One major component of your inbound marketing strategy is brand awareness—how familiar your audience is with the distinctive elements or image of your brand.
What’s brand awareness?
Here’s a flu-season-appropriate example: if you sneeze, you’re likely to ask a friend to pass the Kleenex (rather than the facial tissues). The brand “Kleenex” has such a high level of awareness that its name has become synonymous with the word “tissues.”
Brand awareness is important because it does the following:
- Increases the perceived value of your product or services
- Builds trust within your target market
- Encourages your audience to think of YOU when they think of a need that your company fulfills
Your company may not need Kleenex-level awareness to thrive, but there’s still a lot you can do to increase familiarity among your target market.
Here are 5 strategies to increase brand awareness:
1. Establish brand identity and personality
Brand identity and brand personality develop naturally for most companies, so you’ve probably already done a lot of this.
- Brand identity is the FACE of your brand and encompasses elements like logos, colors, packaging, and messaging.
- Brand personality assigns human characteristics to your brand that determine how you communicate and engage with your audience, for example, “friendly and informal” or “adventurous and encouraging.”
Both your brand identity and brand personality should be unique, authentic, and suited to your target audience. All of your other brand awareness efforts are based on this important strategy.
2. Utilize social media
Social media is the epicenter of brand awareness in modern marketing. There are several platforms and hundreds of strategies you can use to engage your audience via social media, but here are some great ones specific to building brand awareness:
- Focus on connection: Your social media activity should not be completely oriented around making sales. While it’s nice to share a product benefit or special offer, you build a greater connection when you focus on storytelling, sharing interesting content, and fostering conversations.
- Work with influencers: 80% of marketers say working with influencers is effective for their business. Influencers and brand ambassadors enhance brand awareness not only by exposing their following to your product but also by associating their distinctive traits with your brand. For example, a brand specializing in camping gear might work with a rugged, bold, down-to-earth influencer to help the audience tie those qualities with their brand identity.
- Encourage sharing: People LOVE to share about themselves. Encouraging your audience to share stories related to your service or pictures of themselves enjoying your products is surprisingly effective. Or...maybe it’s not so surprising when you learn that talking about themselves gives people as much pleasure as food or money. Your audience is pretty happy to help you build brand awareness among their followers if it gives them a chance to express themselves or garner a little attention.
3. Indoctrinate via email
Email is an excellent way to build awareness after someone has opted into your mailing list. A series of welcome messages gives you a chance to tell your potential customer who you are, what you believe in, and what sets you apart from other brands.
4. Videos, videos, videos
In the awareness stage of the sales funnel, captivating the audience and grabbing their attention is of utmost importance. It’s not the right time to go heavy on the selling, but you still have LOTS to say to your new audience. Video is the way to do that.
Here are some types of videos that work beautifully to build brand awareness:
- Brand videos: Share your values, mission, and brand identity by telling a story. Brand videos can be straightforward, like this one from Airbnb. Or they can be more emotional and abstract, like this tear-jerker from Lyft.
- Behind-the-scenes videos: Give your audience a look inside your offices or a peek into your product manufacturing process for instant familiarity points.
- Explainer videos: Especially if you have a complicated service, explainer videos are a great way to show your audience exactly what you do. Place them strategically so leads can easily get an idea of what you’re all about when they view your website, social media pages, and emails.
5. Develop free content
Along with videos, provide free content like blogs, infographics, white papers, podcasts, and more. Anything of value to your audience that you offer freely contributes to brand awareness as it is consumed and shared by your audience.
Stay authentic, be consistent, and get creative in your quest for increased brand awareness. If you could use some extra guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team at Tobe. Happy marketing!
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