Brand awareness is one of the main goals of marketing along with sales growth. If buyers do not know the company, they will choose its competitors more often. Digital trends expert Gabriel Shaulian writes that consistently improving visibility across platforms increases sales by an average of 23%.
It all starts with naming. As you name the ship, you will simplify PR. Many brands have secured free publicity with a provocative or catchy name alone.
In simple terms, brand awareness is when people know the name of a company or recognize a brand among others. In a broader sense, this is the name of everything that the company is known for. Usually they use this approach to recognition: the more people know about the company, the better.
Brand recognition is often the first and most important step in a customer’s journey to purchase. If a consumer is unaware of a brand, they are less likely to buy its product. It happens that customers make purchases without first getting to know the company – for example, this is how impulsive purchases work. However, industries where brand recognition means little are rather in the minority. If you have a real estate photography business, you need to make sure that all the famous real estate agencies know about you using all the PR tricks.
If a consumer doesn’t know about a company, they most likely won’t buy from it. Therefore, recognition is often considered as the essence of a brand. It’s a way to bring the team together. Top-level executives often track brand awareness. The indicator is convenient to use to monitor the progress of the business. As a rule, if awareness grows, then the position of the business improves.
Brand awareness is an indicator in business. You can compare these two figures. It is necessary to set a goal: the expected recognition in readiness to buy from you. Then more people will buy your brand’s products, and the company’s market share will supply. The same applies to the provision of services. If you are a tax consultant desired by many big companies and want more companies to use your services, you need to work on your reputation.
The best results are shown by companies that develop a marketing plan to increase awareness. The plan should follow the brand strategy. Recognition needs to be worked on both in the short and long term. The strategy must take this into account. You should not focus on one tool – you need to look for a balance. If you’ve taken advantage of email marketing trends and felt the impact on your brand awareness, then keep using it. When you want to build brand awareness in the long run, remember that people need to buy today. If you’re building brand awareness today, remember to take long-term action as well.
The best results are obtained by an integrated approach that takes into account the characteristics of the target audience. Many brands and media compete for consumer attention. The more tools used to promote the brand, the larger the audience. If you offer free financial reporting software solutions, you can focus on finance and accounting firms, large companies and also small businesses. Advertising is an effective way to reach a mass audience. Advertising can be shown to hundreds and thousands of people. The best way to increase brand awareness through advertising is to create creatives that will be remembered. Brands are constantly competing for the attention of consumers, but only those who are different from others achieve success.
Main advertising channels:
- social networks;
- search engines;
- TV;
- radio;
- newspapers and magazines.
Public relations (PR). Unlike advertising, PR is like one-on-one communication between a company and consumers. Among PR techniques, there are many that can be used to increase awareness. For example:
- Promotion of information in publications that are ready to present a positive and reliable image of the brand.
- Working with influencers, influencers and bloggers. If a blogger on YouTube or another social network has a lot of subscribers, the company will be able to reach a large audience through him.
Not only you want to increase brand awareness, but also your competitors. Any company is fighting for customers in a market where there is a lot of “noise”. Marketing and advertising is a tight space. Advertising is a proven way to reach a large mass of people. But consumers are bad at remembering brands. According to Marketing Week, only 20% of people will remember an ad the next day and be able to recognize the advertised brand in it. There is a way to overcome this – to create signals that will tie ads to your brand.
Awareness needs to be explored in the context that best fits the business. So, there is a big difference between financial services and loans for students. Therefore, for measurement, you need to select the appropriate target audience and formulate accurate questions.
Do you offer student loans but want to expand your range of services? Then it is better to ask broad questions. So you can understand what you will have to face in your work and who your competitors are.
Final thoughts
The level of recognition needs to be compared with the size of your company. Large brands usually have a high and at the same time stable level of recognition. The recognition of such a company can be measured using unprompted questions. Smaller companies can do one thing very well and want to focus on building visibility for that narrow offering. Therefore, they focus on recognizability with a hint.