Brand awareness is crucial for the success of any business. It connects your products and services with the customers and clients you need for your business to succeed by making. When people are more aware of your brand, they are more inclined to make purchases, which is your ultimate goal.
9 tips about increasing brand awareness
It doesn’t matter if you have a small, local business or you have a nationally acclaimed fortune 500 company, marketing the products and services that you offer is essential. There are a lot of tools in a marketing toolbox, and one of the most important is brand awareness.
What is brand awareness? Simply put, it involves the process of building a brand in order to make potential customers aware of your business. By using marketing and advertising, you can build a memorable brand that will let more people know who you are and what you do. Building awareness of your brand is essential because it not only attracts new customers to your business, but it encourages them to continue coming back. People prefer to buy from names they know and trust, and brand awareness helps you establish both.
Brand awareness has proven to be one of the most effective ways to get customers and clients to recognize and remember a brand, thus increasing conversions and return on investment (ROI).
How can you go about making people more aware of your brand? Below, you’ll find tips that will help you put your brand on the forefront of the minds of your targeted audience.
Take Advantage of Social Media
The popularity of social media offers companies an incredible marketing opportunity; namely, it can help them successfully build awareness of their brand. Every day, countless people use sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat to connect with others, including businesses. In terms of marketing, these social sites are an excellent platform for promoting a business and building a brand.
Take some time to research which social media channels your targeted audience uses the most to find out where your business is most likely to be seen. Next, create an account for your businesses on the social media site and establish yourself. Commit yourself to using social media to promote your brand; it won’t happen overnight, but if you’re committed and post great content on a regular basis, you will connect with your audience and build your brand. Post amazing status updates with captivating pictures or videos to get your products and services noticed. Offer useful insight; don’t just post advertisements, but offer valuable information that your potential customers will find useful and can relate to. Interact. When people comment on your posts, respond.
Though it will take some time, if you are committed and do it right, social media is an excellent way to build awareness for your brand.
Host an Event
No matter what type of business you are in, hosting a live event is an excellent way to grab the attention of your prospective customers. The event could be something as simple as setting up a booth at a trade show, hosting a holiday party or running a workshop that will allow you to share your professional expertise.
A live event gives you the opportunity to have valuable face time with your potential customers. It also offers them the opportunity to really experience the look, the feel and the personality of your brand. You might want to consider incorporating a theme with your event to garner more interest. For example, a 1950s sock hop or a 1980s dance party might help to get people more to come out to your event.
Launch a Public Relations Campaign
If you really want to increase awareness of your brand, you are going to want to get covered by the press. Press coverage is essentially free advertising, and it can do wonders for building awareness of your brand. It helps to build the credibility of a brand, as people are more inclined to associate businesses that are spotlighted in the media with being highly credible. The media is also more likely to convince your targeted audience to check out your business.
If you are going to launch a PR campaign, you want to make sure that you have a great angle that will get picked up by the media. Perhaps you have an intriguing personal story, or maybe you are active in a cause that your targeted audience is passionate about. Maybe you are doing great things for the community, or your business offers great products or services that can relate to an upcoming holiday. The more unique and interesting your story is, the greater the chances the media will pick it up, and the more your brand will be recognized.
Collaborate with Other Businesses
It’s said that there is power in numbers, and when it comes to building awareness for your brand, that saying is really true. If your business identifies with others that are targeting the same type of customers, but you aren’t directly competing with those businesses, there’s a real opportunity for you to join forces, which will be mutually beneficial.
Consider this example: You’re a florist and there is a bridal shop in your area. Consider joining forces with the bridal shop and offer an exclusive discount to people who shop at the bridal shop. It’s a great way to attract attention to your brand and customers for your business, and it’s an excellent way for the bridal shop to reward their clientele with no expense and no effort on their part.
Consider becoming a Sponsor
Another highly effective way to draw attention to your brand is to become a sponsor. Businesses that sponsor events garner tons of attention for their brand. It’s an excellent way to reach your targeted audience and boost awareness of your brand. Sponsoring an event will give you valuable face time with those who attend, thus making your business more known and establishing your reputation.
If you are going to sponsor an event, make sure you choose your event wisely. Avoid any event that doesn’t tie into your brand, as it could end up being a public relations disaster. For example, when Nestle’s sponsored a health conference in 2014, the event ended up being cancelled when affluent members of the National Health Service (NHS) boycotted the event because of the company’s promotion of infant formula.
Get Creative and Engage
Put on your thinking cap and come up with a super creative way to engage with your targeted audience. Hire performance artists at a street fair, or organize a flash mob in a highly public location where the audience you are trying to reach frequents. The only thing that can limit you is your imagination! Get super creative and think of ways that you can really interact with your potential customers, and in ways that they will find truly enjoyable.
Use Promotional Merchandise to Your Advantage
Another great way to build awareness for your brand is by giving out free promotional merchandise. Pens, towels, T-shirts, lanyards and other products that have your brand displayed on them cost mere pennies, but they are excellent way to get your brand out there and recognized. Branded merchandise will put your company name and your contact details at the fingertips of your customers, and the effect can be lasting.
Do be cautious with the products that you choose. You don’t want to give out products that are cheap – pens that quickly run out of ink, for example. Doing so will shorten the exposure time of your brand, and more importantly, handing out poor quality items will reflect badly on your business. Also, try to be as creative as you can when choosing the gifts that you give. Unusual items will really grab the attention of those who receive the gifts and could encourage them to share their delight with others, garnering even more attention for your brand.
Consider Using Video
Video marketing has become an incredibly popular marketing tool for businesses, and its popularity continues to grow. In fact, Facebook’s Live Video receives an estimated 8 billion views daily and YouTube receives about 5 billion views a day. With those kind of stats, the chances that your targeted audience will watch your videos online are pretty good.
If you can create engaging and attention-grabbing video content for your brand, there’s a really good chance that you will be able to successfully build awareness for your brand.
Use Content Marketing
Content marketing is another method that has been proven to successfully build the awareness of brands. It helps to build organic traffic, generates more leads, shortens the cycle of sales, and allows you to become a true leader in your industry. Regular blogging is one of the most effective content marketing tactics.
Put these strategies in place and you will build awareness for your brand in no time.