Transforming Your Brand: Strategies for Building Unforgettable Awareness
Building an excellent startup with high-quality products does not ensure success. It does not even guarantee you will make a sale. The corporate environment is congested, both online and offline. Amazon Marketplace allows consumers to purchase over 600 million products, while in-person shoppers may buy around 120,000 different items at their local Walmart. With so much competition, how should your target market discover your products and services? Naturally, brand awareness is essential.
Brand awareness helps clients recognize and remember your company. When they are hungry, they think of Big Macs from McDonald’s. When they get thirsty, they think of Coke, and when they need to hire a moving truck, they consider U-Haul. This is brand awareness in action. But how can you transform from an anonymous brand into an important part of your ideal customer’s thoughts, desires, requirements, and behaviors? We’ll answer that question below.
This article will teach you all you need to know about brand awareness, including what it is, why it matters, how to measure it, and how to improve it. Try the ten surefire tactics listed below to increase brand recognition, such as wildfire.
What is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is a marketing term that explains how well a buyer recognizes your brand depending on many factors:
- Name: When someone reads your brand’s name, do they understand what products and services you offer?
- Logo: Can a buyer identify your brand by looking at your logo?
- Taglines & Slogans: You know who we’re referring to when we say “Just Do It” or “Can You Hear Me Now?“
- Colors: When you see a rich blue soda can, it is nearly usually a Pepsi.
- Products: Recognized a brand simply for its goods. For example, suppose someone recognized a vehicle company only by glancing at the engine.
- Services: Linking a brand to a particular service. When you see someone get out of a car with their head down and gazing at their phone, you can bet they were in an Uber or Lyft.
Loyal ambassadors and eponyms represent the apex of brand awareness. Need to know what eponyms are? Neither did we – we’ll get to it in a second:
- Loyal Ambassadors: You want people to identify with your brand. For example, when someone declares they are a Nike or Apple fan, they have become loyal ambassadors. You don’t need to market to these people. They buy anything they want and frequently encourage their friends (and strangers) to do the same.
- Eponyms: Eponyms occur when a brand’s proprietary name or product becomes generic. For example, when someone requests a Kleenex (but it means a tissue) or a Coke (when they say a beverage). Once you reach this level, your brand has been immortalized.
There are two main types of brand awareness: assisted and unaided.
- Aided Awareness: Aided awareness assesses whether a respondent recognizes your brand when presented with its name or emblem. Are they aware of what you do or sell? Have they heard of you before?
- Unaided awareness: Unaided awareness assesses whether a respondent will recall your brand or items when presented with a hazy trigger. Let’s say, for instance, “Tell us about brands you know that sell DSLR cameras.”
How to Measure Brand Awareness
Before we discuss brand awareness-building tactics, you first understand how to assess brand awareness. What gets measured gets done, and you need to know if your strategies are effective.
Assessing brand awareness is difficult. Some slight biases and unknowns make the results ambiguous. To obtain a more perfect view, you will need to perform extensive investigations with a large number of individuals. As you may expect, this isn’t inexpensive. Instead, we’ll show you a few free and low-cost strategies to assess brand awareness:
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic to your website occurs when visitors type your URL into their search browser, not when they click a Google search result, Facebook link, or advertisement. More direct traffic indicates that more people are discovering you (online or offline) and intentionally visiting your website.
Social Engagement
The number of followers, comments, likes, retweets, and direct messages demonstrates your increasing brand recognition. It illustrates how many people are aware of and engage with your brand.
Google Alerts
Set up Google Alerts to receive notifications when your brand is mentioned online. Your awareness will increase if news sites and other bloggers mention your brand more regularly.
Social Listening
Advanced social media management solutions alert you when your brand or hashtags are mentioned on a social network (even if the article does not tag you). Tracking this can let you see how often you come up in conversations.
Lead Generation
Tag all your calls to action with a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) code to track who visits your product page, website, or event listing. These MQLs (marketing qualified leads) go beyond vanity metrics to determine whether your business attracts potential buyers or simply creates noise.
10 Strategies for Increasing Brand Awareness
We want to assist your small business or startup gain traction with your target audience, but we understand you need an unlimited budget. That is why we do not recommend purchasing a Super Bowl commercial or having Kim Kardashian endorse your product.
Wouldn’t it be lovely, though?
Instead, we’ll provide you with economical brand-building techniques. They may deliver results slower than an ad to millions of viewers, but they will have a significant impact if you put in the time and effort.
Roll up your sleeves – it’s time to go to work.
1. Put Your Name Out There
You cannot wait for others to find you. No one will unintentionally type in your URL (typically) or start following a random Instagram account. You have to put forth the effort to get your name out there.
This includes:
- Creating social media accounts on your target market’s networks and becoming active within the community
- Creating distinctive, shareable content for your website or blog.
- Increasing organic search traffic to your website through search engine optimization (SEO) strategies
- Guest writing on other websites can expose your business to new audiences.
- Launch affiliate marketing initiatives to encourage other firms to promote your business.
- Promoting your business using social media, video, and display advertisements.
- Sponsoring local or online events that your audience intends to attend.
The list goes on. You’ll have to experiment with these concepts to discover which ones stick. Guest blogging may create many new website visitors, whereas local sponsorships may generate very few – depending on your brand, industry, and target demographic. Your goal is to promote your brand’s name, logo, and products in the physical and digital world so that potential customers can easily find them.
2. Tell a story
People don’t necessarily remember items; they remember tales. Make your brand stand for more than products, features, and money. Make it larger-than-life. Think of TOMS. Customers did not brag about the shoes’ durability (because they weren’t). They bought and shared because of the brand’s buy-one, give-one policy. Take Nike, for example. Nike is more concerned with what they empower you to do than with their products. Nike gives you the ability to run faster, jump higher, play harder, and perform for longer. Look at any Nike advertisement or commercial, and you’ll see that’s the story they convey.
What story can your brand tell to help buyers remember you? This technique is complex, so be easy on yourself if you get it immediately. However, developing your narrative is worthwhile since it could become your most effective brand awareness builder.
3. Develop a product that solves a need
We stated that high-quality products do not ensure brand awareness, but they can sometimes help. Take Tesla as an example. The brand’s game-changing products convey a story (saving the globe), and everyone enjoys them, so they naturally crave and share them. If your product is revolutionary, it has the potential to increase throughout your target market. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that exceptional things sell themselves. Consider it more as a catalyst.
4. Make a Public Relations Invest
Although it might not be the first marketing strategy that comes to mind, public relations can increase brand exposure without cost. Well, except for your time, of course. See if you can get journalists and magazines to take an interest in your brand, mission, or merchandise. You’ll need to have an engaging tale that people want to tell. Press releases and media outreach are just some aspects of public relations. Do you recall the previous year’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? The one where all of your pals nominated friends, donated money, and threw buckets of ice water on each other’s heads? That is a classic example of a well-thought-out PR stunt.
5. Sponsor an individual or event
Sponsorship can help your brand reach the proper audience. By sponsoring the proper person or event, you may gain a lot of brand exposure for very little money. It does not have to be a significant sponsorship, either. If your target market is local parents, acquiring a sponsorship with the local Little League baseball club will put your brand in front of them on Saturday mornings and whenever they do their laundry. Or consider Marc-André Leclerc. Leclerc was a relatively obscure Canadian rock climber and alpinist widely regarded as one of the greatest. Arc’teryx helped support his gear and exploits, allowing the solo climber to realize his aspirations and break world records.
Leclerc has now died, but a film titled The Alpinist has been published, showcasing his trips and accomplishments – and everyone wants to know what gear he uses when suspending himself hundreds of feet above the ground on his own. Arc’teryx now receives significant attention and validation for 1 hour and 33 minutes each time a viewer sits down to see the film.
6. Win the Right Keywords
Help your target customers find your brand by ranking high in crucial search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term approach that pays off correctly. SEO can boost brand awareness among an untapped population of potential clients who may have never heard of your company.
Find the keywords that your target market uses. For example, if you offer a stand mixer, you may target search traffic with terms like “stand mixer pizza dough,” “how to make bread dough,” or “mashed potatoes in a stand mixer.” Write fascinating material on these themes, and your audience may come across your site looking for answers to their questions.
7. Experiment with Traditional Advertising
Depending on your target demographic, a radio advertisement or billboard campaign may be the most effective approach to capture their attention. If your ad is placed correctly, your target market may see it several times daily. If people see or hear it enough, they’ll recognize your brand. They may wait to become customers, but they will be aware of your brand when it comes.
8. Guest appearances on podcasts
467 million people listened to podcasts in 2023. In an increasingly busy world, people require a hands-off method of finding pleasure and information, and podcasts fit the bill wonderfully. However, starting your podcast and growing an audience can take much work. Instead, consider guest starring on popular podcasts among your target demographic. Getting your foot in the podcasting door may be difficult, but once you do, your personality will come through, making it much easier to join additional podcasts.
9. Work with content creators and influencers
Another effective strategy to increase brand awareness is to work directly with professional (or enthusiastic amateur) content creators or influencers who your target demographic follows religiously. Both categories of people have unique advantages, such as high-quality content or a huge audience for maximum visibility. Learn about the distinction between content creators and influencers.
10. Make a content marketing commitment
Similar to your social life, committing is the most challenging choice. However, it’s a necessary addition to your content marketing campaigns. You will see the results you deserve in the fiercely competitive digital world once you put your all into your marketing campaigns. Digi Tech Resource Group, LLC understands the importance of brand awareness and the challenges startups and small businesses face. That’s why we offer various services to help you increase brand recognition and reach your target audience. From social media marketing and SEO to content creation and public relations, Digi Tech Resource Group, LLC can help you develop a comprehensive brand awareness strategy that gets results.