What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of your organisation, goods or services. Strong brand awareness will increase customer loyalty, keep you at the top of consumers’ minds, help to create new leads and keep current customers engaged with any content related to your business. It takes time, but our top tips below will help get you started on increasing awareness of your brand right now.
Brand consistency
First and foremost, you will need to discover how consistent your branding is. Brand continuity should be implemented across all visual platforms, digital and print. Continuity leads to recognition, which eventually converts into increased awareness. To be consistent you should devise a set of brand guidelines for everyone in your organisation to follow, especially those handling outbound content. Your brand should focus on creating interesting, relevant, and value-adding content in order to establish your voice as an authority and build your customer base.
Large restaurant chains are usually a great example of brand consistency. Whether you are in London, Manchester or any other location, the experience is one and the same. Menus may differ to cater for specific local audiences, but tone of voice and imagery should always invoke the same feelings and convey the same message.
Social media
Social media is arguably the most important consumer platform that marketeers have access to in the digital age. Making sure your brand is up to date and engaging across all social media profiles will increase your brands awareness dramatically. 2.65 billion people across the world use social media of some description, with Facebook and Instagram remaining dominant platforms.
Studies show that 89% of businesses currently use Facebook in their marketing efforts, and 90% of Instagram users follow a business. These stats are important to remember when creating social media campaigns, as most people won’t be logging in to find your business but will form an opinion based on what they see. Your social media content must aim to position your brand as ‘Top of the Mind’.
Every post is an opportunity to engage with your customers, whether it’s content or responses in the comments section. Harness the power of hashtags, after all, this is the main way to get content in front of new consumers. Also, look to include relevant testimonials about your products from real users, not just influencers. Credibility and authenticity are always positive traits.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising comes in all shapes and sizes, but in 2020 its most commonly associated with digital advertising. Desktops, laptops, and mobile devices are all included in strategic digital advertising, which continues to be the fastest-growing segment in the advertising space. With average screen times per day reaching 5 hours per person, it is essential to implement your brand correctly and effectively. From Google Search ads to Snapchat ads, understanding the wants and need of your audience, then targeting appropriately, remains integral.
But as suggested earlier, it’s important to remember paid advertising is not exclusive to digital platforms. Out of home (OOH) advertising has evolved and there are plenty of examples of great brand awareness campaigns involving these options.
In 1983 a visual stunt presentation was set up to show the strength of Araldite by gluing a yellow Ford Cortina to a billboard on Cromwell Road, London, with the tagline “It also sticks handles to teapots”. Later, to demonstrate more of its strength, a red Cortina was placed on top of the yellow Cortina, with the tagline “The tension mounts”. Finally, the car was removed from the billboard, leaving a hole on the billboard and a tagline “How did we pull it off?”. This clever marketing campaign is still mentioned when discussing brand awareness, over 30 years later.
Oasis’ Refreshing Stuff’ campaign gained traction in a different manner. The ‘anti’ campaign with quirky ads and matter of fact statements succeeded in getting people talking about and sharing the brand, without crossing the line of becoming overtly offensive. Oasis product sales did indeed rise afterward, so their ‘anti campaign’ was successful in its goal.
SEO
A well thought-out and carefully implemented SEO campaign will bring many benefits. When used effectively and based on accurate data, search engine optimisation will boost brand awareness by positioning your content as the best solution to specific problems. Appropriate SEO considers Local, On-page, Technical and Off-site factors when raising brand awareness. If each branch is used together, this makes for a successful SEO strategy, which in turn, will increase your rankings, putting your brand above your competitors.
The final word
Strong social media presence, paid advertising activity and accurate SEO strategy that is informed by clearly defined brand guidelines will help increase awareness of any businesses. The most successful brands are those that we recognise without any context, as seen below, and is the benchmark that all businesses should aim for.
