How can you increase brand awareness, and why is it important? We will take a closer look at this question below, including some examples of brand awareness.
A good brand is hard to build, but once you get it right, it’s worth its weight in gold, right? Maybe, but there are some caveats to it.
Even the most brilliantly designed brand is not going to be able to generate revenue if no one knows it exists. This is where brand awareness comes into play.
What Is Brand Awareness?
According to HubSpot, brand awareness means “how familiar your audience is with the brand and how well they recognize it”. Brands with high brand awareness are usually considered ‘trendy’, ‘interesting’ or simply just ‘popular’.”
In other words, brand awareness is exactly what it sounds like. It is the degree to which people know your brand.
It is difficult to measure – unlike some of the other marketing metrics, brand awareness is not always quantitative. However, it is possible to get a general sense of it.
You can measure how your target audience reacts to certain marketing messages and see if they are staying up to date. Or you can do your own market research to find out how your brand stacks up against other competitors in the market.
But you need to know whether the people you’re trying to sell actually know who you are or not. Brand recognition is critical to the success of your marketing strategy.
Strategies For Brand Awareness
There are a number of ways to increase the number of people in your target audience that knows you well and make your business grow faster.
Brand Perception
Increasing brand awareness is more than just introducing products or services to your target audience. You also influence what they think of you, whether they already know you or not.
This could be through traditional advertising methods or applying something more advanced like branded content. It creates awareness not only of your existence but also about what you do and what your brand is about.
If your brand is not perceived favorably, an awareness campaign can be a good way to start changing that perception.
Scale Up And Expand
If your business is growing, you have come a long way with your brand locally. You may already be the leader of the pack in your area so as to speak.
When you get to that point, you may feel like expanding your small business to more locations, and perhaps try to break into some new markets. This includes finding new audiences in the area you’re already established in or trying to tap into the same target group in a new place.
Either way, it can be quite helpful down the road in creating brand awareness. This means that when you are contacting someone for the first time, they have probably already heard about you before.
It makes it a lot easier to nurture your potential customers. People prefer to buy from someone that they already know. And brand awareness means that more people know about your business.
Trust
It is quite difficult to trust someone that you don’t know. If you choose to buy from someone completely random, you have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get. But when you know someone’s reputation, it’s at least a good start.
Your brand is the delivery system for your reputation. It puts a face to your name and begins to build the relationship between business and customer. This is not only important for long-term success but is also part of what leads to that first sale.
With brand awareness, you can also get feedback from both potential and existing customers – and responding to them quickly and knowledgeably is one of the best ways to show that you’re worthy of that trust.
Equity
Your brand has limitations if no one has ever heard of you. It’s easy for Lamborghini to ask people to pay exorbitant amounts of money for their cars – their brand is such that buyers know it stands for quality.
It’s also part of the experience to pay that outrageous price. Driving a Lambo not only shows that you have sophisticated taste, but also that you have deep pockets.
However, this only works because buyers and non-buyers alike know what Lamborghini is. Without brand awareness, your brand isn’t worth as much. You won’t have the leverage to raise prices, the influence on social media, or the ability to do anything extraordinary.
The more people know about you and associate your brand with positive experiences, the more options you have at your disposal.
Association
The brand association works in two ways. Both of them show that the brand has reached a high level, but one is a little easier to achieve than the other.
The first part of the brand association is when your product or service is associated with pain or a need. The classic example of this is that no one calls a tube of lip balm anything but Lypsyl. I’m not saying you should hope for the same impact as Lypsyl, but high-level brand awareness looks like that.
The second is a bit deeper – essentially, it’s about transforming your brand into a ‘lifestyle brand’. Just like in the Lamborghini example, a lifestyle brand is a brand that people are proud to be associated with and actively seek out.
If your brand is a lifestyle brand, you’re not just a smart buying option. You’re also an opportunity for your customers to make a statement, look cool, and be part of a community.
In either case, you must first have high brand awareness before you can achieve brand association. Nobody thinks it’s amazing to buy from you until they know who you are.
The following question then becomes relevant: how do you go about brand awareness building?
Improving Brand Awareness
The short version is that you need to get your brand out there to be seen. No matter what target group you are going after, and regardless of the geographic or digital area you are trying to be seen in – your brand needs to be there for building awareness. However, there are some ways to increase brand awareness.
Content
Content is not just about creating a blog to appeal to your target audience. It includes things like articles and e-books, a podcast or webinar, a series of videos, or infographics. Hosting an event (at a physical location or virtual) can also be considered content.
Your content can be anywhere. Of course, owned media such as your website is crucial, but paid media such as advertising is also important. You can also participate as a guest on other people’s websites to make yourself more visible and get the information out there.
The important thing is to make sure that everything you do is consistent with your brand. What you create must fit within the guidelines you have established for your brand.
You must ensure that the content you create is aimed at the right audience and is in places where your audience is looking for information.
Good content in the right place helps to increase brand awareness, especially if it’s part of a larger lead generation campaign.
Rebranding
This is not always something you have to do. Your brand exists but may not have been exposed enough to the right kind of people for raising brand awareness.
When you do a brand audit, you may find that the problem isn’t actually that the people don’t see your brand, but that they simply don’t like it.
Your brand doesn’t have to look the same all the time. If the problem is that you are not seen and lack quality, rebranding is the solution. Sure, it’s a long and complicated method, and can be expensive. But it will be worth it in the long run.
By rebranding your business, you can develop more personality and really show what it’s about instead of just focusing on what you sell.
If no one is responding to your brand, you need to do something about it to get the necessary attention.
How To Increase Brand Awareness With Social Media
Your brand must be social. But what does that mean? It means that social media is incredibly important to building brand awareness.
You don’t have to get as many social media followers as Apple. It also doesn’t have to be controversial. You just need to be out there.
Interact with your customers. Let them talk when they need to and be responsive. Engage with your followers and give them an opportunity to participate. You might not go viral, but people will know you’re out there.
And last but not least – you can increase your reach through strategic sponsorships. You may not be able to get your name on the shirts of a Premier League team. But if there’s an event in your industry that looks promising, it’s worth the investment to do the promotion.
In fact, it doesn’t have to be through sponsorship. A representative, whether it’s the CEO or an expert with public speaking skills, can also introduce your brand. Either way, people need to see you, and that’s what it’s all about.
Conclusion
No matter how good your brand is, it doesn’t serve you any better if no one sees it. You won’t be able to reap the benefits from all the investments you have made in your brand.
Therefore, it is important to create brand awareness by taking the necessary steps. Think about what marketing is all about – introducing your business to people and getting them to become customers. In fact, that is exactly what we have been discussing here.
And that’s why brand awareness is a prerequisite for your marketing to work. People need to be aware of your brand in order to take more steps in your marketing funnel.
So once your brand is designed exactly the way you want it, make sure you do everything you can to promote it to your target audience.