Brand awareness is an intrinsic part of the success of any company. If consumers know who you are, they recognise you and they immediately know what your product is, chances are they’ll buy from you.
That’s why even the most successful brands never stop spending on their brand awareness campaigns.
In this guide, we’ll run through eight digital marketing techniques that any business can use to help them build that all-important brand awareness.
Defined as “the extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services”, brand awareness is all about letting people know who you are and what you do.
It occurs the second someone remembers your brand, from previously seeing it somewhere else, and is aware of your products and services. But it’s so much more than that.
It’s also about your reputation and your brand signalling. The latter is focused on what purchasing your product says about that person to their peers.
You need to get your message out there – to existing customers, potential customers and their peers. And always in the right way. Here are your eight tactics to do just that.
Consistency is crucial. Your messaging, tone, brand look and feel, and imagery need to be consistent across all of your customer touchpoints. While you might dial up or down your tone depending on where you’re talking to your customers, whether social media, through your ads, or on your website, they need to instantly recognise your brand.
Inconsistency leads to confusion which will have a negative impact on your brand awareness and brand signalling.
When it comes to creating your digital display ads for instance you need a solution that helps you build on brand ads that are exactly in line with the rest of your branding. Poor quality ads will impact your immediate campaign KPIs in terms of click-through rate and conversion rate, but they will also negatively impact your brand awareness.
If a user lands on your site, they’re aware of it and your business. That’s the first aspect of your brand awareness, but it shouldn’t stop there. You know the stat about only 2% of consumers converting on their first visit to a website?
Retargeting is an essential tool in your brand awareness campaigns to ensure new customers enter the top of your funnel. Once a user has landed on your site, consider what’s the next logical step to assist them with their needs.
Do they need more information about your brand? Were they looking at a specific product and could they benefit from seeing that product again? Would a retargeted ad that focuses on a category of products help them make their choice?
The process of retargeting users and ensuring that they see your brand wherever they are online is the first step to help build brand awareness. But by tailoring your ads to their specific needs and helping users, you’ll become a much more helpful, relevant and memorable.
Understand your users. Define their needs and intent. Retarget them with relevant ads. That should be your mantra.
Always remember that users and consumers are real people. They have wants, needs and desires. They’ll also be feeling a particular way at a specific time.
Consider the weather. A sunny day brings feelings of fun and possibilities . A rainy day could spell the opposite. What’s happening around them at a particular time will stir specific emotions. The same can be said of political events or the news agenda.
If you can understand how your users are feeling and tap into these emotions with relevant ads that speak to them in that moment, you’ll truly become a memorable brand. Dynamic ads provide the tools to create this relevancy.
SEO is a long-term tactic to help you build brand awareness. And while you might think that your keyword strategy should focus on your brand and product terms, you’d actually only be half of the way there.
To build brand awareness through SEO you also need to answer the most important questions your customers have. Consider how people search through search engines. In most instances they’ll ask questions they need answering. Especially if they don’t yet know your brand or your products.
Increase your keyword research to focus on the key questions your customers are searching for around your products and then provide tailored answers through your onsite content. Helpful, relevant and authoritative content will see you ranking well for these questions. And if you help your customers, they’ll remember you.
If you have physical locations, don’t simply limit your retargeting to the online world. You can employ similar tactics to increase your brand awareness and target those users that have already visited your premises or are in the vicinity.
Geofencing Ads give you the capability to draw a fence around your location and serve ads to anyone that has visited you or is close by. You can even do it around one of your competitors’ locations to get the message out about your business.
Just make sure you get your messaging right and give those users an incentive to come and visit you.
Your social media channels should be at the core of your brand awareness strategy. They promise potential reach and high levels of engagement.
But don’t fall into the trap that too many brands do. If you just talk about yourself and your products, no one will really care. You simply won’t break through the noise and you’ll be doing nothing for your brand awareness.
You have to listen to your customers. In just the same way as you do for your website content, it’s crucial to be there for your users and cater to their needs. Answer their questions, be relevant to their conversations and tailor your messaging in line with their comments about your brand.
To do this, you need the right social listening tools underpinning your strategy and you have to act on the insights they provide.
What audience are you targeting your digital display campaigns?
When it comes to brand awareness, you can’t just throw your message out there and hope for the best. It’s crucial to understand which users bring the most value to your business and the ads that perform and convert for these users.
The insights you secure from your display campaigns will be crucial to help you understand your customer demographics and target your ads towards these users.
What metrics are you currently reporting on to understand this? Are you reporting on the following?
This business intelligence gives you the tools to understand the performance of your previous campaigns and enables you to futureproof the success of your upcoming campaigns.
You have the data to understand that a type of deal, offer or creative resonates with key audiences in line with detailed variables and factors. This gives you the understanding of where future spend should be allocated, enabling you to truly tailor your campaigns to focus on specific audiences.
Through more tailored and relevant digital display campaigns, the higher the click throughs and conversions and the better your brand awareness.
Brand awareness isn’t just about getting your brand out in front of every potential customer. In some instances it’s key to focus on your target demographic in a specific local area.
This could be for the opening of a new store, an event, or weekend discounts for example.
Geotargeting enables you to do exactly that, ensuring all of your spend will go towards targeting a defined demographic of users in a certain geographic location. None of your budget will be wasted.
By focusing on your brand awareness campaigns and employing these eight tactics in your digital marketing strategy, not only will you get your message out there to the users that matter for your business, you’ll begin to convert them into loyal customers.