WHAT IS BRAND AWARENESS?

Brand awareness is how people recognize and perceive your brand. Meaning people can identify your branding and correctly associate it with the attitudes, personality, and services of your brand.

We see and experience brand awareness every day. When you ask your friend, “What’s the best place for a burger downtown?” Do they say, “I don’t know; search engine it?” No, they simply say, “Google it.” That is the power of strong brand awareness.

Brand awareness means you are at the front of consumer’s minds when they are ready to make a purchase; that is why brand awareness is often seen as the first stage of the marketing funnel. So what are the benefits of taking up space in consumer’s minds? Brand awareness fosters trust, bringing customers a step closer to customer loyalty, as well as build brand equity. Increasing brand equity, consequently, means higher perceived value, higher stock prices, and a stronger social impact.

HOW TO BUILD BRAND AWARENESS

Building brand awareness is no easy task, and it doesn’t happen overnight. First and foremost, it is fundamental to define your brand. Give your brand a unique personality and voice to help it stand out. Similarly, socialize and be personable with your brand. You can do this by utilizing storytelling in your brand.

Storytelling creates emotion and further humanizes your brand. Look at Nike’s storytelling. Their content doesn’t say, “Hey, buy our products,” but instead says, “We want to help you do the extraordinary.” Once you have established your brand persona, there are several different places to execute your brand awareness building tactics.

IN YOUR COMMUNITY

It is essential to build brand awareness in your local community or in communities you are targeting. You can implement this by having local partnerships in your community. Similarly, sponsoring or participating in local events is a great way to build favor and awareness. Look at how Red Bull uses brand partnerships. At extreme events, such as the X Games, Red Bull’s graphic is displayed. This sponsorship shows the X Games community, a target audience of Red Bull, that Red Bull is a beverage to be associated with daring deeds.

RELATIONS

As mentioned, it is paramount to be a personable brand, and building customer relations expands upon that initial building block. A relational tactic that builds brand awareness would be offering a referral program. A referral program promotes customer testimonials as well as customer loyalty. Another excellent way to build relationships is to offer Freemiums or freebies. Having some free samples, products, or product lines for consumers to try allows them to become familiar with your brand without worrying about wasting money. Free samples build trust and demonstrate your brand’s willingness to serve customers, as well as improve consumer’s awareness of your brand and its products and services.

THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA AND ONLINE  

Social media and online content maximizes your brand’s organic presence and makes sharing information on your brand easy. Having quality and regular content on social media attracts attention and builds awareness. This content can expand beyond the typical social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to media that can better establish your brand as a thought leader. LinkedIn publishing and running a podcast are great ways to expand on social media brand awareness with a professional angle. Having shareable infographics relating to your field both online and on your social media platforms is a proven method to boost awareness. Lastly, improving and monitoring your SEO keywords and metrics is always a good way to improve your visibility.

PAID ADVERTISING

The last tactic to boost your brand awareness is with paid advertising. Not only is organic content cheaper, but at times it can be simpler. However, paid advertising is a guarantee that your target audience will see your brand and message. And these tactics go hand in hand with the organic content and tactics we have already suggested. Using paid social advertising and influencer marketing is a great way to expand upon the people you would reach on your channels in addition to the organic work you are doing. Similarly, PPC advertising will have the same effect on your online presence, and your brand will not have to rely upon its organic SEO to be seen.

HOW TO MEASURE BRAND AWARENESS

While you cannot measure the effectiveness of your tactics to improve brand awareness in the traditional sense, Hubspot reports that you can gauge the effectiveness. First, you can look at your direct traffic. Direct traffic is when people specifically type in your URL to visit your website. Next, you can look at your site traffic to see how many people are checking out your brand. Lastly, you can check your social engagement. Your social engagement is how many followers, likes, comments, shares, and more your brand experiences.

By comparing these numbers to your rates before your awareness campaign, you can see how well your tactics encouraged people to visit your website.

THE BENEFITS OF BRAND AWARENESS

The results of brand awareness are priceless. By building brand awareness, you will also have built customer recognition, customer loyalty, credibility, consistency, brand equity, and trust in your brand. Similarly, the more people are aware of your brand, the easier it is to stay ahead of the competition, generate leads, promote your brand, and introduce new products.

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