How to Increase Brand Awareness
According to survey reports, 52 percent of consumers expect brands to know when the right moments are to communicate.
When more than 50 percent of the consumers expect this from the marketers, then it is the branding agency's responsibility as businesses, to accordingly design the branding strategy. Also, take it from the expert marketers, it is found that – around 85 percent of marketers say that the primary reason for creating content is to build the brand and positive perceptions of the company. The main benefit of branding tools, and the reason to employ them, is to boost profits.
Before detailing the concepts of how to increase brand awareness, let’s get into the basics first. The brand is a personality that identifies a product, service, or company, involving a term, name, sign, logo, or design. Also, a brand tends to represent the relationship between employees, customers, investors, partners, and so forth. It is not something that exists within a company or an organization. Coming to the main topic, Brand awareness is the level of consumer consciousness of a company, it helps in measuring the potential customer’s ability to not only recognize a brand image but also associate it with a certain product and service of the company. It is often seen as the first stage of the marketing funnel. By creating it, you can cast a wide net across your audience of potential buyers. From there, you can start funneling new leads towards the research and decision-making processes, and eventually the buying process.
Inbound and Outbound marketing is found to be most effective for the brand awareness spread. With intense competition in the marketplace these days, brand awareness is found to be a business’s greatest asset. When customers are encountered with different products, there are high chances that their decision would be more inclined towards choosing a product of the brand name they are familiar with than an unfamiliar one. Creating a brand awareness strategy is an important step while promoting a new product/service or reviving an older brand. The qualities are what distinguish the brand from its competition. Implementation of strategies that further increase brand awareness, can drive consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, and encourages repeat purchase.
What is the difference between brand recognition and brand awareness?
Brand recognition is all about identifying your brand products or services through their logo and any other visual or audio representation. Whereas, Branding agency is a concept that goes a step further to the point where the public can recall information, emotions, and general impressions related to your brand. It’s the level of consumer consciousness of a certain company, by pinpointing what makes your company different and using those differences to show the inherent value of your company. Implementation of strategies that further increase brand awareness, can drive consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, encourages repeat purchase, increase in market share, and lastly rise in incremental sales. In short, recognition focuses on highlighting the unique aspects of the brand in terms of voice, image, and strategy, awareness focuses on the heart and soul of your company. Both of them come together in convincing your customers in choosing you over anyone else. As we can clearly see that both these concepts go hand-in-hand, so let’s concentrate on how you can achieve them both with the help of digital marketing.
Why is brand awareness important in marketing?
As we live in an era of constant advancements in technology, the concept of brand awareness is very essential for every business. That’s because people always have some of the other devices available to them, whether it’s a tablet, mobile phone, laptop, or desktop, which means they are able to quickly communicate with others in a matter of no time. It is your responsibility as a marketer, to use it in favor of your business. Being proactive in brand building will lead to a better brand experience for both existing customers and new prospective leads into loyal brand followers. It drive consumers decisions when differentiating between the competing companies. Also, encourages repeat purchases and leads to an increase in market share and incremental sales of the business.
For instance, if you are planning to purchase a laptop and search for the available options in the marketplace, then you will be exposed to varied product options from the most known brand to a new one. This differentiation of brand perception in your mind is what distinguishes the concept of brand awareness. The more you are aware of the brand, the higher the brand has succeeded in increasing brand awareness in the entire marketplace.
You might have many questions like - how to increase brand awareness for a service. What are brand awareness campaigns? What is suitable to increase brand awareness strategy for a business?
All these queries will be answered further in the article, through a list of brand awareness campaign ideas. These ideas can be used either as an individual branding strategy or as an integrated strategy, based on the availability of resources for your organization.
First, identify the situations where there is more possibility for a customer to engage with the brand. These instances can be used as an opportunity in implementing your branding strategies. Here are some everyday common situations a person encounters with a brand, where the brand awareness strategies can be concentrated:
Window shopping in a mall
Discussion among friend groups
Actually purchasing the products
Find merchandise with the brand logo on it, worn by close community groups
Exposed to the advertisements in either television, newspaper, or online platforms
These are the most common situations where a customer engages with a brand. You need to identify these situations and create strategies that cater to the customer's requirements.
How to Increase brand awareness
Influencer Marketing
This marketing strategy has become a popular trend, and many businesses are actually adopting it as an essential component in their marketing mix. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving product placement or endorsements are done by influencers, people, and companies who have an expert level of social influence on the online user base. Rather than marketing it directly to a large group of customers, the company pays an influencer (person with a huge following on social media channels) to get out the word. Influencers are expected to promote on all their social channels with viable content. The content is either provided by the company or created by the influencer itself, it all depends on the creative freedom of the company.
The process is simpler than it sounds, finds an existing influencer in your specific industry whose activities could complement your brand’s products/service. Make use of their network in promoting your brand. With this marketing trick, you will be a star in no time. Influencers tend to maintain a quasi-personal relationship with their followers, if they recommend a product then there are higher chances for their followers to feel as if a friend is recommending it to them. Use this effective strategy in boosting your brand visibility and maintaining long-term partnerships.
For example, TIMEX is a well-known watch brand company. You never expected a traditional brand like this in the same sentence as influence marketing right. But, it is true! The company has conducted an online campaign - Take Time. They have leveraged around 22 influencers with an average of 85,000 followers each. By implementing this strategy, they had gained a huge audience reach and have successfully achieved an engagement rate of 7.5 percent in total. Timex has taught us a lesson on, doing our research well on the influencers that can help in making a better decision, even if it goes against popular opinions.
Podcasts
Podcasts are usually defined as an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download to their digital device for easy listening. According to Neilsen reports, around 69 percent of podcast listeners agree to the fact podcast ads made them aware of new products and services. Also, recent studies at Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edison Research found that podcast listeners are highly likely to take action when they hear ads during their favorite shows are running. Taking this as an opportunity, you can start your own industry podcast where you could interview the industry experts or people who will complement your business activities. It’s a smart way to build brand awareness, while also developing long-term relationships with other companies of the same field and growing your network.
Many marketing-based industries have already launched their thousands of podcasts and are competing to make a spot for themselves. If your brand comes under a niche industry, where there isn’t much podcast marketing happening then you could take this gap as an opportunity and make your brand recognized.
Use branded packaging
Have you ever wondered why big brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, etc. spend a lot of consideration into their brand packaging?
This is their way of increasing brand awareness. This strategy of brand packaging gives a unique identity to a product and differentiates it from other products in the market. Also, it makes you feel like you are receiving a special gift. It offers an additional touchpoint to the value your brand gives to each customer experience. Product experience does not start at the first trial, but rather at the unboxing stage. The way company presents their brand and the story they narrate through their design and graphics, can create an emotional bond with the customers, that may seem to last even than the product itself.
Maximize your organic social media presence
Social networks have tons of user base in one place and as a brand, it gives you the opportunity to be seen by more and more potential users. Many online marketers have said that their top priority is to build and increase brand awareness. We are living in the world of social marketing trends and every business is aware of its level of impact and influence on its customer base. It depends on the business, whether they would want to conduct their social media brand awareness campaigns through referral, influencers, or by providing quality content.
in the end, all these aspects prove that social networking is the key element in building brand awareness. Most people get to know brands, because of the mentions by a friend/celebrity on social media sites. The idea of increasing customer engagement is interesting for any business, especially when you know that there are different ways in measuring the results across all the social platforms. For example, some brands may look into tracking shares and comments on their posts as a sign of customer engagement, whereas, others might look into conversion rates. Here are some ways to increase brand awareness using social media:
Content speaks for itself. The primary purpose of it is to establish a connection between the audience and the brand. If you are ought to create quality content, then you will probably want to share it across all social media platforms. As we all know, the number of shares is based on the content provided. So, without valuable content, your brand’s social media posts will not get the attention it deserves.
Social media advertising can be a tremendous strategy. These targeted ads based on demographics, geographic, and other characteristics can aid in reaching the exact audience you need. It has been proved to be highly effective in putting your brand in front of those who you already know. These paid social ads if used wisely can be a great addition to your overall brand awareness strategy.
Share all about your CSR activities, support, and efforts across all your social media platforms. People are more inclined and tend to form a positive image of companies that give back to the community.
The majority of the time, the same user base might follow you on social media channels, and repetitive content can just bore them and create an impression that the brand is not creative enough in delivering its message. The key point to be observed here is, the base idea of the content can remain the same, but the message delivery should vary within the platforms.
Running an online contest is a great way of increasing your brand visibility. Make sure that whatever contest you plan to conduct must involve customer participation like sharing their photos or videos on your brand’s page and motivating into providing them with a reward, if their image or video gets more likes. This might increase sharing of your brand’s site links to third-party users and help in boosting brand awareness and getting more user traffic to the site.
Use hashtags in the content posted online and increase brand awareness to great extents. The hashtag is represented by a hash symbol ‘'#’ it is a type of metadata tag used on social media networks to identify messages on a specific topic. They have become the new social trend to get your post across a larger user base. The plus point is they can be used for free. This small tactic can actually put your posts in front of a number of different users and can help your brand in vastly expanding the audience reach on social media.
Any social media post, experiences comments, likes, and shares. These comments can provide a lot of insightful information for the business to grow further. All the data can help in knowing your customer’s interests, opinions, and can help in developing a strategy for the future. Always give close consideration to the feedback received on social channels. Word travels faster, so if the negative comments aren’t dealt with immediately then there are high chances of them spreading all over the web. Also, replying to positive comments will add value to customers’ experience and encourage more customer engagement
Referral Marketing
Did you know that 92 percent of the customers trust recommendations from family and friends Whereas, only 8 percent trust brands today.
Without any doubt, you need more people talking about your brand, and now it is upon you to encourage word-of-mouth recommendations by running one or more referral programs. Here, you can increase both brand awareness and your consumer base without having to invest a lot into building the strategy.
A referral program is an organized process of customers being rewarded for spreading the word out. You might be wondering, why would a customer do whole marketing on your behalf, such as getting more potential leads to your business and increasing brand awareness. Well, here is the actual trick. Customers would gladly want to spread out the word if they knew they will be receiving a reward in return, such as coupons or discounts in the form of an added perk.
The referral process consists of setting your goals straight, like being super clear about what are you expecting to get out of the program, is your goal to retain customers or build trust. Once you have decided your end goals, then list out the possible referral sources, such as past or present customers of your business. Make a plan in reaching out to them and decide on incentives you ought to provide each customer segment as the requirements of people are not always similar. Create resources, such as newsletters, Blogs, Product updates, etc., in reaching out to your customers. Once the strategy is put into action, keep track of the performance as in who is referring whom and how is the chain spreading forward. In between all of this, never forget to thank the customers for the efforts they have put in and invested their time into implementing your idea. Showing gratitude may lead to building long-term loyal customers for the brand. This whole chain process, in the end ultimately leads to increase in brand awareness for the company.
Give your brand a personality
When you are branding on social platforms, you need to make sure that your brand should stand out from the crowd and stop being one among them. Create a personality for your brand, by developing a voice that speaks out and reflect your opinions. People are more likely to engage and connect with the brand when the tone is more casual and matches with their interests or opinions. Being yourself, is actually attractive and can gain more users excited about what the brand could offer more and what would be their next step. These opinions are actual foundation of consumers trust.
Also, you can create a personality by telling a story for your brand. Do you want your customers to remember your brand as a memorable one. Then start by telling a great story. The core drive for any business would be is the bond it creates with the customers. In order to nurture brand awareness, we need to connect with the customers, and storytelling gives that opportunity in doing so. A brand story is more than a tale, and make it look like what you tell them is, what they believe about you. Create your story with a mix of elements like facts, analysis, and feelings. Make sure to be real, and the story told should instantly click in their minds, whenever they see your brand logo, website, or products. Engaging narrative can make your company stand out from the competition. Make sure to be original and interesting in order to capture your audience’s attention, it should motivate them in voluntary brand engagement. The core drive for any business would be is the bond it creates with the customers. Make sure to be original and interesting in order to capture your audience’s attention, it should motivate them in voluntary brand engagement. Having a charismatic personality could be a plus point in gaining more followers.
For example, Nike has an active lifestyle, inspiration, exciting, cool personality. Nike, as a person would be exciting, spirited, proactive, cool, innovative, and into health and fitness. Since 1980s, they have been endorsing the very best athletes across a wide variety of sports.
How to increase brand awareness for small businesses?
Running a small business requires a lot of time and effort. Adding brand awareness campaigns, might seem to be a huge responsibility, but for the long-term benefit every small business owner needs to make this as their top priority. Previously discussed strategies like - social media, hashtags, and influencer marketing can be a good start for the brand awareness activities. Also, you can utilize help from a marketing agency in determining the right media for running brand awareness, the most beneficial tools, and the right message. Even if your business is taking baby steps in implementing brand awareness strategy, make sure to highlight your brands unique selling points on all chosen medias to create a long lasting impression for the customers. In short, using right strategies and creativity can help you in reaching your target audience with the same way as big brands do.