Strong brand awareness helps your company stand out and boosts business success. Effectively building this awareness is a difficult task and takes time. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work. Each business is different. So too should be their brand awareness strategy. It’s important to interact with your target audience in the right way at the right time. You must strategically approach your audience, engage them with the right tools and create enough returning customers to build a recognizable, consistent brand. The following are some practical insights into brand awareness and how to effectively increase it.
What is brand awareness?
Though brand awareness is an abstract concept and can’t be measured in neat and tidy numbers, it’s critical for marketing goals and overall business success. Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand, and how well they recognize it. It enables you to stay top-of-mind for current and/or potential customers. This familiarity kicks off the customer journey through the brand funnel (awareness, consideration, preference, action, loyalty). It increases your brand’s visibility and memorability in ways other marketing cannot.
Why is brand awareness important?
- Creates trust: The more familiar consumers are with your brand, the more they’ll trust you. Trust is everything! 49% of consumers start purchasing and/or purchase more from a company because of trust. 67% of consumers agree that a good reputation may get them to try a product, but unless they come to trust the company behind the product, they’ll soon stop buying. Become a well-known and reputable brand and you’ll gain the trust of customers/prospective customers. Then bridge the gap between trust and loyalty.
- Creates association: Brand awareness leads to the association of actions and products with branded terms (Xeroxing a copy, Googling a question, putting a Band-Aid on a cut, grabbing a Starbucks). The result is free marketing!
- Fulfills a future need: Strong brand awareness has long-term effects. By increasing brand awareness, you put your business on the radar for future purchasing decisions.
- Builds brand equity: Brand equity refers to a brand’s value. This is determined by consumer experience and overall perception of your brand. Higher perceived value allows for higher prices, the ability to expand product/service lines and greater social impact. Boosting brand awareness boosts brand equity.
- Expands your business: If your brand’s recognition/respectability is high, it enables you to expand into new markets and introduce new products/services.
