By
Sarah Harris
Brand awareness is a simple term that essentially means exactly what it sounds like. It refers to a metric that quantifies brand recognition among customers and members of the general public. In layman’s terms, brand recognition refers to how well your general audience knows your company and your products.
If you run a company, the quality of your brand is likely very important to you. However, many business owners tend to focus more on sales numbers than they do on one simple yet crucial question; Do people know about your brand?
What is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is about more than whether your customers have a good understanding of your brand. The concept is focused on potential customers for your business, the target audience for your products or services.
With successful brand awareness, your target audience will have increased knowledge about your brand. This includes what your brand stands for, and how your products could fit into their lifestyle.
The Importance of Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is extremely important for the success of your business. The more your current customers know about your brand and products, the more clientele you’ll be able to achieve through social influence. The general public will also have a more comprehensive idea of the nuances of your brand; which can get lost in certain types of advertising.
How is Brand Awareness Measured?
Measuring your word-of-mouth brand awareness can be difficult. However, you can easily track what your customers and target audience are saying about your brand online. You do this by using media monitoring apps, such as Brand24, or the analytic tools on your social media pages.
With these tools, you can track how often your brand is mentioned and in what context. You can also see how many people have viewed and interacted with the information. In order to build brand awareness, you’ll want to increase these numbers over time so that more people are talking about your brand.
How to Build Brand Awareness
When you’re trying to develop your brand awareness, there are two distinct phases: Building from the ground up and increasing your pre-existing audience. Your starting point for brand awareness will typically depend on the current age, size, and scope of your business.
Here are a few of the most productive things to focus on when you’re building brand awareness from the ground up.
Be a Person, Not a Company
The best way to reach potential customers is to appeal to them on a personal level. When people are getting to know each other, they want to hear about hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on.
While your relationship with people as a brand will be naturally different than an interpersonal relationship, you should try to model the former after the latter. How would you define your brand in a way that makes people feel as though they can connect to it?
Do Your SEO Research
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the act of making your website more easily accessible on popular search engines like Google. The best way to boost your SEO is to utilize popular keywords that potential customers will search when they are looking for your brand or something like it.
While you’re at it, make sure your website is optimized for user-friendliness with fast loading speeds and a clear, yet appealing layout.
Guest Blog for Other Sites
Guest blogging on other companies’ websites is a lot like interpersonal networking in a business setting. It allows you to collaborate with other companies that have similar products and brand identities, while potentially increasing your own brand awareness with their customer base.
You can tailor your blog topics to each individual brand to make sure that the pairing feels natural and can be beneficial to both companies.
Develop Your Social Media Presence
Social media is the way of the future — not just for interpersonal connection and communication it provides. When you expand your reach through social media, you’ll be able to increase brand awareness throughout multiple demographics.
Make sure to regularly interact with your audience on social media and create authentic content that encourages a high level of interaction.
How to Increase Brand Awareness
Once you’ve built a baseline level of brand awareness, there are a few key ways to optimize your efforts and grow your presence even more. Here are a few examples:
Partner with Influencers
Influencers are online personalities that have built a strong base of fans based on their content, their character, or a mixture of both. They use their station to influence the viewing or buying choices of their followers.
Working with influencers can help to increase your brand awareness in a personalized way by appealing directly to your target audience through a familiar (and influential) name and face.
Use Branded Packaging
Why ship your products in a plain cardboard box when you could use your packaging as another boost to your brand awareness?
Your customer’s experience begins the moment they receive their package. Uniquely designed packaging that matches your brand’s aesthetic will boost the quality of that experience.
Branded packaging also acts as a form of free advertisement as it travels from your shipping facility to your customer’s door.
Partner with Other Brands
Much like guest blogging, partnering with other brands allows both companies to benefit from the brand awareness of the other, which increases exposure and sales for both companies. With a partnership, you’ll increase your value to your existing customer base by exposing them to similar brands that they might like based on their loyalty to yours.
Where to Go From Here
Branding is a complex topic that would take several more articles to fully cover. At Print Bind Ship, we’re here to help with all of your branding needs. Launching a startup? Make sure to check out our startup voucher to get your company going with eCommerce integration, customer retention, and much more. While you’re at it, consider a free consultation with one of our experts!