How to Build Brand Awareness

What causes a brand to become a household name? Think Netflix, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Nintendo.

It all boils down to brand awareness. When your target audience associates your brand with a particular experience and can correctly tie that feeling to the specific products and services you offer, that's what's known as brand awareness.

For example, Coca-Cola almost always comes to mind when you are talking about having a soft drink.

Can you grow your business to the level of brand awareness that gets your target audience to associate it with a particular experience? Yes, but there is some legwork involved.

Let's go further into the details about how you can create awareness of your brand online.

Practical Ways To Increase Brand Awareness for Your Company

Guest Blog on Authority Sites

Blog posts are an excellent way to put your brand's name on search engines for people to discover, but they can only do as much. You can attract new audiences and increase brand awareness for your business through guest blogging.

A little research should suffice. Ask yourself what brands I can partner with in the future and are in an industry complementary to my own?

Research whether they have high website traffic and high domain authority? After identifying potential brands to pitch for a guest blog, analyze their brand voice, messaging, and audience.

You want your guest blog to align with their brand message. But, ultimately, your focus should be on delivering helpful, actionable information that their readers will want to check out your brand.

Here are aspects of guest blogging that will make their readers want to check you out:

1. Leaving a clear and concise author bio, especially when the target website prohibits incorporating backlinks to your website within the main body of your guest blog
2. Incorporate at least one link to one of your website's best blog posts
3. Asking readers to leave comments and share the post
4. Promoting the blog post on your company's social media platforms
   

Adam Steele from Loganix has a detailed spreadsheet of sites that accept guest blogs.

Maximize Your Organic Social Media Presence

When it comes to organic social media, you might want to cast a wide net by building brand awareness on almost all the social media platforms.

But that might not be a good idea because not all the platforms have your target audience. And if you are kickstarting your business, it's essential to be super-specific about the customers you want to target.

You want to target customers who want to know about your products or services. For example, Twitter and LinkedIn might be very effective social media platforms for B2B brands. On the other hand, if you run a C2C business, you might fare well on Tik Tok.

Whether you want to establish your presence on all the platforms or have specific social media channels in mind, it pays to maximize your company's presence on them.

So what can you do to increase brand awareness on social media platforms?

1. Focus on creating more valuable content for your social media fans instead of only promoting your product or service. It's more like the content helps them learn something new or find something, and they will reciprocate by purchasing your product.
2. Build relationships with your audience by liking and replying to their comments. If your audience can interact with you, it personalizes their experience and creates word-of-mouth effects for your brand.
3. Create contests revolving around your brand. For example, you can ask your fans to submit a video or article about how your product or service impacted their life. The best story wins a prize.
4. Post content formats that attract high customer engagement and clicks. Yes, having a mix of formats like video, image, and text is crucial. But specific content types are likely to generate more web traffic than others, e.g., videos
   

If you don’t have the expertise to run social media for your business, it is advisable to get professional aid for the same. It saves you time so you can focus on other core areas in your business, and allows your business to get expert help in that area.

Develop a Voice for Your Brand.

Do you want to create a strong brand recognizable to everyone and set you apart in your niche? If your answer is yes, you might want to consider cultivating a unique brand voice.

What the heck does brand voice even mean? It's simple! Haven't you noticed the consistent messaging most established brands have adopted throughout their existence?

For example, with over 130 years in existence, Coca-Cola still maintains its primary message, i.e., evoking happiness in its customers. Also, Nike is a well-known brand for the tagline 'Just Do It.'

But what is it about those companies that you can apply to your business to enable people to become aware of your brand?

To build a solid brand voice, develop a distinct personality, tell compelling stories, and share memorable content. And that should apply to all your messaging platforms, including social media channels, newsletters, and websites.

Start a Podcast.

As you adopt different marketing efforts for increasing brand awareness, podcasting can be one of them. It is an excellent way to build relationships, refer listeners to your website and convert leads into customers.

According to Infinite Dial, 62 % of the 12+ U.S. population have ever listened to a podcast in 2022, up from 57% in 2021. That's a whopping 177 million people based on their estimates!

Imagine if your podcast could tap into such a high number of online listeners. And the beauty about? You could start as a solo podcaster and then gradually invite thought leaders within your industry as the podcast grows.

Furthermore, there are other several advantages to using podcasts to build brand awareness, including:

1. You can cover a broad range of topics in a single podcast
2. Your target audience can listen to you whenever they want, even when they are busy
3. They can also share and comment on the podcast and enable you to reach several listeners
4. It's easier to combine educational content with humor and entertainment
   

So get behind the mic and start building brand recognition by teaching your audience about your area of expertise!

Invest in SEO and Rank For Industry Terms

You are a small business or even an established one without a solid online presence. You want to grow and position your company as a customer's go-to brand.

Is search engine optimization (SEO) worth exploring? Absolutely.

You want to position your website at the top of the search engine results page on Google - the most popular search engine commanding 92% of all searches.

If you are beginning to build your SEO marketing campaign, your biggest goal is to grow brand awareness among your customers. So what strategy should you adopt?

1. Research specific industry terms (keywords) your target customers are searching - this should help you know their specific wording, popularity, and dollar value. You can start by brainstorming keywords that you think represent your brand and are of interest to customers. Subsequently, type those keywords into a keyword tool to confirm their suitability and generate other terms. But, again, your focus should be on eliminating too competitive keywords. Keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SemRush are very effective at determining low-competition high R.O.I. keywords you can create content around.
2. Analyze your competition in greater detail to figure out their SEO marketing campaigns within your locality and how you can promote your brand differently.
3. Create high-quality, keyword-rich content that matches user intent. The content should reflect the findings of your research and include quality backlinks.
   

However, as a business owner, you may not have the time to do the SEO yourself. If that is the case, then hiring SEO professionals on Legiit will be a life saver for your business.

Build a Community

Every great brand has one thing in common: they build an engaging community around their brand. People from your brand community will tell friends and family about your brand.

Let's put it on the table: brand community determines the authenticity of your brand. And it's that authenticity that defines how familiar your target customers are with your brand, aka brand awareness.

There are several vital questions you need to ask yourself when creating brand awareness through building a brand community, including:

• What goals will the community address?
• How is the brand going to meet its community's specialized needs?
• On what platforms will the community exist? Will it be on social media, forums, or both? Creating a referral program is another excellent way of building a brand community.
• What roles will community members assume to foster engagement and inclusion? The functions could include talent scouts, mentors, supporters, educators, and more.
• Are their strategies for in-person events for meeting the community members?
• Is there an evaluation methodology, i.e., how to measure brand awareness within the community?
  

Harley-Davidson, aka Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.), is a great example of how building a community contributes to your overall marketing strategy.

The H.O.G. community shares endless stories of their personal experiences on their motorcycles. This helps foster an emotional connection with the company.

Give Something Away for Free.

Oh! "Nothing is free," it's said. But take an in-depth look at every great brand, and you'll witness them dishing out free stuff all in an attempt to boost brand awareness.

And what makes it even more interesting? Fewer customers, if any, don't love free stuff.

So, depending on the product that your company sells, always conduct giveaways campaigns via your website, newsletter, or social media.

And while at it, focus on building awareness of your brand among consumers jumping at the free products or services you offer.

It seems counterintuitive to offer freebies without receiving any money in return. But when done well and consistently, your brand name will grow immensely.

Think about the positive reviews and recommendations you will get from your brand consumers.

Advertise

You might have discovered a free offer for a product before, but here's the question: How did the offer come to your attention? You guessed it right. Ads.

While ads might be almost exclusively effective at creating product awareness in digital marketing, you cannot underestimate them in building brand awareness.

Your brand awareness campaign via ads might include paid social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, or both.

Even then, advertising does not only involve running ad campaigns alone. You can go for influencer marketing! Here, you can collaborate with people with great personal brands on social media to help promote your brand to their followers.

Build a Strategy For Your Brand Awareness Campaign On Social Platforms

The best way to create a strategy is to analyze your target audience thoroughly. Here is how to build your brand strategy.

Make a Plan to Build Awareness By Focusing on What They Want

You've created a service or product that correctly addresses a specific problem in your locality. But it can fail to capture the proper attention if you don't understand the audience that needs it.

Ask yourself what are my audience's fears, paint-points, frustrations, and joys? Also, establish demographic data like age, gender, and social status.

Your objective is to know those aspects of your audience that make them tick in order to be specific in your messaging.

Position Yourself Where They Are

Your brand doesn't have to be on every social platform. Here are some critical questions to ask yourself:

• Where does your target audience like to hang out?
• Which social platforms do they depend on for information?
• Where do they like to spend their money?

Once you nail down two or three social networks where your audience likes to spend time, make the most out of industry-related trending hashtags. Then, you can use them to promote your brand.

Give Them a Reason To Follow You

Show your audience that it's worth sticking around your brand. You can achieve this by sharing educational content that teaches them something they are unaware of within your niche.

Moreover, create funny and entertaining content that appeals to their emotions and encourages them to share with others. Inspirational posts are also great at enhancing follows and shares.

So keep it informative, make it entertaining, and maintain an inspirational outlook in your posts.

How To Build Brand Awareness: Frequently Asked Questions

What is brand awareness strategy?

Brand strategy refers to the marketing efforts a brand adopts to help its brand message reach a wider audience. The objective is for the brand to establish a long-lasting impression among consumers.

How do you create positive brand awareness?

It all boils down to knowing your target audience, understanding their needs, and addressing those needs in a way that is distinct from other brands. Additionally, be sure your messaging is consistent throughout your campaigns and avoid negative press.

What is a brand awareness example?

You might have encountered the "Keep Walking" slogan by the whiskey brand Johnnie Walker severally. But, did you know that back in the 80s, the company was almost on the brink of collapse due to its identity as an older adult's drink?

But thanks to a shift in its messaging appeal, it successfully reinvented itself from a brand obsessed with itself to a customer-centric brand targeting consumers aged 15-35 years.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, brand awareness makes a company plaster itself in customers' minds in the years to come. And if done consistently, you can quickly build a community of brand loyalists who will be happy choosing your product without thinking twice.

So include the above brand awareness campaigns in your marketing to create a solid brand in your industry.