When you think of coffee, what brand comes to mind? What about soda? Or smartphones? Some brand names automatically come to mind when you think about certain products or services, that’s what brand awareness is. Brand awareness is the degree consumers recognize a product from memory, making them more familiar and comfortable with choosing a certain brand over others. It includes qualities that make a brand stand out from its competition and makes it the one consumers reach for when faced with a choice.
A higher level of brand awareness can translate to a higher return in sales since consumers are more likely to purchase a more familiar brand versus an unfamiliar one, making it tougher for competitors to gain more market share.
Why is brand awareness important?
When consumers are more aware of your brand, your brand becomes a top-of-mind option when they make a purchase since they can easily recall your brand and are comfortable with your products. Brand awareness contributes to sales making managing business expenses easier, helps increase traffic to your website, expands your market, builds brand affinity and brand loyalty, and cultivates leads for research and other future projects. Brand awareness is a key factor in your company’s growth and also contributes to your audience’s appreciation of your brand.
Through brand awareness, you can let consumers know what your brand has to offer and at the same time nurture your already existing audience. Brand awareness can also change how people perceive and think of your brand, adding to your brand loyalty and affinity.
Bigger and more established brands have built their market over time by employing various strategies that have increased their brand awareness, but what can your brand do to raise brand awareness? Here are some strategies you can use to increase brand awareness.
1) Above the line advertising
Above the line or ATL covers promotion over mass media such as print media including newspapers, billboards, and magazines, TV, and radio to reach a larger audience. This form of advertising, though costly, is an effective means of increasing your brand awareness over a large scale and ensures the best return on investment. ATL is also effective since its audio-visual properties can easily grab the audience’s attention.
2) Below the line advertising
Compared to ATL that aims to reach large audiences through mass media, below-the-line advertising or BTL is aimed towards reaching smaller, more targeted audiences through more direct marketing means such as door-to-door promotion, roadshows, direct mail and email campaigns, and sponsored events. Besides being a lower-cost marketing option, BTL is effective in engaging your audiences and building brand loyalty through these engagements.
3) Maximize social media
Social media isn’t just a means for friends and colleagues to connect, but is also an effective platform to increase your brand awareness among consumers. Facebook alone, for instance, has around 2.89 billion monthly active users and is the most popular social media platform worldwide, while Instagram has around 1 billion active users, with around 500 million users who actively use Instagram stories daily. Peoples’ social media feeds are curated based on user behavior, as well as their preferences, and running ads on social media platforms can reach consumers who might be interested in your brand. Besides running in-feed ads, you can also make more use of your brand’s social media accounts to interact with consumers by responding to comments on brand posts, bringing your brand closer to audiences in the process, and also creating shareable content to reach more people. Another means is to boost or promote your brand to appear more frequently on users’ feeds to make more people familiar with your brand.
4) SEO and Google Ads
Search Engine Optimization works by getting your brand’s page to appear higher in organic ranking for users looking for queries related to your content, while ads target keywords and phrases to create an ad to promote your brand and content through searches that include those keywords and phrases. Brands can use both SEO and ads to drive traffic from searches where it may be difficult to land on the first page in search results or to be a more visible result from keywords with higher search rates.
5) Podcasts
Research has shown that podcasting is estimated to be a billion-dollar industry by the end of 2021. Though podcasting has been around for almost 20 years, the format has gained more traction in the last five years and is expected to grow even more in the next five. You can make use of podcasts to create a more authentic connection with audiences through educating and informing them not just about your brand’s products or services but other topics that relate to your brand, building trust and loyalty to the brand by doing so.
6) Use branded packaging
As consumers purchase your product, having packaging with your brand logo is important to reinforce your brand awareness and add to the customer experience of your brand. Smart branding reflected through packaging your products is a means to show consumers who purchase your product the care you take to make sure they get the best quality product, and at the same time, serve as a means to creatively present your brand.
7) Tap influencers
Influencers have an audience that trusts them. Mentions of your brand on their platforms can pique curiosity and get audiences to search for other products or services you offer, expanding your brand awareness to an audience you may not have reached yet. You can sponsor content on influencers’ respective platforms and in return, influencers can help increase engagement with your brand in their respective communities.
Brand awareness is about getting consumers to not only recall your brand but trust your brand over others as well. It’s important to remember that employing a fixed strategy to increase your brand awareness may not always yield the best results. You can experiment and employ various strategies to not only increase your brand awareness but drive sales and help your brand grow in the future.