step would be infusing this personality into all aspects of your business.
No matter what product or service you're marketing, it can still be tailored to reflect your personal style and personality.
Exude a sense of personality in your advertisements by using photographs of people who best represent your brand.
This is a two-way street of brand awareness and marketing campaigns. It indeed doesn't have to be one, but it can be.
If you really want to get a consumer engaged and have them come back to your brand, you must keep them wanting more. The old adage 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' has become outdated.
Produce a podcast.
With more than one-third of American adults listening to podcasts regularly, the format has genuinely taken off.
Podcasts are top-rated, and they'll continue to be so for years to come. It used to be challenging to create and release a podcast, but brands now have resources such as SoundCloud and Libsyn to make it much more manageable.
Podcasts are becoming a popular way to connect with your audience. Whether you're promoting your latest product or kicking off a new campaign, podcasts give you the chance to educate, inform, entertain, or provide advice.
A great and easy way to boost brand awareness and trust is to create podcasts.
How To Build Online Brand Awareness
Today's online world is ever-growing, evolving, and changing. It's crucial to stay up-to-date on the latest trends in digital marketing. If you want your business to succeed, you must create an exceptional online presence and know how to grow it.
Guest blog for other sites
It's essential for a brand to run their own blog; it would really help grow their audience, but these assets do have a shelf life of growth because of the amount of time it can take.
This is where guest blogging comes in. It is the process of writing and pitching blog posts for another publication.
Create shareable infographics
Everyone shares content. The fact is, sharing content is how you get more people to see it.
The only question is whether you're sharing with the right audience. In an era of share-picks, shares are vital for connecting with new audiences on social platforms.
Sharing content will ensure that your content gets seen by people beyond your follower base, and your audience will help build organic reach in the wake of "hard to please" algorithms.
If your blog posts aren't sharing well, then it could be time to switch up your visual format.
Infographics are an excellent choice for online sharing because they're visually engaging, easy to consume, and a lot more fun than plain ol' articles. 94% of blog posts with visuals get more engagement than regular blog posts, and they're processed 60,000 times faster than plain text by the human brain.
Improve your SEO with user-intent related keywords
Google and the search engines like it are constantly evolving. To stay on top, organizations must understand these changes and incorporate them into their SEO plans.
An essential part of SEO is to involve customers directly with your brand. They'll give you valuable feedback that can enhance your SEO efforts.
Here's how you can improve your SEO in this new era of search:
Search engines are filled with old, outdated information, so the more relevant you can make your content, the more likely someone will find it. Test out different keywords to determine which ones bring you the most traffic.
By including your keyword in each post's title, you place yourself in a much better position to rank on the first page of search results.
Note; Don't stuff your posts with keywords. Google is not a fan of over-saturation, so use common sense. Pay attention to size, length, and keyword density. Consistently adding keywords will help you get better results, but don't go overboard.
Start a Referral Program
Whether you're a household name or a small company, it's crucial to establish your reputation through word-of-mouth marketing. 49% of U.S. consumers say friends and family are their top sources of brand awareness.
The best way to do that is through customer service. Many customers will do a great deal of research before they purchase, so it's essential to make sure your online shop caters to their needs and their expectations.
Maximize your organic social media presence
Are you creating content that's worthy of follower tagging? Or, maybe even spreading the word to people they know? It all depends on what you're creating.
Content is only as good as the emotional response it's intended to trigger, but first comes the legwork involved in creating it. If you want something shared with someone else, it needs to be something they care about enough to share with their friends.
Many brands are trying to drive the awareness and purchase of a product by offering a contest. But not all contests are equal.
A highly effective social media contest is one that asks your followers to tag, share or re-post your content with the promise of winning a prize.
The key to an effective promotion is to create content that makes your brand look more interesting than the competition.
Develop a voice for your brand
Developing a brand voice is not only about copying the same vernacular as an industry leader like Nike; it's about creating a voice that you fully own.
It could be funny, emotional, intelligent, sentimental—but it has to be true to the brand and audience you serve. In today's cluttered marketplace, a brand that doesn't try to stand out from the pack will have no room to grow.
Start a podcast
Podcasting is incredibly powerful. It's a great way to reach your target consumers and encourage them to engage with you and your brand.
Through listening, viewers can connect with your product or service directly. It helps break through the clutter of other brands in your industry and keeps them curious about what you have to say.
Take part in brand partnerships.
Which areas of your business may you be an expert in?
Consider who the experts are and how they can help spread your gospel of marketing gospel. Then create a piece of content that showcases your expertise and value to consumers.
This can be something as simple as a listicle or a catchy headline.
Give something away for free.
Asking people to cough up cash isn't the way to do it. Instead, offering a freebie is the best way to build awareness and increase sales.
The key here is for it to be an extremely limited-time offer so that you keep your name in their heads. Coupled with a well-planned social media campaign, this can be an easy way to amplify your sales.
How to Measure Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is vital for any of us out there who want to be known by others.
While traditional brand awareness metrics can't be measured, you can still gauge in-store purchases, branding online, social media, and other platform activities that will help you see where your brand stands in terms of being known and how well you're driving consumer awareness.
Here are the best way available to measure your brand awareness.
Quantitative Brand Awareness Measures
Your direct traffic number will tell you how many consumers are now discovering your brand or product via online searches or social media recommendations.
This is an important metric, as many consumers today discover brands through social media, advertisements, and by typing in keywords relating to your brand or product.
They don't fully tell you the source of your traffic, but that doesn't matter because internet users are aware of your brand enough to make an informed decision to visit.
This metric can give you a quick idea of how well you're engaging with customers. Using tools like Sparktoro can provide instant feedback on this engagement factor in real-time.
Qualitative Brand Awareness Measures
Real-time customer engagement is essential for brands seeking to increase awareness.
Even if your brand has already established a strong online presence and distribution channels, these tactics can still help you identify who and how many people are aware of your brand.
- Monitoring social media will give you a glimpse into what is going on in others' minds about you or about your business. More importantly, it will allow you to create and share valuable content to capture attention and re-engage with customers.
- This is an essential tool for any retailer, but social listening tools give you a glimpse into the online discussion around your brand. The more you can see, the better you can understand what's going on before it's too late.
- Conducting online surveys is a great way to gain information about your customers, what they know of your brand, and what they think of it.
An excellent survey tool is SurveyMonkey or TypeForm that you can create and share with your audience.
It's also a great place to release surveys like the ones we mentioned above.
Batter UPP!!
So what do you think?
Are you ready to start working on your brand awareness?
Do you now have a little insight into what brand awareness is and how important it can be when you are establishing or growing your brand?
If, after reading all this information and digesting it, you still feel as though you may need some help correctly promoting your brand and reaching your audience. Here at GINI, we offer a free consultation to discuss your goals and the overall vision you have for your brand.
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