Your approach to brand awareness can make or break your company’s campaign. As the first marketing funnel stage, brand awareness forms the foundation for your customer’s journey and campaign performance. Moreover, it is important to understand how to increase brand awareness through various channels. This article will explain brand awareness strategy and how to increase them for small business.
Key Point
- Increasing your brand awareness requires that you create a consistent and recognizable brand image across all platforms, including colours, fonts, and logos, to ensure a strong brand identity
- Use social listening tools to monitor customer feedback and actively participate in relevant conversations to build relationships and enhance your brand’s reputation.
- Develop and share engaging, shareable content across social media platforms to increase visibility and attract new customers while maintaining a strategic presence on the right platforms.
- Conduct thorough keyword research and optimize your website content to improve search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.
- Develop a compelling USP that differentiates your brand from competitors and resonates with your target audience. If possible, support it with a memorable slogan.
How to Increase Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a marketing term that explains how well people know a product by its name. Ideally, it’s not just about recognizing the brand; it’s also about having a positive impression of it compared to other options on the market. Research shows that consumers are drawn more to well-known brands, improving their ability to recognize and recall them. Entrepreneurs can enhance their brand visibility by producing insightful content, participating in community service, and fostering a strong network.
High brand awareness most times leads to more sales. Have you noticed that people are more likely to pick a familiar brand over an unfamiliar one when they have options? You should start by linking your product or service to a clear and compelling value to build brand awareness. Take Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” campaign, for example. It effectively drew in its audience by showcasing expanded service coverage and led to a 10% increase in customers, reaching 32.5 million in the first year. Also, you should focus on creating a solid online presence, using attractive designs, and engaging actively with your audience through social media, email, and other platforms.
Personal Experiences Story
A few years ago, I worked for a local bakery that introduced a new line of handmade bread products. Even though the bakery is known for its solid quality, this latest bread was not getting enough customer attention. I suggested to my boss that we try a storytelling strategy to significantly impact people and attract them. We started by composing an engaging media post and email newsletter emphasizing what made the bread special. We also updated their website image with colorful pictures and prominently displayed positive customer comments.
The bakery owner also played an important role by sharing behind-the-scenes snippets of the bread-making process. This helped to forge a deeper connection with their customers. After a month, the bakery started getting much traffic and a significant boost in sales. This experience shows how powerful a compelling story and staying active online can be in building brand awareness.
Read Also: Building a Powerful Brand Platform: A Step-by-Step Guide
Brand Awareness Strategy
A brand awareness strategy aims to assist in building awareness and brand recognition so that your potential customers can think of your brand whenever they want to make a purchase.
I remember being in a restaurant and hearing a familiar jingle on the radio, immediately bringing my favorite brand to mind. Also, I recall following a small tech company that stood out, but not by chance. It went through clever branding that helped it sell its products and create memorable experiences, making it the top choice for tech enthusiasts. All of these explain the power of a strong brand presence. Furthermore, I will describe some strategies to help you build strong brand awareness from scratch.
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#1. Create a Consistent Brand Image
You need to create a clear and more recognizable brand identity to ensure that your brand sticks in the memory of your potential customers, just like my encounter in the restaurant with the radio jingle. You must ensure your target audience knows your company for who they are and what they stand for through your brand image. Using a consistent image across all channels is one of the best ways to create a strong brand image. This includes using the same colors, fonts, and logos on everything from your website to your company card. Staying consistent in these things will help you create a cohesive image that your target customers will easily recognize your customers,
#2. Get to Know Your Audience
Knowing what your target audience expects from your brand is essential for building and increasing brand awareness. Building a strong, long-lasting relationship with your customers will help your brand thrive even among solid competition.
You will need a social listening tool to listen to and monitor your clients. This tool benefits brand awareness by letting you see what people say about you in real-time. Then, use that information to fine-tune your marketing strategy to ensure your brand is seen positively.
When boosting brand awareness through media monitoring, it’s crucial to set up one project to track mentions of your brand, products, or services and another to monitor discussions related to your industry niche. This allows you to discover conversations where you can actively participate and influence undecided customers in favor of your brand or even attract your competitors‘ customers to choose your product.
#3. Establishing a Tone of Voice
Using a consistent tone of voice assists your clients in quickly recognizing your brand and distinguishing it from others in the marketplace. Consider what will connect with your customers when choosing a tone of voice. If you succeed in settling with a tone, maintain it on your website, social media, printed materials, customer service interactions, and across all channels. Additionally, I recommend that you create a strong, clear, and consistent tone of voice for your brand awareness and customer loyalty.
#4. Create a Unique Selling Proposition
This is an important strategy in brand awareness that distinguishes you from your competitors and communicates to your customers who you are, what you represent, and why they should purchase from you. Ensuring your brand delivers a message that connects with your customers is vital to crafting a compelling USP. This USP should be clear, concise, and memorable, and most essentially, it should be relevant to your audience and align with your brand messaging. Moreover, I suggest you make your USP stand out by generating a catchy slogan that connects with your audience.
#5. Do your SEO Research
SEO is about getting the right people to notice your website. When optimized, websites rank high on Google and attract more users. I learned from Search Engine Watch that the top spot on Google search results gets 33% of traffic, while the second position gets only 18%. So, when you want to build your awareness through an SEO strategy, try to figure out what people are searching for, using tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to help you find the right keywords to target.
Keyword research is the key to enhancing brand awareness and marketing efforts. By discovering what people are searching for on Google, you can ensure your brand is visible when potential customers are looking for products or services like yours.
Additionally, I recommend you choose a strategic keyword and start creating content presenting your brand to the right audience. I provided a checklist below to help users comprehensively approach SEO keyword research to ensure they cover all necessary aspects to improve their website’s search engine performance.
SEO Keyword Research Checklist
#6. Use Social Media Wisely
Social media is another effective strategy for brand awareness; it can work wonders for your brand when you use it wisely. Almost everyone uses social media to increase brand awareness. For instance, Instagram has over a billion active users, which keeps growing, so you can’t afford to ignore the audience there. Social media is an excellent strategy to gain massive popularity and gain new customers quickly at a low cost.
Additionally, social media channels are suitable mediums for sharing your content. This means that one person can share your content with her friends and family, leading you to a large audience effortlessly.
However, recognition involves intense competition. Your message must stand out from the crowd before you will be noticed by your potential and existing customers.
So, what approach do you need to increase your brand awareness on social media?
- You must choose the right social media platform to broadcast your message. Just ensure to send the right message to the right people.
- After choosing a platform, you can start promoting your branded hashtag. A branded hashtag is only used to relate to your product or company. For instance, #Adidas or #JustDoIt.
I shared a video that will assist you in understanding better the best way to use social media as a brand awareness strategy
#7. Create a Shareable Content
One of the best brand awareness strategies is to get people to talk about your brand. You do this by creating informative articles that are interesting and social media posts. Also, people are likely to share your content if it contains valuable information that can assist in solving a problem or answer a query. I suggest you include social sharing buttons on your blog to make it easy for readers to share your posts with friends.
Read Also: How to Boost Your Brand Using E-commerce Marketing Automation: Best Tools and Platforms
How to Increase Brand Awareness for Small Business
When I started my small business, I understood that brand awareness was important for my survival. My aim was not just to be recognized but to build trust for my brand. Since it was a small business, I didn’t have a big budget for a large marketing campaign, but I focused on the important details. Afterward, I learnt that by using the internet wisely, I will be able to make my brand stand out without spending much. I kept applying simple strategies, and my business gained attention and trust. If you are looking to grow your brand, the following are the tips on how to increase brand awareness for small business, they are:
#1. Use Social Media
This is one of the most powerful tools you need for brand awareness for your small business. Your business must create an account and pages on different platforms to get started. Then, ensure the content on your profile and pages is clear, straightforward, authentic, and represents your business mission. Ensure you take your time to create fresh content and select the right image for it. Afterward, engage with your customers by sharing their posts and liking their pictures on social media. Finally, your content should be engaging if you are willing to build a strong social media presence. Also, people love giveaways, hilarious videos and contests. You can try it out, too.
#2. Pay Attention to Customers
People love it when they get high-quality customer service. For instance, when a product or service has issues, it is important to respond immediately with a more friendly tone. Ensure you reply with a consistent and understandable tone. You need to reward your customers with a nice note or free product if a customer writes a nice review or consistently shares your content. Afterward, you are sure to get positive reviews. Even though it may be slow, it will improve your rating and visibility online. Additionally, the old adage that customers are always right is still true.
How Do You Fix Lack of Brand Awareness?
Invest in targeted advertising to increase visibility, and make sure they are attention-grabbing and relevant to your intended demographic. Another strategy to raise awareness is collaborating with social influencers to promote your product or service. These influencers have a significant following, and people trust them.
What Are the Four 4 Levels of Brand Awareness?
A brand awareness pyramid can visually represent four levels of brand awareness. According to David Aaker’s brand loyalty pyramid, there are four levels of brand awareness: zero awareness, recognition, brand recall, and top of the buyer’s mind.
How Can Small Businesses Increase Brand Awareness?
- Use social media. Social media is one of the most effective tools for brand building.
- Pay attention to the customers.
- Promotional products help you get noticed.
- Local markets are important.
- Influencers are powerful…
- Include Your Logo on Packaging…
- SEO is essential.
Why Do We Need to Increase Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness helps your business become at the forefront of potential customers’ minds when they explore purchasing decisions. After all, having a strong brand is crucial, but customers must be aware of it for your business to develop.
References
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