Brand Awareness Overview: 5 Tips to Increase Brand Awareness

Brand awareness, also called brand recognition, is a metric that gauges how familiar consumers are with a brand name or product. Many businesses will measure brand awareness with a focus group to determine whether their target audience recognizes the company brand. In addition to maintaining strong brand recall, a company or startup might make an extra push to build brand awareness in advance of a new product launch to increase the chance of early sales.

The importance of brand awareness extends beyond getting a new customer to buy your product or service. Awareness of your brand is also an important component for developing brand equity, which is the perceived value of a product, service, or company. Brand equity hinges not so much on the actual specifications of a product, but rather on the perceived quality of that product. Many consumers may choose a known brand over one they do not recognize. Better brand awareness efforts can lead to increased sales and higher profits, due to increased customer loyalty.

Consider the following marketing efforts that can help your company or small business identify new audiences and create a memorable brand that keeps your business top-of-mind when customers do their decision-making.

1. 1. Have a clear brand identity. Who are you? How do you see your company existing in the market? Who is your target audience? How will this target audience perceive you in relation to other brands and product lines? Take the time to answer these questions about your brand as you want customers to perceive it. Think about your company name, brand messaging, brand voice, brand values, the particular product or service you are selling, and the kind of brand loyalty you want to build. A strong brand awareness strategy should entail a strong vision of the intended brand image, making sure to unify all content in that brand identity.
2. 2. Include social media in your brand awareness campaign. Your social media presence is where you have a real-time opportunity to define your brand hour by hour, minute by minute, even second by second. A strong social media marketing campaign that aligns with your brand identity can build a lot of buzz; each social media post you hashtag and put up does more to help acquaint people with your brand’s unique personality.
3. 3. Try influencer marketing to reach target audiences. You can team up or create a partnership with a popular influencer on social media to help advertise your product or service. Many brands will provide an influencer with their goods free of charge in return for the influencer providing an honest review of them to their wide base of social media followers.
4. 4. Run a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. Search engine marketing focuses on obtaining display ads from search engines. The goal is to display a service or product through purchased ad space when an internet user searches for something similar. You can also use search engine optimization (SEO) by optimizing web content for search engines through keywords and market research to get your product or service to organically appear under searches made by your target audience.
5. 5. Create an email marketing strategy. Centered around direct outreach, email marketing can manifest as a long-term engagement approach (connecting with long-term customers on an email list). There are multiple strategies for digital marketing, so be sure to research and experiment to find the right fit for your business.

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