What Is And How To Improve Brand Awareness?

As a business, the importance of brand awareness is something you already probably know about.

Brand awareness is when people ask for a Coke at a shop and not a soft drink. Brand awareness is when people ask for a Band-Aid at a pharmacy and not a bandage.

These brands have embedded themselves in their customers’ lives in a way that they themselves have become the product. Their brand awareness is exceptional.

If you are looking to take your brand’s awareness to those heights or you need to improve brand awareness, keep reading, this article is for you.

What is and how to improve Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how well-known your brand is amongst its target audience and how well they recognize it. It’s a key indicator of how your brand is performing and how effective its marketing efforts have been. It is the first step of the marketing funnel.

The examples above of Coca-Cola and Band-Aid are of brands that have had exponential success in integrating themselves into their customers’ lives.

The goal with brand awareness is to reach as many people as possible with the aim that they keep you in mind when they are purchasing something next.

We have compiled a comprehensive guide to help you improve your brand awareness. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

1.Measure the metrics

The first step in any brand awareness campaign should be: setting up benchmarks. Even when marketing teams remember to have some sort of metrics for their marketing efforts, they forget to set an ideal to compare them to.

You may get 100 likes on a Facebook post, but is it good enough? If you had set the benchmark to get 80 likes, then that is incredible. If the aim was to get 150 likes, then you know you need to do better. The bottom line is that you need to know what you want to achieve to get there.

Brand awareness metrics help you measure your brand awareness in absolute terms. This is to say that they quantify the impact your marketing campaigns are having. Knowing how well you are performing allows you to strategize better in the long run.

There are many different ways to measure brand awareness. Some of the common ones are:

• Brand awareness surveys: let you know unprompted and prompted brand awareness you enjoy amongst your target audience.
• SEO metrics: calculate the traffic your website receives through the SEO tactics such as keyword searches.
• Brand name mentions: let you know about your brand’s impression online across various platforms.
• Content being shared: tells you how much of the content you create is being shared by your audience.
• Reach: quantifies the number of people receiving your content.

2.Partner with others

Brand awareness, by definition, incorporates as many people as possible in your brand’s marketing efforts. So, why work on it alone? Include other brands and influencers in your strategies to increase your reach.

Today influencer marketing platforms like Humanz, Grin, and Upfluence simplify the process of finding the right person for your brand. These platforms have many features and filters which let company owners connect with the person who matches all their requirements. For instance, if you have a local business that doesn’t have worldwide shipping, working with nano influencers will be a reasonable choice as they engage more audiences than macro-influencers and have more curated content. However, working with macro-influencers will not give the needed results as they have followers from all over the world and the results will not justify expectations.

This instantly increases your audience. Their audience is now yours. It gets the conversation started among people who may not know about you as of yet. Moreover, you create allies as you grow your business. It’s a win-win for you.

Now, the question is, how do you do it?

a)Other businesses

When it comes to collaborating with other businesses, you don’t have to go with your competitors. Start local and look for a complementary business to partner up with. If you are a fashion clothing brand, you can partner up with handbags or shoemaker brands. If you are in the wedding business, partner up with florists.

One way to collaborate is to create a co-branding campaign. For example, BMW and Louis Vuitton’s campaign The Art of Travel had BMW pairing one of their cars with the fashion mogul’s bags.

Starbucks and Spotify teamed up to create a first-of-its-kind music ecosystem where Starbucks employees were given Spotify premium to create playlists to be played in the cafe throughout the day.

Another way is to write guest blogs for other brands. Look for brands in your industry that allow guest blogs and apply to write for them. However, run-of-the-mill content won’t cut it here. Make sure your content is top-notch quality and unique so that it stands out.

b)Influencers

It is not a stretch to say that Influencers are a brand in themselves today. Collaborating with them gives you exposure beyond the reach of other businesses. Moreover, you create a customer in them as well. Them casually using your products or your products being in the back of their pictures and videos is simply free exposure.

3.Use social media to socialize

Almost every brand today has a social media presence. Only a few utilize it to its true potential, though. Most see it as an obligation to be fulfilled and forget about it. Or at most, they use it as a showcase about themselves, their achievements, etc. This approach is less likely to help your brand awareness.

Use social media to tell your story and have personalized interactions with your audience. Let them inside the curtain, so to speak, and let them see the real you.

a)Tell a story

It has been said time and again that with social media, you need to create a story about your brand and tell that story over and over. Crafting a narrative around your business humanizes it, gives it depth, and gives the audience something to connect with.

Have a post or timeline of your journey pinned at the top of your social pages so anyone new can see it the first thing and know you. Additionally, constantly provide a peek behind the scenes and your company culture in your posts.

b)Encourage interaction

50% of a brand’s reputation comes with a brand’s sociability.

Interact with people online, reply to comments in witty ways, ask questions to keep the conversation going. Conduct polls and contests to encourage interaction with your customers.

You should know about Brand Strategy

4.Create content worth sharing

Approximately 90% of the marketers agreed that brand awareness is their number one goal with their marketing efforts in 2021.

Content marketing happens to be a paramount aspect of a brand’s marketing efforts today. It is only natural that your content should be focused on increasing your brand awareness.

Don’t view content creation as an obligation to fill web pages and blogs.

Instead, look at it as an opportunity to make a difference. You should strive to be a thought leader in your industry. Create content from personal experiences, conduct surveys, research, and come up with unique findings.

Use every medium you can. Social platforms like Instagram and Twitter are mainstream and most brands operate there. However, TikTok recently became the most downloaded application in the world and till now, few brands have been able to make a mark there.

No medium or platform should be out of bound. You never know which of them goes on to gain popularity in the future. Having a toe dipped in all areas means you don’t have to start from scratch anywhere.

Don’t just write blogs, create infographics, video content, short videos, and podcasts. You can even collaborate with other podcasts to increase your visibility.

5.Let your customers speak for you

Who better to spread the word about your brand than the people who buy from you. Social proof is a phenomenon that states that people are more comfortable doing something once they see someone else do it.

Ask customers to leave a review or testimonial of their experience using your product. Make leaving a review easy for them. Such as, instead of directing them off-site, simply ask them to write the review as a reply to your email.

Moreover, 49% of US consumers say that their number one source of brand awareness is their friends and family.

You can leverage this by creating a referral program. Offers gifts, deals, and discounts to people who refer your brand to a friend.

6.Go offline

It may seem counterintuitive to take a step back from online marketing when it has completely taken over marketing today.

However, many brands get so caught up in it that they forget the value of going offline once in a while. On-the-ground marketing still holds immense value, perhaps more so in a way because one is bound to remember a human interaction more than an online one.

For example, Running Remote, a conference run by Time Doctor, became the world’s largest in-person conference about working with remote teams. It only started in 2018 and has grown in attendance ever since.

Conferences, meetings, and fairs are still a great way to build connections with people. Some may want to work with you, some may want to buy from you. Either way, they are a great way to build momentum around your brand in the real world.

Conclusion

No matter the medium, brand awareness continues to be an indispensable aspect of a company’s marketing efforts.

The trick is to understand your audience and take small steps forward.

Try to cover as many areas as you can and keep measuring your success to know what works and what doesn’t.

Most importantly, listen to what your customers say and work toward fulfilling their needs.