Originally published by GatherVoices.
Creating brand awareness is essential for the success of most companies. You need people to know about your product and trust your brand. The more people who can recall your brand, the better.
Brand awareness is developed over time and via many different mediums. Promoting your brand online, establishing a presence on social media, and investing in digital marketing and traditional print advertising are all ways to increase your brand awareness.
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness refers to how familiar people are with a particular product or service. In order for a product or company to be successful, there is typically high brand awareness. The more people know about a certain product or service, the more likely it is for that company to have high sales.
When creating brand awareness, companies strive to distinguish their product from that of their competitors. When faced with multiple choices, consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a brand they know and trust, so it is important for companies to find ways to stand out.
Various marketing and advertising strategies are used to create awareness of a brand. Print media, social media, television commercials, and digital marketing are all types of advertising strategies used to enhance brand awareness. When these strategies are successful, consumers become familiar with a particular brand and are more likely to choose it over competitor products.
How to Measure Brand Awareness
Measuring brand awareness can be tricky, but it is an important piece of understanding whether your marketing efforts are working. Using metrics to track the performance of your brand provides information on the level of brand awareness that your company or product has among the public.
Measuring brand awareness helps you understand what marketing strategies are working for your brand. Some ways to measure brand awareness include:
- Taking surveys. Whether by email, website, phone, or in person, you can ask existing customers how they learned about your brand. You can also test brand awareness by asking a random selection of people if they have heard of your product.
- Analyzing your website traffic. Monitoring your website traffic over time will provide you with an idea about how your brand awareness has shifted. Services like Google Analytics track data, such as the number of people who search your URL, bookmark your website in their browser, or click on links to your website.
- Reviewing search volume data. You can see the volume of searches for your brand, as well as track the volume of searches over time, via services like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Google Trends.
- Practicing social listening. With the help of social listening tools, you can track conversations about your brand online and on social media. These conversations can give you more insight into the true awareness and feelings toward your brand than standard surveys can.
When measuring brand awareness, there are many data points to consider. The number of times your brand is mentioned online, the reach of each mention, and the level of brand engagement you have are all factors worth tracking.
There is no single best way to measure brand awareness. Rather, brand awareness is best tracked through a variety of different methods.
Increasing Brand Awareness
Just as with tracking, you can increase your brand awareness through a variety of means. You will likely find more success when you spread your efforts across multiple outlets.
Here are strategies to increase your brand awareness:
- Use branded packaging. Remember that your customers’ experience with your product begins with the packaging they receive it in. Customize your packaging to enhance the experience of your product, help it stand out from competitors, and increase the awareness of your brand.
- Use social media. Establish accounts that consistently communicate your brand to consumers across social media. Establishing your presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter extends your reach and is an effective way to communicate with new and existing customers.
- Research search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Grow your brand awareness by researching SEO strategies and incorporating them into your online presence so consumers can find you quickly and easily.
- Partner with influencers. Celebrities and social media influencers have well-established audiences that trust them. Partnering with influencers who promote your brand to their audience immediately amplifies your brand awareness and is likely to lead to increased sales.
- Try Google’s AdSense auto ads. Paid advertising is a great way to increase brand awareness, but it can be costly. An addition to Google’s AdSense finds the best places to publish the right ads for you. Auto ads are automatically put on sites that fit your brand and target audience.
By promoting your brand through a variety of techniques, you will be able to see which strategies are most effective for your brand. As you learn more about your target audience, you can focus your resources on the strategies that reach your audience most effectively.
Types of Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are strategic marketing efforts aimed at promoting a specific product, service, or brand of a company. They are used to attract the attention of customers over various forms of media, including print ads, emails, television, and social media.
Standard marketing campaigns include services related to the promotion, advertising, distribution, merchandising, and pricing of products and services. These types of marketing campaigns can help to increase product and brand awareness:
- Traditional media campaign: This type of campaign relies on traditional media outlets, such as television, radio, and print and mail advertising. You may place an ad in your local newspaper and make an announcement on a local radio channel about your store’s grand opening.
- Seasonal push campaign: This type of campaign promotes seasonal deals that your company is offering, such as a winter or summer sale, in an effort to draw customers in.
- Product launch campaign: Manufacturers and distribution partners typically drive product launch campaigns. The goal is to raise awareness and interest in new products that are being offered.
- Brand awareness campaign: Both brands that are looking to build awareness and companies that wish to keep awareness of their brand high utilize brand awareness campaigns. Marketing efforts are focused on increasing awareness of specific products or companies.
- Rebranding campaign: When a company wishes to promote a new name, logo, partnership, or shift in company ideals, they may initiate a rebranding campaign to advertise their changes and improvements to their target audiences.
- Brand launch campaign: This type of campaign is used when a company has created a new brand and wants its target audience to know it. The company may advertise on social media and send promotional emails to its existing customer base encouraging people to shop from the new brand.
- Contest marketing campaign: In order to promote a new product, a company may run a contest via its website or social media accounts that requires participants to tag a certain number of friends in order to enter. The result is an increase in website traffic, spreading awareness of the company and its new products.
- Email marketing campaign: A great way to stay in contact with existing customers, an email marketing campaign can offer deals and discounts to loyal customers as well as inform them of upcoming sales and events.
Developing Brand Awareness Without Physical Events
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented businesses with many challenges, but there are many ways to spread the word about your business without holding physical events.
In today’s age of social media and digital marketing, physical events are not required to successfully develop brand awareness. None of the previously discussed marketing campaigns and tips for increasing brand awareness require physical events.
Optimizing your presence online and on social media platforms can go a long way toward increasing awareness of your company, products, services, and brand. In order to make sure that your marketing efforts are effective, track your efforts. Look at how much website traffic you are getting and how frequently your products are talked about online.
It is important to focus on approaches that will reach your target audience most effectively. Do some research to understand who your target audience is and how to connect with them the best. You can effectively increase brand awareness among those people via the right marketing campaigns.
Help With Fostering Brand Awareness
At Gather Voices, we are here to help you increase brand awareness by establishing your voice, building your brand, and reaching the communities that your business is made for. Use our platform to develop compelling videos that are easy to create and share.
References
6 Innovative Ways to Increase Brand Awareness. (March 2018). Entrepreneur.
8 Types of Marketing Campaigns to Boost Business. (April 2020). Indeed.
Brand Awareness. (July 2020). Investopedia.
How to Measure Brand Awareness. (November 2018). Brandwatch.
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