What is Brand Awareness?

Brand Awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of a particular product of a brand of goods or services.

Creating brand awareness is crucial not only for start-ups but also for companies with an established position on the market. After all, the competition is fierce and grabbing the attention of potential customers is vital for a business to thrive.

Therefore, organizations have various brand awareness programs included in their marketing strategies and it has many benefits.

• It encourages consumers’ decisions making process when they have to choose between two companies.
• It drives repeated purchases.
• It contributes to an increase in market share and conversions

How to Build Brand Awareness? Strategies for Brand Awareness

T.here are plenty of tactics to implement to boost brand awareness, starting with a strong social media presence and ending on cooperating with other companies.

• Using Social Media to Build Brand Awareness
• Customers’ Testimonials
• Cooperate with Social Media Influencers
• SEO Research
• Remarketing Campaigns
• Social Media Listening for Brand Awareness
• Partner with Local Businesses
• Sponsor Events for Customer Experience
• Free Samples, Sales Coupons & Promotions
• Refunds & Rebates Strategies to Guarantee Quality 

How Does Social Media Build Brand Awareness

It’s hard to imagine the world without social media. Well-optimized social media channels do wonders for brand awareness. Claiming that almost everyone is now on social media is not an exaggeration. Only Instagram has more than one billion active users, and that number is still growing. That’s a huge market you cannot miss.

On the other hand, the popularity of social media is a blessing because brands can get a message to new audiences relatively easy and at little costs. But it also means that the competition is way tougher nowadays and will get a lot tougher in the coming era as this market is growing very fast. Brands message needs to stand out from the crowd to get recognition from potential customers. To build brand awareness on social media, the top brands have to make the right approach.

One of the best things about social media is that it’s a platform that works efficiently where the message can be broadcasted to a large number of people in a very short period. All you have to do is to send the right message to the right people at the right time.

The right platform for business is the platform where its customers are present, it is as simple as that.

Usually, B2B companies are most active on Twitter. Brands that can produce attractive visual content, like Jewelry or cosmetics brands, have loyal followers on Instagram and Pinterest, and for some building, an active group on Facebook is the best option.

Once you establish the desired platform for your brand awareness, it’s now time to get right to the business. Start promoting your brand with hashtags. A branded hashtag is a hashtag that is only used to relate to your products, for example, #adidas, #justdoit, #pepsi, #gucci, etc.

There are two benefits that brands get while using branding hashtag. Firstly, they can see how their content spreads on social media. They can spot the demographic groups interested in their products, their location, time of day they’re active on the social media channels, and much more. This helps to tailor their messaging exactly to the targeted audience. That will certainly boost their brand awareness as social media users will engage with brand content.

Secondly, a branded hashtag helps to find and repost user-generated content. And UGC is a great way to build brand awareness. User-generated content serves as social proof, a way to reassure other social media users about the quality of Brand products.

• Customers’ Testimonials

Customer testimonials are a great way to build brand awareness. The perks of a customer’s testimonials on the brand website are as follows.

• It helps to establish brand credibility.
• It drives sales. There’s nothing more convincing than reading success stories from other satisfied clients.
• They are highly effective and free ads.
• They build brand awareness.

Brands can start implementing customer’s testimonials on their website. One way to do is to start creating a project which is coded with the predefined keywords that the brand likes to monitor. Their predefined keywords can be

• The name of the brand Company
• The name of the brand product
• And the Brand hashtag

The search engine will start to gather all publicly mentioned testimonials available on the internet. And that’s where the magic happens. Brands can analyze only positive testimonials with their predefined keyword and group them. And it is a great way to convince undecided customers to opt for their products. 

• Cooperate with Social Media Influencers

Influencers can help brands reach audiences they would otherwise miss. They can not only spread brand content and build brand awareness, but also legitimize their message with their authority.

The key to successful social media influencers marketing is choosing the right influencers. They have to align with the brand’s core values and have the same target audience.

So, if you already know that influencers are good for building brand awareness how do you choose the right influencer for the brand?

While choosing the right influencer for brand awareness, make sure it has;

• The influence of social media authors
• And is the most active social media authors

This way brands ensure that they have the right influencer to work with.

Also read: How to Develop an Influencer Marketing Platform

• SEO Research

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A well-optimized website will rank high on Google, so the users are more likely to click on it.

According to the Search Engine Watch, the top listing on Google’s organic search receives 33% of the traffic, the second position gets 18%, and it only degrades from there. Brands build awareness through SEO, They know what people are looking for and the tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs will help brands find the right keywords.

SEO is not only about implementing keyword research to your website or blog but also to think about the technical aspects of the website development such as the loading speed of the website. The faster the web loads, the better. It all has an impact on your position in Google or any other search engine. 

Implement Remarketing Campaigns

Remarketing campaigns are paid marketing campaigns where the Brand target audience has already visited a brand website but left before converting. This is a pro approach to build brand awareness. The idea behind this technique is that it’s easier to boost brand awareness to people who have already heard about your brand.

The main aim of a remarketing campaign for brand awareness is not only to broadcast messages to new audiences but to strengthen message among existing potential client base as well. It takes several touch points to convert a client, and a remarketing ad is a perfect one. 

• Social Media Listening for Brand Awareness

The key element of increasing brand awareness is to be aware of what potential customers expect from the brand. Building long-lasting relationships help a brand thrive in an extremely competitive world.

When it comes to social media listening for brand awareness, the key is not to monitor the results related directly to the brand but to focus on monitoring keywords related to a brand niche. It helps brands to find out the conversations in which they can easily jump into and then sway undecided customers towards their brand or even get competitors’ clients to buy their products. 

• Partner with Local Businesses

Building a global business is a brand’s dream, but they might get more conversion if they focus on the local market in the beginning.

Partnering with local businesses to build brand awareness works similarly to cooperating with influencers. Brands can expose products to new audiences which will tremendously help with building brand awareness.

A coffee house can team up with a local bakery, a fashion brand with shoemakers, and a wedding venue with a florist. There’re many options to choose from. Importantly, when it comes to enhancing brand recognition and expanding your reach, one effective strategy is delving into the world of global branding.

• Sponsor Events for Customer Experience

Sponsorships and inbound marketing go together like the horse and carriage. But there is a fine line between event sponsorship being outbound or inbound. The main difference is that outbound sponsorships usually chase attendees down to make them buy, while inbound sales aim for something more than just a simple purchase. When it comes to inbound or pull marketing, it shouldn’t just a onetime fling, but a long-lasting serious relationship. inbound sponsorship focuses on providing attendees with quality information, valuable content, and customer experience. Thus, aiming for building a long-lasting relationship.

The main goal is the same, turning the potential customers into actual customers, it’s just the approach that is different. To achieve this goal, they place a strategic banner to initiate a brand recall inception and then they think about how they would give value to the attendees.

Brands can have a representative of their brand to perform an inspiring speech to the attendees which creates an eBook or a flyer with information helpful to the attendees. Inbound sponsorship is about building the foundation of a loyal brand-customer relationship. It might not follow through right then and there, but the brand offer is valuable enough for the participant, it will eventually turn them into loyal customers.  

• Free Samples, Sales Coupons & Promotions

Discounts are everywhere and people love that. Whether it takes the form of a free sample, a coupon or a promotion, sales can be a great example of an inbound marketing strategy for a product.

The customers think about the times in which they decided to buy a monthly subscription for a certain brand, and after they check out their price lists and realizes that the yearly subscription is way cheaper, they go for a longer subscription. Now that is something that lasts longer. Aiming for long runs, instead of short ones also ensures customer retention.

Another common practice is the free samples by the brands and this practice is also called drug temptation because it works exactly like that. The brand is confident that the person who tries the product, will be willing to pay the full amount to repeat the experience. On the other hand, the customers are more than willing to try something for free, without any strings attached. So, it’s a win-win situation.

The same principle applies to free trials and demos. Everyone is familiar with the famous “first month for free” line. As harmless as it sounds, it is part of the same marketing plan. Netflix knows this sales promotion strategy very well and is embracing it with its arms open. 

• Adopt Refunds & Rebates Strategies to Guarantee Quality

Refunds and rebates are some of the classics in product promotion strategies. The concept behind them is pretty similar, however, they are different in essence and practice.

Refunds represent a way of guaranteeing customers about the quality of the product. This promotion marketing tactic works like reverse psychology. Knowing that if a customer is not satisfied with the product, customers can get their money back will make them want to try the product. Of course, brands who adopt this type of promotion strategy are mostly the ones who know, a customer won’t ask for your money back, because a customer will fall in love with their brand.

Rebates, on the other hand, are counting on a different thing that makes customers come back again. In the case of this particular marketing strategy, the partial discount also known as a rebate is offered only when the purchased quantity reaches a specific limit. The targeted public here is not potential customers, but rather existing customers, in the hopes of securing customer loyalty.

If you are looking help with your brand building activity, then connect today with Aalpha