Brand awareness has been a hot topic lately, since it may be a key factor of your business popularity and as a result a booster for your performance. It is halfway to reaching your target audience and staying in their mind for longer. If you want your brand awareness campaigns to be successful, you should understand what makes a brand unique and then create campaigns that convey this information. As part of your marketing strategy, you should aim to increase awareness of your brand.
In this article, you will find a brand awareness breakdown; what the brand is and what the brand awareness stands for. We will also share a few tips on how to boost it at low cost.
What the brand is?
What sticks in people’s minds is the brand. It is a combination of the name, logo, marketing slogan, packages and USPs which makes a perfect mixture of your business recognition.
Brand is how people see your company and what comes to their minds when they hear or see your products or name. It indicates the emotions or memories associated with your business. Every single brand has ties with various feelings, ideas or memories which make them all special and unique.
For example, let’s take a closer look at the Starbucks brand. What is your first association with this name? Its logo design or characteristic coffee shop design? Maybe your favourite beverage, or your last meeting with friends, sipping Starbucks Frappuccino? This is how that so-called brand magic works. It brings all connections to the top of your mind and builds a company image in your head.
Brand awareness – crucial aspects
Let’s focus on brand awareness, now. What is it and how does it work in practice, beyond all that theory?
What is brand awareness?
Customers’ awareness of a particular brand is measured by their ability to recognize it. It plays a crucial role during making the purchase decision. Both your regular and potential customers should recognize the brand and products to go through the marketing funnel successfully. Your awareness efforts should lead to an expanded group of potential customers who are able to tell what your brand is and what product category you offer.
Strong brand awareness contributes to immediate brand recall, which is the ability to point to the name when a given product category is mentioned. In practice, it is when your customer base needs a product from your field, your brand comes to their mind first. As a result, they search for the product on your site and make a purchase. This is how consumer awareness generates income.
There is also another type of brand awareness: an aided awareness. It happens when customers recognize your brand among others in a specific field. It is also very helpful and a good place to begin.
Why is brand awareness important?
It can be your business’s “be or not to be”, especially in a competitive market. It is essential to your target market to know you and come to you before competitors. So, just briefly – why should you care about brand awareness?
- It increases sales, engagement rate and conversion rates.
- It is helpful in identifying your brand’s level of recognition.
- It boosts consumer engagement and thus customer satisfaction.
- It supports your marketing efforts, as the campaigns of known and recognizable brands have a higher ROI than the ones of unknown brands.
- It supports building loyalty among your customers.
These are only a few reasons why brand awareness is so crucial for your business.
Brand awareness vs. brand recognition
Let’s keep it simple and straight to the point since many people mistake both terms with each other. Yet, they actually complement each other. Brand awareness is not possible without brand recognition, and vice versa. How do they differ, then?
- The first corresponds to knowing what your brand is, and in which field it operates. Strong brand awareness leads to becoming a top brand in customer minds. It is about your search engines optimization, marketing communication and overall presence.
- Brand recognition is about more tangible aspects of your brand like logo, names, set of colours. It is about making your brand inherent with these factors. For example, when you see blue and yellow, probably your first association is IKEA. Although this Swedish giant is not the only one using these two colours, their brand reposition is so strong that it outclasses others. Research shows that using significant colours may boost brand recognition even up to 80%, and IKEA is a living proof.
Can you see how they are connected? Nevertheless, it is good to see the difference between them and know how to improve both of them.
What is branding?
In terms of brand awareness, there is one more box to open: branding. It is the process of shaping the way your brand is recognized by the target audience. Proper branding helps people link their needs to your products as a way of meeting them. You can tailor their perception by marketing communication and channels you use. Depending on the type of branding you have selected, your marketing tactics may differ.
For example, the branding of Coca-Cola makes the beverages a good companion while family dinner or meeting with friends. Recent marketing efforts suggest that it also supports being and expressing yourself while living a full life.
As a contrary, Cartier built its brand as one “available not for everyone”. Brands with this history and tradition are for people who aim to live by these values and need a bit of luxury.
Top way to boost your brand awareness ASAP
To increase your brand awareness, you should focus on your customer engagement and building bonds with them. We have some ideas on how to do so.
#1 Referral programs
It is one of the best ways to establish a long-term relationship with your loyal customers. In a referral program, your customers get a referral link or code, they share it with their friends via e.g., social media posts. Each of the client’s followers who come to your website, start interacting with chatbots, and provide the desired action will receive a reward. Furthermore, the referrer can receive one, too, in this matter rules are up to you. There is also flexibility in what you should offer as an incentive.
With word-of-mouth marketing you will be able to expand awareness of your company thanks to friends’ recommendations, people will be more willing to trust in them. More than 80% of recipients trust referrals more than any other types of marketing. This number speaks for itself, it is worth running a program.
If you want to try, sign up for an EarlyParrot demo and learn more about our referral software. With this one, you can create a program that is well-tailored to your needs in a heartbeat. You should try!
#2 Social media presence
What you publish and how you build your brand in social media is crucial for increasing awareness. Your content should be coherent and reflect your brand mission and vision. It is important to think about the type of content you wish to publish. It should bring value to your audience and be catchy. You can shuffle with various types of content, pics, infographics, short videos and deliver some news from the industry or tips on how to make the most of your products. It would also be a good habit to respond to comments, or at least like them or give them hearts. This way you create a sense of community. People prefer brands that are down to earth and make a bond with their audience. This can be accomplished through social media.
Additionally, to scheduled posts, you should think about live broadcasts. During such events you will be able to get in touch with your followers, show your product in action or answer some questions. The numbers speak for themselves, by a year, live streaming field has grown by almost 100%. It’s living proof of its effectiveness.
#3 Invest in brand analytics (find out about competitors to Latana)
To build your brand, you must invest in brand analytics. It helps to track your brand activities to know whether they are having the right impact. Lantana is a good choice but its micro nature and pricing might not suit your needs. If you want better brand analytics, learn about more competitors to Latana. Good brand analytics enables you to improve your performance and build a successful and more lasting relationship with your audience.
In today’s world, branding has become very data-driven. Therefore, marketing as well as brand decisions must be made with real data and not gut feelings. If you’re passionate about building your brand, brand analytics is not what you put on a maybe list, it must be on your must-do list. The benefits are immense and they make your branding journey smoother and more fruitful.
Brand analytics solutions give you the following benefits:
- Data you can rely on
- Access to diverse respondents
- Ability to reach a large audience
- Access to survey templates
- Numerous tracker templates
- Survey translation options
- Customization
- Nice designs
- Third-party integrations
#4 Affiliate marketing
What about the combination of the two above? Affiliate marketing is quite a one. As with referral marketing, it is all above sharing links, but it is done not by your customer, only by affiliates. You might wonder who they are. There are people who have gathered a bigger audience on their social media, blogs or YouTube channels. They have a big influence on their followers and the content they publish is an opinion-forming one. It is worth cooperating with affiliates from your niche since, similar to referral, it may be a very cost effective option. Also, some people enjoy feeling as if they are stars, so they want to use the same product as their favourite YouTube creator or Instagrammer.
There are a few major rules when it comes to selecting your affiliates.
- Rule No.1 – don to go too big. If your business is a local one, don’t reach global stars. First, there are small chances to contact them and second of all, their commissions may be too high for a local company. Furthermore, their audience may not coincide with your target perfectly. Local influencers are more than good, then.
- Rule No.2 – before making a final decision, do a decent research. Both in terms of cooperation with a given creator and in terms of their cooperation. It means you shouldn’t work with affiliates that have worked with your competitors. It doesn’t seem trustworthy at all, and people will trust both for your and the affiliates.
- Rule No.3 – set terms and your buffer zone. While doing research, you should also get to know what the commissions are in your field and prepare the offer. Moreover, there should be room to negotiate, but you need to set the buffer. In this way, you won’t be surprised by the other side’s offer and the negotiation will go smoothly.
What is important to add, using all the three suggested strategies you will be ready to profit from the synergy effect. You will be seen on various platforms from various sources and people will remember you. This is how brand awareness is built.
3, 2, 1… go!
From this article you have learnt something about brand and brand awareness. We showed you what the difference is between brand awareness and brand recognition. Moreover, there are some subtleties about branding. And crème de la crème – three tactics on how to boost brand awareness of your company. If you are interested in this topic and want to learn more, there is a great piece about brand awareness on our blog, yet. Feel free to jump in!