When it comes to creating a household name, brand awareness and brand recognition are key. Whether you are a multinational corporation or a local shop just starting out, getting your business seen by new customers and recalled when it comes to purchasing time it imperative to keeping your business going. When building a digital marketing strategy, many businesses can be tempted to focus purely on metrics such as clicks and conversions. However, in order for your business to thrive online, brand awareness, or brand recognition is key to making your business known online and out in the world and attracting new leads. We’ve put together a guide to all things brand awareness including why brand awareness is key to any good marketing strategy and ideas on how you can boost your business’ brand awareness.
What is Brand Awareness?
One of the first questions you may be wondering is what exactly is brand awareness? Brand awareness, simply put, is how your brand is perceived by the general public. Part of brand awareness includes how a brand or business distinguishes itself from its competitors and the general marketplace in which it sits. Your customers and consumers will want to know what exactly makes you different and what makes you stand out against other businesses offering similar services or products to yours. Brand awareness fosters trust, one of the key elements of drawing in new customers and establishing a loyal following.
Why is Brand Awareness Important?
One of the most powerful elements in a buyer’s mind when considering purchasing a product or service is the ability to recall the brand that they are purchasing from. A good level of brand awareness can not only help your website and company get found by more potential customers, it can also help reinforce the trustworthiness of your brand in the eye of the consumer. If a customer remembers having seen your company around before, they are more likely to put their trust, and therefore money into your hands. Brand awareness ensures that when your target customer is looking for a product or service, they automatically think of your company each time.
How Can I Build Brand Awareness for my Company?
Now that you understand the importance of brand awareness, the next step is to take a look at how you actually go about increasing brand awareness. One of the important things to do when embarking on boosting brand awareness is to focus your campaign strategy and ensure any campaigns are correctly monitored. If you are launching a brand awareness campaign, brand awareness itself needs to be the set target of that particular campaign, rather than building a campaign focussed on another metric and hoping awareness will happen. For example, running a product ad in order to establish sales may aid click-throughs to your website but will do little for your company’s brand awareness whereas collaborating with a known influencer to offer your customers exclusive content it directly aimed at raising brand awareness and engaging with your consumer base.
Some good ways to establish brand awareness include:
- Engage with customers on social media without trying to sell them something first
- Tell a story with your content. Craft a narrative around your brand to enhance authenticity with details such as the history of your company or events your company has attended.
- Give your brand a personality. Inject some personality into your marketing efforts to create a brand personality your consumers can connect with and identify as something uniquely ‘you’.
- Create shareable content. Whether it is a ‘how to’ list, insightful infographic, dream-worthy video or hilarious meme, create content that your audience will want to share with their connections.
- Promote your business across multiple channels. Use a variety of platforms to keep your audience engaged based on the platforms they use. Whether that is tying in an email marketing campaign with a Facebook campaign or sharing aspirational images on your Instagram page paired with a Snapchat story.
How Do I Measure Brand Awareness?
Whilst it is true that brand awareness can’t be measured in the same way as other key marketing metrics, brand awareness is not something that should be forgotten when it comes to reflecting on your marketing efforts. There are a few ways for you to measure your website and business’s brand awareness.
One way in particular which is relatively simple is to take a look at your website metrics in terms of how visitors visit your website. When embarking on a brand awareness digital marketing campaign, take a look at the number of ‘direct’ visitors you have visiting your website in google analytics. After a successful brand awareness campaign, you should see that number rise as more visitors search for your company’s name directly as opposed to being directed to the site through a paid campaign, for example.
Another way to measure brand awareness is through social listening. This involves using social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter alongside any other online channels where organic conversations about your brand may be happening. Thirdly, surveys are also a good way to gather information about how your company or brand is seen. This can be done through email or online with a short series of questions to ascertain firstly, whether consumers have heard of your brand and then how your brand is perceived by your audience.
What Metrics Can I Track to Measure Brand Awareness?
When it comes to setting campaign targets, the ability to measure a campaign value is key. Whilst measuring something like brand awareness and sentiment may seem difficult, there are few different metrics you can monitor as part of your online marketing to understand how your marketing is being received. One set of metrics in particular is engagement. How is your audience interacting with your content and brand online? Has there been an increase in comments, shares, likes? These are all engagement statistics that can inform your brand awareness strategies and can be monitored through native social media marketing platform tools.
Where Can I Find More Help With Improving my Company’s Brand Awareness?
If you are looking to increase your brand awareness this year, why not get in touch with our team of digital marketing experts? We have a number of years experience building up an online presence for companies big and small and can help answer any questions you may have.
Call SEM Consultants on 0121 552 6500 or contact us online to find out more about how we can help you.