What is a brand? It is the whole meaning and concept of your company represented by its name, symbols, logo and slogans. Building brand awareness is highly important in order to get your products/services jump above others, stand out, be noticed and remembered. It leads to creating a long-term and strong position in today’s free market. The apex of brand awareness are proprietary eponyms. Do you ask for a plastic bandage or a Band-Aid? For a cola or a Coke? These brand names have replaced every generic term for any similar product in various languages across the globe.
Developing The Brand’s Meaning and Message
This is the first step when creating long- and short-term advertising goals – to create brand awareness. The customers have to be aware of your brand and its meaning, so you would be able to motivate them to buy or create a favorable impression. Brand name and anything related to its products is communicated through marketing messages delivered via various media channels. When people know you exist, the buzz on the market is created.
Top of Mind Awareness
If customers need to purchase a product within your product category and they think of you first, you have officially reached the highest level of brand awareness. Top of mind awareness can be built through consistent delivery of high quality products/services over time and through repeated exposure. This awareness put your company in huge advantage over the competition in your business niche.
Building Equity
In order to develop a solid brand equity, you must first take the level of brand awareness higher. Equity is, to put it simple, the value of your company’s brand beyond physical assets. Your overall brand value and profit potential will grow as people become more aware of you. This leads to strengthening your reputation, ramping your customer loyalty, and growing customer base.
Using Technological Advancements
Today, everything is online, and if you are not present on the Internet, then your business might suffer. The evolution of digital technology and the Internet has made the importance of brand awareness more significant than before. The number of people who use smartphones and tablets has surpassed the number of those that use PCs. People use their mobile devices to search for products, thus by investing in your online presence and by using social media, information about your brand can be communicated quickly.
You probably won’t reach the kind of brand awareness pinnacle that Coca-Cola did, but it does not mean that you cannot do something to boost your brand awareness.
- Social Media Contests – Try running a social media contest in which the contestants submit a video or a photo, with a voting poll where visitors can vote for their favorites. They will share links to your social media pages and build your brand awareness.
- Paid Social Advertising – Businesses are turning to paid social advertising more, because organic social marketing is becoming more and more difficult. Your brand can be seen on social media through paid Twitter and Facebook ads. They are relatively cheap and, most importantly, attract the audience.
- Promo material – There are various solutions for the promotional material that should be handed on meetings, business fairs, and other kinds of happenings. From neat self-adhesive stickers to flyers, key chains, pencils, mugs, notebooks, caps and t-shirts, with your brand name and logo printed on it will surely attract attention, and get people to want to know about it.
- Local Partnerships – Getting involved with local partnerships is a great way for building a brand, especially for businesses that are local-oriented. Find other local businesses and partner up. Hold join festivals and seminars, donate to charity events, or sponsor local sport teams. If your brand logo and name are seen all around events and festivals, it will have a huge positive impact on your brand.
Conclusion
Brand awareness can also serve as an excellent and useful executive metric. Executives use it as evidence and result of their company’s success, which they report to the shareholders, the board, the CEO, and other stakeholders. One more reason for measuring and tracking brand awareness over time.