Understanding brand awareness is key to success. Check out What is Brand Awareness before continuing.
Now that you know what brand awareness is, it is important to know how to build your brand awareness. There are many ways to show your brand to the world. One way to show care your brand is getting creative with it.
As reported by Constant Contact on January 21, 2021 by Connor Benedict in the article, How to Build Brand Awareness: 20 Pro Tips
Brand awareness is one of the most important tools you can use to grow your business. It might be the deciding factor that helps you elevate your company to the next level. In this article, we’ll review 22 techniques you can use to maximize brand awareness for your own business.
21 Ways to Build Brand Awareness
If you want to establish strong brand awareness in a local, regional, national, or global market, you’re in the right place — you’re about to learn 21 techniques that will help you build brand awareness.
1. Advertising and Publicity
Before the Internet and social media, advertising and publicity reigned supreme
for brand building. Today, advertising is primarily used by consumer, retail and larger corporate brands. The advantage of advertising is speed and control with campaigns being launched relatively quickly through media channels that deliver relevant target audiences. The disadvantage of advertising is high costs.
Publicity in contrast, is free press coverage, interviews, and media placements that can accomplish brand awareness building, but might not be possible to achieve for certain brands or categories. Often publicity can be realized when combined with Cause Marketing for powerful publicity placements that position the brand as a leader and preferred brand in competitive markets. While publicity placements are free, investment is required to prepare the content and communications with editors, broadcasters, and journalists.
2. Utilize Brand Partnerships
Brand partnerships are one of the best ways to establish local brand awareness. In this method, you work with a business, school, or sports team to sponsor a local event.
You might provide them with money, equipment, uniforms, or even a venue for their event. In exchange, they’ll announce that the event was sponsored by your business. This can be done using banners, advertisements, or by including your company’s name in the event title.
Some of the most visible brand partnerships involve professional sports teams. Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Philadelphia Eagles, is sponsored by Lincoln Financial Group. The team benefits by having a state-of-the-art field and Lincoln gains visibility through the field’s name. The same could be done on a much smaller scale with your business.
3. Use Car Wraps
With the right design a car wrap gets you noticed everywhere you go.
Car wraps are an old-school method that still holds up to this day. This is when you cover a car with your logo, business information, and name. This could either be your personal vehicle or company car(s). If your wraps look cool enough, you might even attract people who want to wrap their own car with your branding.
Think of wrapped cars as mobile billboards. In traffic, people will gain familiarity with your brand. Just make sure your drivers are doing a good job on the road.
4. Start Some Controversy
his idea doesn’t work for everyone, but controversy is a sure way to attract attention. By churning the rumor mill, you might get some eyes looking at your company to learn more.
Make sure to carefully think out any controversial statements or positions before going public with them — you don’t want to attract negative press and end up losing business.
Consider taking a progressive or cutting-edge stance on a subject within your industry. People love to talk about new and revolutionary ideas, so this can provide you with a quick way to get your brand into the spotlight.
5. Offer Freemium Content
Freemium content is the idea of giving away a portion of your final product for free. For example, Constant Contact has a robust email marketing program, and they offer some freemium content. You can use a trial of their program for free and explore some of its functions.
This helps convert potential customers while building brand awareness. Freemium content should contain your brand name and links to your site in order to drive business.
6. Start a Referral Program
Referral programs are a method that has been getting more traction lately. The idea is that you offer your current customers an incentive to refer new customers. The best method would be to offer a two-way incentive.
The new customer and the former customer both get something free, a nice discount, added perks, or a gift card. Not only does it strengthen your customer base, but it also helps organically grow your business.
Maybe your car wash company offers 50% off a standard wash through a referral program. Current customers and their acquaintances benefit by getting a bargain and you’ll get new customers in exchange.
7. Tell Your Story
Don’t forget that the overarching idea here is creating a strong connection with current and potential customers. You want to come across as a person, not a company.
If you make your brand’s story compelling, people will connect with you. This story can be told on local news, it can be built into your branding, you can make posts about it, or you can take out ads.
At the end of the day, a story about who you are and how your company started will add a level of personalization to your brand.
8. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging works on many different levels. First and foremost, it gets your name out there. People will stumble across your brand in places where they might not expect it. It also gives you an opportunity to link back to your website. This increases traffic, helps with SEO, and further improves your brand awareness.
Keep in mind that you’ll need to produce quality content if you want your blog to be effective. Consider hiring a professional writer to help you with this if you don’t already have a strong background in writing. Make sure that your blog posts don’t present as advertisements. If readers think they’re being sold something, they’re less likely to engage with your post or recommend it to others.
Write something interesting that shows your industry knowledge and proves why you deserve to be the go-to brand for what you offer.
9. Start a Podcast
Another way to get your name out there and show your industry knowledge is through a podcast. This should be at least tangentially connected to your business’ offerings. Again, your content shouldn’t be overly salesy — consumers won’t listen to or recommend your podcast if it doesn’t provide them with useful information or entertainment.
If your money is in the finance field, you might start a podcast explaining the do’s and don’ts about personal finance. This will establish credibility within your field and make listeners more likely to call you first when they need financial services.
If nothing else, a decent podcast will drive traffic to your site, getting more eyes on your business and improving your brand awareness.
10. Social Media Advertising
There’s nothing like a good social media ad. These can be targeted to any demographic or location, so take some time to figure out what your strongest demographics are.
Even if social media users don’t interact with your ads, you’re still gaining visibility with potential customers in your area. Repeatedly seeing your name and the product that you provide will strengthen your brand awareness.
11. Improve SEO
SEO is another big focus for businesses, and it can make all the difference when it comes to online brand awareness. SEO stands for search engine optimization. The idea is that you can learn how prominent search engines work and use legitimate naming and keyword tactics to help your website show up in searches.
Many customers primarily use Google when they’re searching for a product or service, so it’s best to focus on optimizing for Google above other search engines. In an increasingly online world, SEO is often what determines the success — or failure — of modern brands.
12. Give Away Free Swag
People love free stuff. By giving away small free items with your name and details on them, you’ll gain goodwill with potential clients while increasing their exposure to your brand.
Examples of free swag could be t-shirts, koozies, keychains, frisbees, pens — anything that people might use that doesn’t cost you a lot of money. When they use your pen to write something, they will remember your name. Subconsciously or not, they’ll become more familiar with your brand.
13. Make Useful and Shareable Infographics
A well-done infographic, like this marketing and holiday planning infographic (created and published monthly by Constant Constant contact), branded with your company colors and logo, can create brand awareness as it gets shared across the internet
Another way to build brand awareness is to create free, viral content. If you put together a useful infographic that’s shareable, you can get a lot of attention.
This should be an idea that’s industry-specific. For example, you can explain how landfills are killing sea otters. Your company sells biodegradable cutlery and plates, so customers will reduce the harm done to sea otters if they choose you.
By doing the research and professionally putting it together, you’ll present yourself as an industry leader. People will look to you for more information. People will also gain familiarity with your brand name after seeing your infographic shared.
The beauty of this is that people will naturally share the infographic if the information pertains to them and is interesting. You create a viral marketing campaign simply by knowing your industry and presenting the information correctly. Don’t forget a Call to Action on the document that tells people to visit your site to learn more.
14. Inject Some Personality
Old Spice is an incredible example of injecting personality into marketing. Their whole brand is built around being a personable, humorous deodorant company.
You can use the same tactic for your brand. Add a little bit of humor, personality, and empathy to your brand. This goes back to the idea of making your company seem like a person, not a business.
If humor doesn’t come naturally, take some time to decide what traits best fit your brand and create a persona that reflects that. Don’t be afraid to take input from colleagues or family — they might bring up a marketable angle that you’ve missed.
15. Use PPC Google Ads
Since you understand how important Google is to a prospective customer, you should also know that Google Ads can be a powerful tool. These ads are Pay Per Click (PPC). You pay a certain amount of money per person that clicks your ad.
The ad will direct the traffic to your site. The beauty of these ads is that you don’t have to put together an incredible SEO plan or execute months’ worth of work. You can pay to have your link show up at the top of the list depending on what the customer searches.
However, you should still make sure that your ad is attractive and representative of your products or services — using deceptive or badly designed ads will hurt your brand image and decrease sales in the long run.
16. Partner with an Influencer
Some people make their living by being popular on social media. They’re called influencers and they’re always open to new business opportunities. This is good news for your company.
You can partner with an influencer in a couple of ways, depending on your business. One option is to pay them to give an honest review of your product.
You can also pay them to create random content about something related to your brand but not explicitly about your brand. They will tag you in their post, which drives traffic to your page and brand.
Just be sure to pick an influencer that matches the demographic that you’re targeting. Most influencers build their fame from a certain topic, industry, or area of thought.
17. Don’t Forget Your Social Media Presence
The idea of focusing on your social media presence can’t be stressed enough. Social media is completely free to use, and tons of people are using it non-stop every day. Free platforms like Facebook offer a lot of ways for your business to take off.
Pay attention to successful business accounts in your niche — while it’s essential to establish your own identity, it’s still helpful to see what your target demographic responds well to.
Make a concerted effort to engage with your customers. If you respond to their comments on your posts, you’ll let them know that you value their opinions. This will increase customer loyalty and strengthen your reputation.
18. Develop and Upkeep Your Voice
Throughout all of these techniques, you want to make sure that you keep your brand’s voice alive. The first part of this formula is to make sure you have a brand voice.
This is the way that you explain things, talk to people, and even sell your product. Using a different voice for every social media page will hint that you’re not being genuine. Alternatively, if you do a good job of upkeeping your voice, people will think that your posts are coming from a regular person, not a faceless company.
19. Throw a Social Media Contest
Why not throw a social media contest? By using special hashtags and looking for specific content, you’ll drive your brand awareness up.
For example, a dog food company might offer a $100 prize to whoever posts the most-liked picture of their dog with a hashtag of the company’s choosing. It’s essential that any contests you host be related to the product or service you provide. This will ensure that any entrants or spectators are potential customers.
If the contest goes well, you’ll get a huge following and a ton of clicks to your page. These clicks can translate to sales if you make it easy to find and purchase your products from your social media page. At the very least, you’ll walk away with improved brand awareness.
20. Retargeting Campaigns
The function of a retargeting campaign is to show an ad to someone who visited your site but didn’t buy anything. When they see your site, they have cookies stored on their computer. You can use this data to send them a follow-up ad on a web page they randomly visit in the future.
These ads could pop up as the customer is shopping somewhere, reading an article online, or shopping with your competitor.
This is an effective way to ensure that potential customers see your advertising over and over again. This increases brand awareness, increasing the probability of future sales.
21. Be a Local Hero
If your business targets local customers, then be a local hero. If you’re spotted shoveling snow for a neighbor, walking someone across the street, or helping someone in need, you become a local hero.
Better yet, you might decide to make a larger effort to help your community and involve the press. If you live in an area with cold winters, you might buy and distribute winter clothing. Local news channels or papers will likely be interested in covering such an event, which will strengthen your reputation and provide brand exposure at the same time.
What techniques will you use to show case your brand to your target audience?
Additional Brand Awareness Resources
7 Best Brands of 2020 (IDeas BIG)
The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness (HubSpot)
Building Your Offline Brand Online (IDeas BIG)
