Whether you’re familiar with how to increase brand awareness or not, if you own or run a business, it is something you need to start paying more attention to.
Many marketers will tell you that building and increasing your company’s brand awareness is more important than advertising your new product or service.
Why? You might ask?
Sure, you’ve launched your shiny new phone or opened the best hostel in town. But if people don’t know who you are, what your brand stands for, or even worse, they have never even heard of you and your company, you won’t reach half your potential.
This is where brand awareness comes in handy.
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Brand Awareness Definition
Brand awareness is how people recognize, view, and remember your company, business, or product. As a business owner or as a marketer, your goal would be to familiarize as many people (both inside your demographic and out) as possible with your brand or product.
Here is an example. If you’ve spent any time on the internet, then you’ve definitely been subjected to a lot of advertising. Sure, those ads won’t be convincing enough for you to actually buy the product. But now you’re aware of brand X and what they have to offer.
You will also be subjected to different ads of the same brand on different media channels. Now, let’s say you’re thinking of buying a printer. The first product that will come to your mind is the one whose company has invested in building and increasing its brand awareness.
Now that we’ve mentioned printers, the brand that first came to your mind is the brand that knew how to play their brand awareness game right!
Why Brand Awareness is Important for any Company
Brand awareness is the first thing your marketing department should be focused on. Before you even launch your first product or service, you need to have an audience familiar with your brand, logo, and name.
A consumer who has been hearing of, seeing, and talking about your brand for a long time is more likely to buy from you than a consumer who has never been exposed to any of your messages.
The more you invest in brand awareness, the easier it will be to market your products or services. It will also help you crush your competition, especially if they’re not as serious about their brand awareness as you are.
Apple is a perfect example of brand awareness. Not everyone has an iPhone, but everyone knows about it.
In this case, Apple globalized their brand awareness efforts, even in markets where their products aren’t officially sold yet. This is because brand awareness is often treated as the first stage of the sales funnel.
You first make yourself known to as many people as possible, then you start selecting the ones who will be purchasing your product. The rest may not buy from you, but they will talk about it to those who will.
Brand Awareness Examples
- Influencer-driven Brand Awareness Campaigns
One of the ways many brands nowadays reach their audience is through influencers, both big and small. The bigger the influencer’s following is, the more people a brand can reach through a single sponsored post, video, or live stream.
SeatGeek first partnered up with David Dobrik in 2016. Since then, they have sponsored over 30 videos of his that have almost all gone viral.
Today, David Dobrik’s main YouTube channel has over 18 million subscribers, with almost 6 billion views in total. Dobrik has two other channels in which he has 8 million and 1.7 million subscribers, respectively.
Thanks to this partnership, SeatGeek has almost become synonymous with the Dobrik brand. As a result, any of his millions of followers throughout the web will be heading to SeatGeek dot com the moment they think of buying a ticket online.
Sometimes, a brand will partner up with small creators. When they do that, it’s because the creator’s following, despite being small, see the creator like a friend rather than a celebrity, which can have a higher conversion rate.
See how we can increase your brand awareness using our digital marketing strategies. Contact Us!
- Complementary Partnerships
Companies build on and increase their brand awareness by partnering up with companies that offer complementary services.
An example of this would be dbrand’s partnership with Google.
You might think that Google is too big to partner up with a small company such as dbrand, but you would be wrong. Yes, Google is well-known, but it isn’t the first company you think of when you’re looking to buy a smartphone.
Google’s partnership with dbrand, a smartphone accessory manufacturer, allowed the two companies to benefit from one another.
After dbrand made accessories for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, they were then “hand-picked to be among the launch partners for the made for Google program”, as dbrand’s website says.
Whoever is familiar with Google phones will now be aware that dbrand is a trusted accessory maker. Whoever is familiar with dbrand will now be aware that Google also makes and sells smartphones.
A win-win partnership.
How to increase Brand Awareness
Before you can increase your brand awareness, you need first to build one. There are different ways you can do this, but the goal stays the same.
You want people to be familiar with your brand, logo, and narrative. What should you do?
First, people need to hear about you from someone they already know and trust, and that person is definitely not you, and it’s not done through paid advertising either.
- Guest Blog
Blogging is a fantastic way of reaching people and interacting with them. But you’re trying to build a new audience, not interact with only the one you currently have.
This is where guest blogging comes in handy.
You can use the Ol’ reliable Google to do this. Simply search your industry + ‘guest blogging’, and you’ll be able to find a list of all the blogs that accept guest posts.
As you put together a list of the blogs you shortlisted, do some research on them to see if their content and content guidelines go hand-in-hand with what you have to offer. Keep in mind that some websites may allow you to publish for free, and some may ask for some sort of payment.
After you’ve done that, it’s time you started brainstorming blog post ideas with your team to make sure you have something with a unique perspective and that has yet to be covered on their website.
Send emails to each site, pitch them your blog post idea, or send them a full article better yet.
Once your article is live on their blog, you now have access to an entirely new audience ready to read what you have to say. The best part is that your new audience is reading what you have to say from a trusted source.
- Use Referral Programs
Another way of reaching new audiences is through word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is one of the oldest marketing methods and is free. You let your most loyal customers advocate for your brand.
Referral programs are a way you can push your loyal customers that one last step into telling their friends and family about it. Not only does that put your brand in front of the eyes of more people, but it does so through a well-trusted source.
A lot of companies will offer both parties a discount if a customer refers another person. They do that to increase brand awareness.
- Make Your Brand’s Voice a Unique One
Let’s take dbrand as an example, their social media person is one of the most sarcastic people you could ever meet, and they took things a step further.
After people started liking their sarcastic social media tone, they made sure their entire brand was perceived that way. From their Twitter account, YouTube videos to their website.
Everything about the dbrand brand is unique. The bottom of their website says 4021 instead of 2021. Why? Because it fits their claim that robots run the whole company.
They’re committed to their sarcastic profile to the point they don’t care if their Twitter bio reads as follows:
Their tutorial videos are sarcastic and will very sarcastically show you how to apply a dbrand skin. If you dare ask them a question on Twitter, expect a somewhat harsh answer, but it is still an answer.
This is what makes them unique. People share their social media posts just because they are funny, not because they are interested in their phone cases or phone skins.
They’re doing their marketing right, and their fans know it!
Read as we go in-depth into what corporate identity is and how you can find yours! Read here!
Now that you’ve built your brand awareness, it’s time you increased it.
How to Increase Your Brand Awareness
This isn’t any different from what we’ve discussed earlier. The only difference is that you’re no longer a nobody and are recognizable by many people.
So, what do you do now?
See how you can use Psychographic Segmentation to build a memorable brand!
Remember the David Dobrik-SeatGeek partnership we reviewed in the beginning? Do that!
- Influencer Partnerships
The first step is to look for influencers whose fanbase is similar to your targeted demographic. You can directly ask them to showcase one of your products or services on their social media accounts, sure!
Of course, you don’t have to target influencers who will charge you millions of dollars for a single ad! There are enough influencers on the internet for all market sizes.
But a better way of using influencer marketing would be to sponsor some of their content. As strong as the word ‘hate’ can be, most people hate to be asked to buy or use a specific brand’s services, but they love to see their favorite creators do the things they love.
This is where you come!
If you’ve ever seen a David Dobrik video before where he gave SeatGeek a shoutout, you’ll see that he always asks his followers to use the SeatGeek app so that he can surprise his friends with more cars.
Viewers no longer feel like they’re being pushed to use SeatGeek but instead use it because they believe they are helping their favorite creator.
- SEO
Yes, you heard that right, SEO!
SEO is a vital part of your online presence. It will help you rank higher on search engines, but it has a hidden value.
When somebody searches for a service or a product and your website is listed first, you’ve just increased your brand awareness.
When your website appears on the first page of Google organically, people will immediately think you’re a leader in your industry. They will also trust you more because they didn’t hear about you through an ad or a paid channel.
See how you can build the best identity design for your business! Read here!
The customers you gain through SEO are more than likely going to be one of your most loyal customers because they believe they are the ones who found you, not the other way around.
Five seconds ago, I didn’t know Ticket Master existed. Now I am pretty sure they are one of the best in the online ticket industry!
This can be done for your company and brand as well!
Final Thoughts
Brand awareness can be summed up in two sentences:
- Brand awareness allows for people to recognize and remember your brand
- Brand awareness will allow your business to be the first thing people think of when talking about a certain industry
Finally, once you’ve reached a certain level of brand awareness, keep doing what you were doing to make sure people don’t forget about you!
Start Your Brand Awareness Campaign Today!
