The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a quintessential piece of building your company culture. If you want your business to endure the test of time, you must create credibility by increasing customer lifetime value (CVL), while cultivating a community of loyal customers that trust your product/services.
Have you ever heard people say they only use Apple products? Instead of considering competitors, they trust the brand enough to purchase their phones, computers, tablets, and headphones from them. This is an amazing example of brand awareness, and how this can overflow into longevity for your company revenue.
In this article, we will outline the importance of brand awareness, how to establish it for your audience, and how to create campaigns that continually evolve as you grow.
The Importance of Brand Awareness For Your Business
Brand awareness refers to how familiar and recognizable your brand is to customers and prospects. When you see new ‘trending’ companies on the market, they often build a great deal of brand awareness through marketing campaigns and consistent branding. Eventually, an unrecognizable brand becomes something that’s at the forefront of your mind, as you see it popping up virtually everywhere.
So, why exactly is brand awareness important for your business? Well, it builds trust that breaks through the hesitation many buyers feel going down the sales funnel. New prospects will view your business through a lens of credibility and professionalism, shortening the time it takes them to commit to making a purchase.
Another aspect of brand awareness is that it builds associations in the minds of customers. For example, if you are a skincare line and you sell an exclusive LED light mask, brand awareness could mean customers attribute that product directly to your business—even if it can be found elsewhere.
Brand awareness helps you build a company that’s seen as high-end and worth the splurge. It is that extra push that makes customers want to be a part of your community, and boast about your products, even if they could find a cheaper alternative elsewhere.
Considering everything we’ve mentioned thus far, you can see how brand awareness can be incredibly influential to your long-term growth and ROI down the line. The key is to build a business that speaks for itself, so eventually, your brand awareness does most of the passive marketing work for you.
How to Build Brand Awareness
Create a Company Culture That Goes Beyond Self-Promotion
People are attracted to people, which means your brand mission should go beyond just selling a product or service. For example, Nike has been acclaimed as having some of the best marketing out there. If you at their content across platforms, it goes beyond just promoting shoes or fitness clothes. They have created a company culture that puts the audience first and attracts people to get involved with their inspirational messaging. Every business has the potential to dig deeper and form personal relationships with customers that bring an aspect of humanity back to the business world.
Influencers
This element is often overlooked by many businesses’ when developing a brand strategy. When people think of influencers, they immediately think of the “fitness” industry with apparel or supplements. However, there are influencers for practically every industry imaginable. There are influencer search databases out there you can utilize to find the people that align with your mission and values to represent your brand. Some of the services we’ve utilized and recommend are upfluence, grin, creator.co, and influencity.
Interact With Your Audience
According to Forbes Insight, 50% of your brand’s reputation is generated by socializing and interacting with your audience. Some of the biggest brands will publicly answer their customer’s questions, posts content on other company accounts, and get involved online. There is a misconception that a professional business needs to create a boundary between them and their audience, however, this could be weakening the quality of your brand awareness.
Tell Your Brands Story In An Authentic Way
Storytelling is a huge part of the marketing world today because it evokes emotion, relatability, and customer loyalty. The market is saturated today with a plethora of businesses, products, services, and information.
Telling your story publicly and adding an aspect of personality to your marketing campaigns can encourage customers to choose your business over competitors. When someone falls in love with your mission and story, they build a connection that often translates into a purchase.
Create Content That People Want to Share
Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the highest-converting factors of every business. People trust recommendations made by verified customers, which is why creating shareable content is so important. Focus on generating blog posts, social media posts, digital downloads, product pages, ads and videos that are easily shareable. Alongside making it simple for content to be shared, ensure that it appeals directly to your target audience. People will repost content that is valuable and speaks to their unique pain points.
Another great way to encourage content shares is to provide an incentive like a giveaway or discount. For example, “Share this post for a chance to win a $500 gift card and free spa treatments!”. We set a program up for one of our clients in the fall of 2021 that resulted in a 231% increase in followers after one giveaway. The giveaway was for a brand new iphone pro + a case + $300 for their phone bill. It was a big investment and the first time running a giveaway, they now do giveaways regularly when hitting sales milestones. The most recent giveaway was for $1,000 cash, with the cost of living increasing exponentially lately they noticed a significant increase in engagement. Giveaways can also be utilized for new product drops; it can amplify the exposure for launch day. For example, let’s say you’re a self-care company and you’re releasing a new kit of lotions. Create a kit that you’ll giveaway for free, require people to like, comment, and share the post, then set the close date to be the night before the launch.
Every Business Needs a Brand Awareness Strategy
An effective brand awareness strategy can have a significant impact on your marketing efforts, how consumers perceive you, and revenue. The results of a successful brand awareness strategy are a loyal audience, standing out among competitors, repeat buyers, and consumers willing to share your products with their friends and families.
And if you need ideas or want a brand audit, we’re here to help! We have worked with people and businesses like you across the US to develop a winning strategy and increase brand recognition!
