In the world of 21st Century business brand awareness plays a critical role in separating you from your competition with branding opportunities such as environmental branding. Especially on the internet where all too many marketers will happily try to mimic your graphics and content to steal a piece of the pie from unsuspecting consumers who might not recognize the difference.
Being able to build strong brand awareness that consumers and new users recognize, and trust involves a multi-stage approach. This starts with asking and answering some important questions.
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness can be defined as just how familiar your target audience is with your company, designing your logo, how you use your images, and your product line. It is very valuable when marketing and promoting your company and products. It plays an absolutely critical role in helping you stand out from your competitors in the early stages of growing your business.
Brand awareness fosters trust, which is extremely important in a world where consumers are increasingly skeptical. Though once a consumer connects to your brand, they become increasingly likely to make repeat purchases to become a loyal customer. In some sectors, this can also translate into referrals that further help boost sales.
At its core, an effective brand awareness strategy creates an association. This in turn helps to build brand equity. This is a type of perception, determined by what consumer experiences. Positive experiences and perception equal positive brand equity, and the same go for negative notions.
This includes things like:
- Your brand name
- Your logo & graphics
- Your products & services
- Brand attitude
- Brand narratives
- Community outreach connection
What Are The Benefits Of Brand Awareness?
Building strong brand awareness has several benefits that go beyond simply standing out from the rest of the competition in your sector. When used strategically, it can cement your brand in the hearts and minds of new customers who convert into loyal customers. This can also do things like:
Increasing Sales
21st Century consumers are far more likely to purchase products and services from brands they’ve heard of and are familiar with. This gives an established brand an advantage when it comes to things like mass distribution based on demand, which further helps lead to increased sales.
Greater Profit Margins
Most consumers will pay a slightly higher price for a brand that they recognize, or one that has established itself as an industry leader in that sector. A growing body of research demonstrates that brand awareness even plays an important role in pricing. This allows companies with a strong, positive brand awareness to essentially charge a premium for products. It can even hold true when tangible superiority over competitors can’t be concretely demonstrated.
Increases Your Industry Influence
Well-known brands often find it easier to do things like make strategic partnerships, or lead industry trends, as other companies want to be seen as being affiliated with them. This can include cooperative advertising ventures or carrying another product line of accessories along with your own.
The Ability To Recruit The Best Talent
Being able to recruit the best talent, or even being able to steal valued employees from a competitor is more than just a feather in your cap. The strategic information and wisdom that valuable employees bring with them can boost your company to new heights. Of course, the most talented executives and potential new hires are more likely to be attracted to a company with a strong brand image and brand awareness strategy.
How Do I Build Brand Awareness?
Building brand awareness means selling the perception that you are a person with a narrative, and not just a company with a sales motive. Though this is something that doesn’t happen overnight.
Developing a strong brand awareness comes from a process of multiple simultaneous efforts that go beyond trying to attract paying customers. It comes from more than just running a few product advertisements on Facebook, or making the occasional Instagram post. You need to use a multi-faceted approach by incorporating the following tips into your broader brand awareness strategy.
Communicate To Users As A Person, Not Just A Company
You want users to feel like you are talking to them directly as part of a conservative narrative. You want to share and learn things from them like what their hobbies are, what are they passionate about, as well as the things that they like and dislike. It also helps to pay attention to how they speak, to get a more complete idea about the things that get them excited.
This will help you determine and promote your company in a way that truly connects on an individual level. It also helps to create an impact with your audience to better define yourself as being apart from the rest of the competitors in your sector.
Use Content to Socialize
Human beings are social animals who benefit from social contact and spending time with each other. It’s how we stay connected, learn new things, and grow. This also holds true for your brand.
You can help promote brand awareness, through vigorous use of social media. This includes things that might not be directly related to your product or services. Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting on posts, or retweeting or sharing content you like. Treat your social accounts as if you were a person trying to make friends, not a business trying to make money.
Research shows that over 50% of brand reputation comes from online sociability. Being social leads to greater awareness and simply being known.
Develop A Narrative
These days storytelling is king and developing your own narrative that users can connect with is an incredibly powerful marketing strategy. Best of all, the strength of this narrative approach holds true whether you are marketing products, developing awareness of services, promoting outreach, or promoting your brand.
This narrative approach gives your users something real to connect with. It also adds to the authenticity of your company, which plays a key role in transforming new customers into loyal returning customers.
At the same time, carefully crafting an authentic narrative about your brand humanizes your company and gives it depth. Though this narrative needs to be carefully woven into your marketing inherently markets your brand alongside your products or services.
The narrative you use to build brand awareness can be connected to just about any topic as long as it’s true. This might be the narrative tale about the founder, or your company developing its first product idea. Just remember that authenticity is critical for building brand awareness.
Social Media Shareability
Making sure that your narrative and all your content are easily shareable on all your social media platforms is also critical for building brand awareness. People who like your content and connect with your brand identity are very likely to share that content. This will go a long way toward attracting not only new users, but it increases the chances of them being like-minded, which increases the chances of cementing your connection.
This could come in the form of blog posts, especially sponsored content, engaging videos, social media posts, or even engaging product pages with strong testimonials. Just make sure that whatever it is that it’s easily shareable. When it comes to social media, sharing is the digital form of word-of-mouth advertising.
