Brand Awareness

Brand awareness refers to the degree of consumer recognition and memory associated with a specific brand. It encompasses how familiar consumers are with a brand's name, logo, messaging, and overall image.

High brand awareness increases the chance of consumers considering your brand during purchase decisions. An effective brand awareness campaign can be the difference between good and great sales numbers.

Is Brand Awareness Important?

Brand awareness is a foundational element in marketing. It acts as the initial point of contact between consumers and your brand, influencing their perception and future interactions.

Without brand awareness, generating consistent interest in your goods and services can be almost impossible. Without creating brand awareness, you could find yourself spending some serious cash on paid adverts and heavy discounts on your inventory.

The Benefits of Brand Awareness

Increased Sales and Market Share

A well-recognised brand is more likely to be chosen by consumers, leading to increased sales and a larger market share. More sales? More happy shareholders!

Enhanced Brand Trust

Positive brand awareness builds trust and credibility, making consumers more receptive to your marketing messages and offerings. Trust is absolutely vital for any customer, especially first-time buyers.

With so many different options available to customers, trust is what separates brands from their competitors and helps new audiences make the jump from admirer to purchaser.

Improved Customer Loyalty

But an increase in brand awareness doesn't just benefit brands and their new customers. Strong brand awareness also fosters customer loyalty and encourages repeat business, which is absolutely crucial for long-term sustainable success.

Competitive Advantage

As we have already touched on, brand awareness gives you a competitive edge, making it easier to stand out from the crowd in a saturated market. Not only will it help you become a more prominent household name, but it will also evoke feelings of trust and quality when done well.

Strategies for Building Brand Awareness

Content Marketing

The most obvious way to increase brand awareness is via content marketing. Content marketing should play a key role in any brand awareness campaign, creating informative and engaging content such as blog posts, articles, or case studies.

This content should attract your target audience at the top of the marketing funnel, and then entice more purchases with a great call to action at the bottom of the funnel.

Social Media Marketing

Social media also plays a huge role in brand awareness, and an excellent way to push your brand to your target audience.

To raise brand awareness on social media channels, actively engage with your audience on social media platforms. Share brand stories, participate in relevant conversations, and run targeted campaigns to reach a wider audience.

Public Relations (PR)

Another option that many marketers forget or dismiss is PR, which is an excellent way to build brand awareness when done effectively.

Secure positive media coverage in news articles, industry publications, or podcasts, as this helps your brand reach a wider audience and build brand credibility with third-party validation.

Your target audience expect you to say how great you are. After all, if you don't toot your own horn, who will? So if a reputable independant source has the same opinion, that opinion can carry much more weight.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

By implementing an effective SEO strategy and optimising your website and content for relevant search terms, you can greatly improve your organic search engine visibility.

This increases the likelihood of potential customers finding your brand when searching for solutions or information related to your offerings.

However, be wary of content agencies or 'experts' that claim to write content that will rank on the first page of Google. SEO is much more advanced than it was back in 2015, and it takes quite a bit more than a few articles with a ton of keywords stuffed in.

For proper SEO support and guidance, get in touch with GWC today.

Influencer Marketing

Finally, you might want to consider reaching out to influencers to help build brand awareness. Partner with relevant influencers in your industry to leverage their established audience and endorsement power.

This exposes your brand to a wider audience and builds trust through the influencer's credibility. Influencer marketing has gone from a quirky idea to a staple of any content marketing efforts, as the impact an effective influencer can have can be much higher than generic marketing messaging that comes directly from a brand.

Measuring Brand Awareness

Brand Mentions

One way to measure brand awareness is by tracking how often your brand is mentioned online, in social media conversations, or in news articles. This indicates brand reach and engagement. However, it's worth pointing out that this approach can be quite manual, making it difficult to track the true performance of your marketing efforts as the numbers begin to rise.

Website Traffic

Another more analytical approach to measuring the effectiveness of your brand awareness strategy is to take a close look at web traffic.

Monitor website traffic growth and user engagement metrics to understand brand reach and audience interest using tools like Adobe or Google Analytics or software like Ahrefs.

Most website source providers like Squarespace, WordPress, etc, have their own analytics built in, allowing you to get a much better idea of how traffic your brand awareness is getting, and which content avenues it is coming from.

Brand Recall Surveys

If website analytics aren't your cup of tea, you could conduct surveys to assess how easily consumers remember your brand and its key attributes. This directly measures brand recognition and memory retention.

To get proper results, you'll likely need to pay for a proper survey to be conducted.