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Email marketing is one of the oldest and best tricks in the communication playbook, and newsletters are an excellent tool for brand awareness, audience engagement, and lead nurturing. But newsletter planning is challenging. Coming up with and delivering fresh ideas...
Aug 23, 2024
Brand awareness is the extent to which your target audience recognises your brand. It can be understood as people’s familiarity with your brand, including its name, design, benefits, and distinct features.
Let’s say you want to find something on the Internet. The first website you will visit is Google, isn’t it? Or imagine you are ordering a drink at a fast-food restaurant. Do you ever ask for a cold drink or simply a Coke? That’s brand awareness.
Brands like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Google have become so well-known that they have most likely replaced the generic terms for similar products in our language.
But do you think all this is accidental? Well, no!
It is the outcome of their well-thought-out and strategic branding campaigns.
No matter how unique your product is, you need to implement a robust brand awareness strategy to bring it into the limelight. This guide will help you understand brand awareness and discuss actionable steps to create a powerful brand awareness strategy. Let’s get started.
Contents
At its very core, brand awareness is all about trust.
People who are familiar with your company are more likely to trust it. And when they trust your company, they are more likely to become loyal customers.
Here are some of the specific points that demonstrate the importance of brand awareness:
If people are familiar with your brand, your marketing efforts across various channels become more effective. For instance, if your brand is well-known, people are more likely to engage with your brand’s posts on social media, share your products with others, and click on your search engine results page.
Brand awareness plays a pivotal role in attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Recurrent exposure to your brand and its offerings builds trust, which, in turn, fosters loyalty and reduces customer churn. This loyalty then translates into repeat purchases.
Apple, for instance, demonstrates a brilliant example of this. Over the years, the company has built a loyal customer base that eagerly anticipates the launch of every new Apple product.
Brand equity can be understood as the perceived value of your brand based on customer experiences and expectations. For instance, brands like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Porsche have high brand equity and, subsequently, high influence in the market. This influence often leads customers to choose your brand over your competitors.
Several strategies exist for building brand awareness. Here, we will discuss the most helpful strategies for expanding your brand’s recognition and visibility.
Creating a compelling narrative helps build a deep emotional connection with your audience. Share your brand’s history, the obstacles you faced, and how you developed products/services that solve real issues.
Airbnb is one of the finest examples of a brand that indulges in powerful storytelling. In their series “Host Stories,” the brand showcased some great stories about how the brand made a difference in a host’s life. The campaign helped them boost their brand awareness significantly.
Another way to build brand awareness is by boosting your presence on social media. As a brand, you must:
Brands like Shopify excel at social media marketing by offering valuable resources to help people start their own businesses. Their brilliant content on social platforms has increased their visibility and made them a favourite X account for many people.
While free publicity is always great, building brand awareness through paid advertisements is also possible. Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram allow you to run pay-per-click ads to reach your target audience and create brand familiarity. Make sure to include your brand colors, logo, and consistent brand messaging to make your ads memorable. If you haven’t already, take the time to create a logo that effectively represents your brand identity and can enhance your advertising efforts across all platforms.
Additionally, exploring diverse ad formats can enhance your brand’s visibility. For instance, video ads are highly engaging and can dynamically convey your brand’s story. Sponsored content on platforms like LinkedIn can position your brand as a thought leader in your industry. Another practical approach is using interstitial ads. These full-screen ads appear at natural transition points in apps or websites, capturing user attention and delivering impactful brand messages. When designed effectively, they can significantly boost brand recall and recognition.
A great example is Nike’s advertising strategy. Nike uses a combination of pay-per-click ads on social media, engaging video ads that highlight its latest products, and strategically placed interstitial ads within fitness apps. This multifaceted approach ensures that Nike’s brand message reaches a broad audience and reinforces its brand identity across various platforms.
Below, you can see examples of two such ad campaigns by Nike- PPC ads on Facebook and an interstitial ad to promote its products and build a strong brand recall.
Employee advocacy is when employees share your brand’s content on their personal social media networks. By encouraging employees to discuss your company and their own experiences with your brand, you can grow an army of ambassadors and significantly boost brand awareness.
Reebok showcases a great example of this by training its employees to be brand advocates. Below is an image that shows how most of the company’s employees distribute their own content wearing Reebok’s apparel, thereby boosting brand awareness in a subtle yet fun way.
Creating high-quality, informative, and valuable content can establish your brand as an authority and boost your online visibility. Make sure to optimise your content for search engines by utilising relevant keywords, meta tags and descriptions. Also, broaden your content strategy by incorporating various formats, such as starting a podcast, crafting blog posts, developing infographics, or creating video tutorials. This diversification can expand your reach and appeal to different segments of your audience.
Starbucks does a great job of offering superior-quality images and graphics to users. These images help with on-page SEO, as Google rewards websites with well-integrated images.
Engage in influencer-marketing by collaborating with influencers who share your target audience and whose values and opinions align with your brand. Their endorsement can increase your brand awareness and visibility online.
Dove, for instance, has partnered with several micro-influencers to boost awareness. Their campaigns, including #PassTheCrown, OneRealPressure, and #DetoxYourFeed, helped them succeed on social channels, earning over 1 billion impressions and 20% high engagement.
A well-thought-out brand awareness strategy can create strong brand recall and position you as a leader in your industry. Here, we will take you through a step-by-step approach to creating a powerful brand awareness strategy.
Determining your current brand awareness levels is the first step to building a robust strategy. Doing so will provide you with specific benchmark metrics that you can use to evaluate your awareness campaign later.
Begin by conducting surveys among focus groups to find out if they can recognise your brand from a list of brand names. Alternatively, you can email market research surveys to your customers, asking them, “how did you hear about us?” This will give you the first glimpse of your brand awareness.
Additionally, follow your brand mentions on social media platforms. There are plenty of social media listening tools that can help you find out your brand’s reach and gather insights on how many people are talking about your brand.
Lastly, measure your reputation via your website. You can use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track direct traffic, i.e., people directly accessing your website without going through a search engine. This can be a great indicator of your brand awareness.
Conducting brand awareness surveys will also give you vital insights into your target audience. You can then go further, delving into their real needs, preferences, and pain points.
This information is crucial to providing your audience with what they are looking for. When you do that, your audience will automatically trust you more and perceive your brand as an expert in the industry.
There are plenty of consumer insight tools, such as Google Trends, that can help you gather valuable audience insights and build more reliable profiles for your target market.
For those who run a smaller business, such as restaurant or salon owners, take your research offline and talk directly with your customers to see what their interests, pain points, and needs are.
With so many brands out there, you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. The best way to do that is by creating a memorable tone and voice for your brand.
A clear voice with consistent messaging across all channels will offer a satisfactory customer experience. The right tone will also enable your brand to deliver more expressive messages while staying on-brand.
Let’s take Nike’s example to showcase the importance of having a distinguishable voice to boost awareness. The company keeps its messaging consistent and focuses on delivering motivational and determined messages that have helped the brand create a unique voice.
Your brand’s logo is the key to building your brand recognition. Focus on creating a visually striking and memorable logo that reflects your brand’s values and personality. Develop a consistent visual identity that aligns with your brand’s identity, including imagery and typography.
Also, don’t fret if you feel like revamping your logo at any point. Throughout the years, several brands have rebranded their logos while maintaining brand recognition. Microsoft Windows is a great example of this.
Apart from your logo, create a helpful tagline to accompany it. Make sure your tagline is short, easily memorised, and highlights your brand’s purpose. Here are some excellent examples of memorable taglines.
Content marketing is the most critical aspect of building brand awareness, especially in today’s digital era, when consumers begin every online research.
Content marketing helps you attract new customers and nurture existing ones. It boosts your reputation and visibility online, making your brand relevant to consumers. Here are some excellent content marketing tools to get you started.
If you’re just getting started and are unsure what to write about, you can use websites like AnswerThePublic to help with content idea generation. For example, if you’re trying to attract HVAC business owners to your website, topic ideas include “HVAC tools,” “how to start an HVAC business” or “the best HVAC apps”.
Building a brand is an ongoing process. Regularly monitor your brand’s performance and adjust your strategies as required. Establish KPIs to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. For instance, analyse metrics such as brand reach, social media engagement, website engagement, website traffic and conversion rates.
Monitor customer feedback, evolving market trends, and competitor activities. Constantly refine your brand’s messaging to stay relevant and resonant with your target audience. Flexibility and adaptability are vital to maintaining a solid and enduring brand presence.
Building brand awareness is essential for brands to thrive in competitive markets. A robust branding strategy can help companies elevate their online presence, forge meaningful connections with their audience, and drive business growth. Utilising tactics such as storytelling, influencer collaborations, and employee advocacy can help companies stand out from the competition and significantly enhance their brand awareness.
Joy D’Cruz is a content marketing specialist currently working with SaSHunt. Joy has a keen interest in researching topics related to B2B and SaaS. During weekends, he enjoys spending time watching YouTube.
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