Targeting brand awareness is one of the key pillars of a successful business: it allows you to be the first person consumers think of when they need a product or service.
Some time ago I told you about brand positioning and how important it is for your brand to have its own recognizable identity.
Do you remember what I was saying about that?
That, to be successful, you need to work on empathy with your customers and positively influence the perception of your brand if you want to position yourself uniquely and distinctively in the market.
Think about it, though: is it possible if people out there don't even know you exist?
That is why any marketing strategy, online and offline, cannot fail to consider the brand awareness.
Have you ever heard of them?
It is an expression that defines how recognizable and memorable a brand is among the public, in terms of notoriety and awareness.Understanding its value and improving it is essential to increasing the number of customers and profitability of your business.
In fact, it leads consumers to have an instinctive preference toward you, impacting their perceptions.
But what precisely is meant by brand awareness And how can you increase it?
Let's see it together.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the brand awareness: indicates how well an audience is able to recognize, identify and associate a brand with a company, product or service.
Basically, it is an indicator that people know that you exist and that your brand exists, but also what your distinctive and characteristic traits are-which is obviously related to your success.
It is what makes your brand perceived as familiar and thus predisposes people more to purchase: it happens that, even if a product/service has never been purchased or used, simply knowing the name can lead your potential customer to choose you over someone else, precisely because of the perceived sense of familiarity.
Working on brand awareness means making sure that your identity aligns with a certain recognizability. It is a concept that is not only about quantitative diffusion, but also about the ability to transfer values.
Once the public knows your brand, they begin to recognize it without assistance, seek it out to make a purchase and begin to prefer it to similar ones, consequently establishing loyalty that not only spurs further purchases, but also makes them recommend it to family and friends.
Why it matters in marketing
Brand awareness serves you for a simple, but fundamental, reason: to increase the likelihood that people will remember your brand when making a purchase where they have many alternatives available to them and will think of you when they need to solve a problem or meet a need.
Trivially, if you have a craving for something sweet and chocolaty, what will be the first thing that comes to mind? Buying a jar of Nutella, that goes without saying!
In fact, this means that consumers not only know your brand name, but are also able to recognize it (thanks, for example, to the graphics and logo) and attribute positive associations to it.
Basically, the more brand awareness you demonstrate, the more you can increase the profitability of your business: the greater the awareness and visibility, the higher the sales volume (and turnover).
It is especially important, for example, when launching new products on the market, because all things being equal, the target audience's choice will fall on the better-known brand.
It is also a major factor in influencing consumer behavior and making your name connect to the satisfaction of certain values.
How to measure brand awareness
You may be wondering, how can I know what level is my brand awareness?
In fact, it is something that is in the mind of the consumer. One tool that can help you is the so-called Aaker's pyramid, developed by the American economist of the same name, which provides a symbolic representation of the various levels of brand awareness. Here it is:
At the base is the absence of knowledge, then rising toward superficial or in-depth brand knowledge. We speak respectively of Brand Recognition (brand recognition through questions that call it to mind) and Brand Recall (when consumers spontaneously associate the brand with products or services without the need for external stimuli).
The tip, on the other hand, corresponds to the "Top of Mind": here the brand in question represents the consumer's first thought when it comes to repeat purchase experience.
To accurately measure the level of brand awareness achieved, what you need to do is to make use of tools of Data Analysis that can provide you with objective, quantifiable values (e.g., Google Analytics or Facebook Insights).
How to increase your brand awareness
A communication plan that aims to increase brand awareness has many arrows to its bow, both online and offline. However, you need to know how to use and enhance them in an integrated way.
As in any self-respecting strategy, the starting point is always the same: give yourself a clear business goal (also defining the KPI most important), find your positioning in your target industry, and choose your target audience. Only then can you identify the best communication channels to reach them.
Then there are a whole series of actions to consider, which go beyond simple ads or banner ads: here are some practical tips about them.
First of all, take the utmost care of the image of your brand: design is a key component of getting recognized and remembered, in all its components (logo, colors, font, etc.).
He then points to the valuable content: blogging or publishing lead magnets is not just a good way to find leads. They can optimize brand awareness and make it become synonymous with certain features and undisputed quality, giving you authority.
Don't forget to also take advantage of the SEO: optimize your website to improve Google rankings, study keywords to use, and include valuable content written with a view to SEO copywriting. This will allow you to rank among the top results in Google searches.
Build a strong presence on the social media: creating your business page on the channels where your users are and curating it with content they value is a great way to increase engagement. It allows you to reach your target audience directly, gaining visibility and communication opportunities. You can also work with the influencer: this method, however, only works if you choose the right people, who create real and tangible connection between the name and the target community.
Finally, among offline tools, there is one in particular that is sometimes underestimated but could give you great results instead: the creation and sale of personalized gadgets, that is, of products branded with your brand name. Have you ever thought about this? It is not a question in that case of wanting to make money from individual sales, as much as it is really about getting to physically in the hands of your customers and convey more concreteness than you are able to do through digital communication.
Would you like to know more about it? Well, in the next article I will tell you a lot about it 😉
Conclusion
Brand awareness is important because it establishes trust with your customers, creates positive associations, and builds invaluable value that allows you to become a household name and a reference point for your target audience.
The goal is to integrate into people's lifestyles and buying habits so that they don't have to think twice before becoming your customer, over and over again.
In all of this, however, there is one essential thing you must respect: the time. Other marketing strategies can yield good results quickly, but not brand awareness techniques: here you need structured work over months, sometimes years.
That is why it is important to start this journey with the right perspective: step by step. Eventually, though, the results will show (and how!).
If you really want to make a difference, don't miss the next article, in which I'll talk about how branded products can increase brand awareness and foster the success of your business.
Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash