So you’ve got a brand you’re unleashing on the world and you want to know how to get more brand awareness right?
Brand awareness is one of the most pressing tasks whether you have a new brand or an established brand.
If your brand name is on the lips or in the minds of your audience, then you’ve cracked one of the most critical goals of branding your business.
In this article we break down 12 techniques you can use to first establish and then increase your brand awareness.
Brand Awareness Definition
Brand awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with a your brand and what it offers to the market.
In other words, brand awareness is about making your brand familiar to the market.
If your audience knows who you are, what you do or even better, why what you do is valuable to them… then the chances of your brand being in the mix in the buying decision process is increased exponentially.
Why Brand Awareness Is So Critical
In short, if no one sees your brand, knows who it is and what it does then your offer of goods or services is irrelevant.
You could have the best service in the world with an extraordinary offer to boot, but if you don’t leverage techniques to tell people about it, then it might as well be a figment of your imagination.
Your job as a brand builder is to get your brand and it’s messaging in front of as many of the most relevant eyeballs as possible.
Only then, will you get the opportunity to engage with them and let them know what your brand does, and more importantly, why that’s important and valuable to them.
That’s why first establishing and then raising your brand awareness is so critical.
The more people that know the value your brand brings to the table, the more people turn into leads and then of course, sales.
PRO Brand Strategy BluePrint
Build Brands Like A Pro Brand Strategist
How To Develop Brand Awareness
So now we know we need to raise brand awareness, how do we go about it?
This is where brand strategy meets marketing strategy.
Below, there are many examples of brand awareness techniques, but every brand is different and some of these techniques will be more effective for some brands than others.
Your marketing strategy therefore should identify where your audience is and how to engage with them to get your brand message under their noses.
Here are some of the most impactful ways to gain exposure and reach within your target market.
Explore Brand Strategy
Programs & Tools
Brand Awareness Technique #1
Be Where Your Audience Is
Despite what some marketers say, traffic is not something you create. It’s something you tap into.
Your audience is already online.
They’re using search engines, they’re browsing social media, they’re reading forums or any of the other countless activates or tasks we partake in online.
They’re there and no doubt Google and Facebook have a million data points on their online activity.
The point is, that whether you’re online on not, your audience most certainly is. Congregating, contributing, digesting information on the very problem your brand solves.
Once you know where they are… you just need to go there too.
Brand Awareness Technique #2
Be Helpful Without Asking
(The ask comes later)
Building brand awareness is not about sales. Sales come later when the relationship is better established.
If, when you identify where your audience is, you go in like a gun slingin sales machine pushing your products or services on them, you’ll gain some awareness alright…but not the kind you’re after.
None of us like being sold to, least not from someone we don’t know.
Raising brand awareness is about showing why you’re relevant.
The best way to do that is to help your audience solve a problem around your area of expertise.
So when you arrive at where your audience is, be as helpful as you possibly can without asking for anything in return.
Over time, your audience will begin to position you in their mind as an expert.
Brand Awareness Technique #3
Create Useful Branded Content
Your audience has more than one problem you can help them with.
In and around your area of expertise, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of smaller challenges that they deal with every day.
By creating content that address these smaller issues and provides value in the form of an answer or understanding or direction, you extend your ability to help your audience with these small challenges.
Every challenge you help your audience with, is another valuable slice of trust earned.
A person that uses your content to improve their situation will remember that gesture and are far more likely to recall your brand or share the content with others.
Brand Awareness Technique #4
Use Publishing Platforms
As you create your content you have plenty of options to distribute it.
There are countless platforms you can post this content to where your audience are already congregating.
This means that even if your website has zero traffic, you can leverage these publishing platforms to tap into theirs.
Youtube, Medium, Likedin Publishing are all examples of platforms where the people you want to reach are going in search of answers.
Leverage this traffic and get your content under their noses.
These platforms are invaluable as it offers you the ability to put your content in front of people you might not have otherwise had the exposure to.
Brand Awareness Technique #5
Leverage A Human Brand Persona
A brand is an entity that people engage before ever becoming a customer.
This engagement could be with a social media post, a blog article, a how-to video or any number of touch points a brand may have with its audience.
If, when you engage with a brand, it feels like you’re speaking with a corporate entity with no feelings and no personality, you’re far less likely to want to continue that engagement.
If, on the other hand the engagement feels human, if the content is written in a human voice, the how-to video displays some personality or the social media post oozes character, you’re far more likely to want to stick around.
The days of corporate speaking entities are gone.
Brands today need to be more human than they’ve ever been before.
It needs beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes and opinions, which make human connections and establish real relationships.
Brand Awareness Technique #6
Engage Your Target Market With Personality
Through a human persona, your brand will have a fully-fledged personality to engage your audience with.
If your personality is developed with the audience in mind and considers their desires and motivations, then it is far more likely to strike a chord with who they are and ultimately resonate.
So get to know your audience on a human level. Understand the language they use and the characteristics they’re attracted to so you can approach them with a familiar and welcome personality.
Brand Awareness Technique #7
Utilise Brand Storytelling
As humans, we’re 22 times more likely to remember story than we are simple fact sharing.
We love stories because we see ourselves in the characters.
We relate to their fears, struggles, challenges and triumphs and we cheer them along every step of the way because of that.
As you engage your audience, wrap your messages up in stories that they can relate to.
If your audience sees themselves in your brand story, you have dramatically increased the chances that they’ll remember your brand.
Brand Awareness Technique #8
Focus Your Social Media Marketing
There are more social platforms out there than you can shake a stick at.
These platforms are all different which means that they don’t just attract different groups of people but these people are in different emotional states depending on what app they’re using.
As part of your marketing strategy it’s important to first identify the social platforms you’re most likely to find your audience on, the best state in which to engage them and then prioritize which platforms to focus on.
Because these platforms represent different environments, your message should feel relevant to the platform and therefore each platform message should be tailored as such.
Brand Awareness Technique #9
Guest As An Expert on Podcasts
As you look to extend the reach of your brand, a great way to do that is by gaining exposure to different audiences.
Podcasts are growing in popularity and represent an increasingly relevant way for consumers to find the information they need to solve their problems.
Leverage the expertise you have in your field by appearing as a guest on a podcast your audience listens to.
If you’re able to provide useful information or a solution to one of their challenges, they’ll want to hear more from you and follow the call to action of the podcast host to connect with your brand.
Brand Awareness Technique #2
Invest in SEO
SEO is a long term strategy that doesn’t see results overnight though there is no time too early to begin investing in SEO.
As you leverage various brand awareness techniques, chances are you’ll be helping people to overcome challenges in the form of some kind of content.
If one person has this problem then you can bet your bottom dollar they’re not the only one.
If you can wrap up your solution or advice in a blog post, and follow and SEO structure, then you’ll increase your chances of that post being found, this driving traffic to your website.
Of course this is an oversimplification of SEO and doesn’t cover the legwork involved, but every post is a deposit in the ranking bank and over time, Google will see you as a legitimate source of valuable information and drive more traffic to your site.
Brand Awareness Technique #10
Use Pay Per Click Advertising
Many businesses come to the market with a shorter time frame for success than an SEO strategy on its own will require.
There is a quicker way however to get to the top of Google. Pay-Per-Click Advertising.
Google are more than happy to bump you up ahead of those brands that have been producing content for years so long as you have the funds to play the game.
If you have keywords you want to appear for and the budget to pay for them, then Google has your back.
This was a much more realistic strategy for smaller businesses some years ago when they could afford to pay the asking rate for the click and still come out with a profit.
Over time however, smaller businesses have been priced out of the market of bigger corporations.
That said; there are still plenty of Niches where keywords are still affordable and this strategy can be leveraged effectively.
Brand Awareness Technique #11
Boost Your Engagement With Paid Social
Paid social advertising is a far more cost-effective solution for smaller businesses when compared to PPC advertising.
Facebook has become to go to for small businesses with an advertising budget looking for an immediate impact.
For pennies on the dollar, you can have your custom designed advertisement on the scroll of your exact audience.
You can specify with granular detail who you want your ads to be shown to and no matter where they are in the world, Facebook will oblige and get your message out there.
Though these ads are still relatively cheap, most ads are dismissed by default and unless your ad is very specifically dialed in to who your audience is and the pain-points they have, Facebook ads can be an endless money pit.
Brand Awareness Technique #12
Leverage Remarketing Campaigns
Remarketing offers one of the highest ROI’s of all paid advertising.
Using cookies and pixels, Facebook and Google will allow you to place ads in front of the exact people who have visited your website and even more specifically, those who have visited exact pages (such as your checkout page).
This allows you to get a message in front of people who are far more likely to become a customer than the general public, due to the actions they’ve taken.
The more these people see your brand name and messages, the higher their level of awareness.
Conclusion
Raising your brand awareness is one of the most pressing tasks for any brand.
It’s great that you have an awesome product or service that helps your customers but unless people know about it, you won’t be helping anyone.
Get out there and tell the world, not just what you do, but also why they should care and the value it brings.
Have you recently built a brand and which of the techniques above have you used to raise awareness.
I’d love to hear your experience and thoughts on how you’re going about raising awareness and which of the above techniques are relevant to your brand.
Let me know in the comments Right Now!
On-Demand Digital Program
Brand Master Secrets
Make the transition from hired-gun to highly valued brand strategist in less than 30 days. The systems, frameworks and tools inside this comprehensive program are all you need to level up.
Related Posts
For me, most of my clients are on Instagram and in FB Business Groups. I find that I have more engagement on IG so as part of my strategy for brand awareness I make sure to continue using my brand colors and fonts for consistency in addition to using my brand’s tone in almost every post. I feel more relatable to my clients doing that instead of just taking an informational-only approach. Thanks for this. I will try these additional methods.
Hey Nicole – One of the biggest problems we need to overcome is simply picking a direction and going all in… We try to do everything and spread ourselves too thin… Your IG approach is solid… Consistency now is the key :) – good luck