If people aren’t familiar with your brand, they’re not likely to think of buying from you. The guide covers how to build brand awareness and why it is important.
What is brand awareness?
It’s an important concept in marketing and is one of the first steps to creating a memorable brand Brand awareness is when people know the name of or recognize your brand. It’s an important concept in marketing and is the first step to creating a memorable brand. In addition to knowing who you are, it’s also important to know what you’re known for. Generally, it’s better to be known, than not known.
Brand awareness often thought of as the most important step in the buying process. If the consumer is not aware of your brand, they are unlikely to consider it when making a purchase. There are some cases where people will buy something without knowing the brand, but if you increase brand awareness, you will be less reliant on people finding you by chance.
The two types of brand awareness
How familiar your target audience is with your brand is an important way to measure how successful your marketing efforts have been. Awareness measures are often used to assess brand performance and marketing effectiveness. In other words, does becoming more aware of a brand lead to that brand performing better?
At the unaided level, people must be familiar enough with your brand to spontaneously think of it in connection with the category in which they are making a purchase. We can gauge the success of our marketing campaign through two measures: unaided awareness and aided. people must be familiar enough with your brand to think of it spontaneously in connection with the category they’re making a purchase in, to be measured at the unaided level. The size of your brand will determine which measures are most important to you. For example, if you have a small brand, you will have a harder time achieving unaided awareness, so it wouldn’t be much use to measure that.
Unaided brand awareness
Brand awareness without any prompting or reminder is when you can remember the name of the brand or product. This is usually in the context of the product category. You can check how often your brand is thought of unprompted by consumers by seeing how frequently it is named first. Top of mind refers to products that people tend to recall and is usually a strong indicator of performance and a predictor of choice.
After you’ve determined your brand’s top of mind score, compare it to other brands’ scores. However, make sure you compare brands that are similar in size.
What is the first brand that comes to mind when you think about buying a new refrigerator?
A typical follow-up question for this would be to ask if they can think of any other brands of refrigerators, which is often referred to as ‘spontaneous awareness.’
The first question measures Top of Mind Awareness, while the net of the first and second questions measures a brand’s Total Unaided Awareness.
Although this is a good way to measure progress, keep in mind that it can be easily influenced by how the initial statement is worded. What restaurant is the first to come to mind when you want to get food to eat out of your home?
What is the first type of place that comes to mind when you want to get something to eat?
Aided brand awareness
Aided brand awareness means that people recognize your brand when they see it on a list of other brands.
Noticing a brand without any help is much harder for people than when they are given some assistance, and usually brand size plays a role in how difficult it is. The bigger your brand is, the more likely customers are to be aware of it without any help.
How is brand awareness different from brand recognition or brand recall?
You may hear the terms “brand awareness”, “brand recognition” and “brand recall” all used interchangeably. This is incorrect. All three terms have distinct meanings.
Brand recognition
Brand recognition is another way of saying “aided” brand awareness. This measures how much consumers know about the brand and whether it exists in the market. Brand recognition is a measure of total brand awareness in a given category. It can also be used to evaluate how well an advertisement is conveying the brand.
Brand recall
Brand recall is when a customer can remember a brand without any prompting. It allows marketers to measure how strongly a brand is associated with a particular category. Here is an example:
What is the first brand that comes to mind when you think about toothpaste?
Answer: Crest.
This unaided method can also be applied to recall of advertising:
Can you think of any toothpaste commercials you’ve seen in the last couple of weeks?
“Can you describe the ad?”
“What brand was featured in the ad?”
Questions about an ad’s presence and consumer connection to the correct brand can help us understand how well the ad is doing.
These two approaches to awareness – recall and recognition – are used throughout brand and ad research and have important, nuanced differences that can help marketers evaluate how well their brands and advertising are establishing themselves in the consumers’ minds.
Brand salience: The ultimate goal of awareness
As we covered above, building brand awareness is important. But it’s not enough on its own. The best brands are the ones that come to mind first when a customer is looking to buy a product or service.
This is called brand salience. This refers to how often your brand is thought about or noticed by customers when they are making a purchase.
Brands should increase their brand awareness by creating cues that activate the brand at critical touchpoints. Cues that become synonymous with the customer’s needs in that moment are the best cues. The more you can make yourselves unique, the better.
How to Generate Awareness for Your Brand?
Now that you are aware of the definition of brand awareness, it is time to learn how to utilise this concept.
GETTING STARTED WITH CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing refers to the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. Content marketing is an effective way of attracting traffic to your website by creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly define audience.
82% of marketers actively used content marketing in 2021. Since almost half of customers consult multiple pieces of content before talking to a sales rep, it’s clear why content marketing is so important.
When getting started with content marketing, take the following steps:
- Understand Your Customers: Who is your target audience? What kind of content are they more likely to read? Do they prefer blog posts or video content? Knowing all of this will help you deliver the best and most engaging content to your customers.
- Define Your Brand: Use your content to bring out the best in your brand. What does your brand stand for? How do you plan to make a difference? Defining these aspects will help you get started with content marketing.
- Create A Content Marketing Plan: Formulate an editorial calendar detailing where and when you’ll publish new content on social media, your blog, or through guest blogging. Likewise, schedule engaging content that you’ll publish on social media.
- Re-adjust Your Strategy: Depending on the performance of your content, make changes to it (e.g. tone of voice). The point of marketing is to test and measure your progress to improve your strategies based on actual data.
WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING: DOES IT WORK?
Word of mouth marketing involves creating strategies to make people talk about your brand. A word-of-mouth marketing strategy relies on advocates or promoters to spread the word about a product or service to their networks.
One person’s influence can have a big impact on other people. If customers are satisfied with your product or service, they will spread the word to their friends and relatives.
People are more likely to believe people they know rather than a brand that is claiming to be the best.
referring to something else; exactly; stated; ie. Word of mouth marketing is effective at bringing new customers to a business because people are more likely to trust recommendations from people they know.
WOM marketing is extremely effective, accounting for 13% of global sales and $6 trillion in global spending annually. A large majority of marketers believe that word of mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing.
AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS AND HOW TO USE THEM TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Brand awareness campaigns are designed to promote a brand so that people will remember it and buy it. These campaigns can be used to introduce a new product to consumers or to promote a new initiative.
Businesses can use brand awareness campaigns to:
- Build Hype: A brand awareness campaign is a perfect way to build hype and anticipation for a product or service. For instance, Coke’s #ShareACoke hashtag did a great job at keeping the brand in the limelight.
- Introduce a New Product: If you’re launching a new product, use social media campaigns and email marketing campaigns to introduce it to your target audience.
- Create A Buzz Around Your Brand: Highlight the things that make your brand special such as unique design, quality products, and more. Make your target audience care about what you do by creating a buzz online.
INFLUENCER MARKETING: IS THIS A VIABLE WAY TO GENERATE AWARENESS?
As influencer marketing becomes more popular, people are beginning to trust the recommendations of others more and more. People are more likely to believe what influencers say if they share similar interests.
Around one in six businesses spend the majority of their marketing budget on working with social media influencers. This approach is suitable for businesses that want to stay popular with the public.
How Can Brand Awareness Help You Gain Loyal Customers?
Brand awareness is important because it helps customers remember your brand and makes them more likely to be loyal to it. Not only does this result in immediate sales, but it also builds customer loyalty and brand affinity in the long run.
CREATES AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS
Having brand awareness means that your customers are familiar with your brand and what it represents. This connection between customer and brand can be emotional, making the customer more likely to remain loyal and buy from you again in the future. If you can find interesting ways to show your audience the benefits of using your product or service, they will start to trust it more.
Disney is a good example of this. Even though there have been a lot of worrying claims about the company, Disney movies are still successful, as shown by the company’s revenue increasing to more than 69 billion dollars in 2020. The bond that audience members feel with Disney’s media productions is strong and full of nostalgic emotions. Disney uses this to its advantage.
CREATES TRUST WITH YOUR CUSTOMER
It is helpful for a brand to have strong awareness so that consumers will trust it. When people trust that they can get the best quality, fast shipping, or excellent customer support from a company, their loyalty to the brand strengthens.
GENERATES REFERRALS FROM OTHER LOYAL CUSTOMERS
Product or service recommendations from customers can help bring in more business, depending on how aware people are of the brand.
Customer advocacy is an important marketing tool because it allows brands to connect with their target audiences through everyday consumers. It is easier to believe a customer than a company itself. This is because customers are unbiased and have no reason to lie about their experiences.
How to Know if Your Awareness Efforts Are Working?
To measure the success of your awareness campaign or brand awareness strategy, you can use the following metrics.
SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS INSIGHTS: WHAT DO THESE TELL YOU?
The insights you get from social media posts, such as likes, shares, comments, and saves, can tell you how your target audience is engaging with your content. The higher the engagement, the higher the brand awareness.
This means that your content is resonating with your audience and is helping to build a strong brand identity.
WEBSITE TRAFFIC: IS IT CHANGING?
Traffic to your website is a good indicator of how well your brand awareness campaign is doing. If the number of people visiting your site is increasing, it means your efforts are paying off. It is also helpful to determine which channel is the source of the traffic.
Do you think people are coming to your social media accounts from the link in your bio? Is it an organic search? This knowledge can help you perfect your brand awareness strategy.
BRANDED SEARCH VOLUME
The brand search volume is the number of times your brand name is searched for. The success of your brand awareness campaign can be measured by how often it is used as a keyword on Google Ads.
This text is saying that if your brand has a high search volume, it means that your marketing is effective and that people are aware of your brand.
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