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13 Nov 2020

Everything You Should Know About Brand Awareness

Why do most people prefer buying soft drinks from brands like Coke or Pepsi, or choose fast-food restaurants like KFC or McDonald’s over others? It’s because these brands are familiar. In fact, these brands are so prominent that the word soft drinks and fast food are often synonymous with them.

That’s how brand awareness works! When a brand becomes embedded into the consumers’ lifestyles and purchase habits that the brand’s name will often be at the top of the consumers’ mind when they want to make their purchase.

With that, here we will walk you through what you should know about brand awareness which includes the following; 

  • What is brand awareness?
  • Why is brand awareness important
  • Types of brand awareness strategies 
  • How to measure brand awareness
  • Benefits of brand awareness

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recognize or identify a brand by its key product, service, character, or trademark. Establishing brand awareness is crucial in either helping your next product gets sold, reviving your older products, or overcoming competitions. 

Products or services that can successfully establish a high level of brand awareness are more likely to generate more sales as consumers confronted with too many choices will have the tendency to buy a familiar brand product than an unfamiliar one.

Thus why a brand awareness campaign’s goals should always seek to make the consumers and the general public familiar with a new or revised product and make them understand its benefits without needing much effort. 

Why is Brand Awareness important?

To put things into perspective, before making the decision to purchase your products or services, the consumer path to purchase consists of a variety of things which include, research, comparison, contemplation, and eventual decision-making. 

In this case, it’s important to remember that every customer goes through a different path to purchase. For most people, there are infinite opportunities to become distracted during a purchasing session, that’s why your business will have to provide customers with more than just a service or experience to gain a competitive advantage over your competitor. 

That’s where brand awareness comes in - it helps you set the path for a customer's purchasing journey and serves as an affirmation of your brand’s credibility that will help eliminate other distractions. Apart from that, here are a few more reasons why brand awareness is important;

Helps you draw customers - Brand awareness is the foundation that will help you attract customers and build their interest to purchase from your business. Most often, customers buying for the first time are more willing to try out products that are well-known as compared to the ones that aren’t.

Keep your brand top-of-mind - When people become familiar and comfortable with your brand they will be more likely to remember and buy from your brand when faced with a decision to buy from you or your competitor as your brand will come first in their mind when they think of a service or product that you offer.

Helps you achieve a variety of business objectives - Through brand awareness, you can expand your audience, increase traffic, build brand recognition, and even get more loyal customers that will help your business in the long run. 

It comes as no surprise that brand awareness is at the top when it comes to marketing your business. It helps in your overall marketing execution and complements your new and existing marketing efforts. 

Types of Brand Awareness Strategies

While big companies may have the resources to invest in big billboards located in the heart of the city, smaller businesses may also amplify their brand awareness efforts through these strategies. 

Referral Programs

A referral program relies heavily on the user’s efforts on sharing their experience of using your product or service to their circle. In order to encourage them to spread awareness of your product, a referral program helps you reward their efforts either in monetary form, gifts, discounts, special services, or other additional benefits. 

Guest Posting 

Another great way to get your brand known on the web is to provide interesting content that enables you to guest post on other websites. Guest posting is a powerful way to get your name known in your industry.

However, in order to truly benefit from this strategy, you will need to dedicate your effort to creating high-quality content. This way the website that you’re guest posting will see your post as valuable content and you’ll be introduced to new audiences and make a lasting impression.

Local partnerships

Another great brand building strategy is to get involved with local partnerships (this is tremendously important for local-oriented businesses, but can be applied for other businesses as well). Partner with other local businesses to hold joint events or collaborative products. Sponsor a local social cause and donate to charity events. Getting your brand plastered around festivals and events will do big things for your brand

Freebies and Giveaways

Everyone loves free stuff! Put your brand name on small merchandise and give away your items at a local festival, fairs, or events to make a lasting impression. 

Run a social media contest that will get people to share and interact more with your business page. This will get more people to know and talk about your brand as they hype up the contest to get a higher chance of winning. 

Influencer marketing

Social influences are an integral component of brand awareness as you can use it to integrate the fear of missing out among customers. To do so, you may turn to existing influencers in your industry whose business you could potentially complement, rather than compete with. Make use of the influencer’s network to promote your brand while also building up valuable partnerships. 

Though these strategies may seem small, they can be just as impactful as high-budget advertising. Building brand awareness takes time and the right strategy. So don’t worry if your first few tries don’t end up being viral or don’t receive overwhelming responses, the key is to continue to try and build your brand awareness for the long run. 

How to Measure Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness goes beyond just one single purchase. Its goal is to make your brand a familiar name and seek you to sell more than just your service or product. It aims to help you sell through brand recognition and uses social validations to re-strengthen your efforts. 

Brand awareness may seem like a broad concept with very vague metrics to measure success but at the end of the day, it all depends on the scale of your business and your business goal. For instance, big brands like Nike and Adidas may have an entirely different metric for measuring brand awareness as compared to your local chained chicken rice shop or even hardware store.

In general, measuring how well your brand awareness strategies work is important to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. These metrics can help you paint the overall picture of your brand awareness strategy.   

 

Direct traffic. The easiest way to measure your brand awareness is through direct traffic. The result of people typing in your URL or your business name and visiting your website signals that they already know your brand and products. This is an important metric, as many consumers today discover brands through social media, advertisements, or by typing in keywords related to your brand or product. When consumers go directly to your site, it means they were aware of your brand beforehand.

Site traffic numbers. This number just reflects overall site traffic, this tells you how much of the general internet population is checking out your content and spending time with your brand. It doesn’t tell how these people ended up on your website, but it does tell you that you are doing something right for them to land on your website.

Social engagement. Engagement can refer to followers, likes, retweets, comments, and more. It’s a reflection of how many people know your brand and interact with it, the more engagement you have, the more interest people show in your brand

Searching Google and setting up Google Alerts. Doing this gets you up to speed with how your brand is being talked about online. It will alert you to any news or mentions by third-party channels. As your brand grows, its internet presence will expand beyond your website, so this will help you keep an eye on that.

Running brand awareness surveys. This process involves getting feedback from your customers and audience. It can be incredibly helpful in helping you understand how many people are talking about your brand, what customers want, and what they think about it. 

These metrics will help you understand your brand awareness among your audience and the general public. It’s impossible to have a clear-cut metric, but tracking your efforts with this measure will help you understand the impact of your brand awareness efforts and let you stay connected to your audience. Regardless of how you gauge brand awareness for your company, what matters is whether your target audience knows about your brand. 

In a nutshell

While you may have heard big companies raking in millions of sales from people buying for the sake of the brand, how does it benefit your business? 

Brand awareness increases visibility and recognition. A brand that’s visible and recognizable becomes your target audience’s choice and go-to. Its familiarity is important in making it stand out in a sea of choices that consumers face every day. Having clear visibility - when your brand becomes synonymous with the service it provides, becomes an advertisement in itself, leading to more sales and customers. A recent survey found that 59% of people choose to spend their money on familiar brands.

These benefits along with a mountainous of other advantages are a testament to how brand awareness is a powerful concept that can have a major impact on your business, consumer perception, and revenue.

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