Marcus Richards
One of the most critical factors in business success, particularly for start-ups, is brand awareness. Since your company is new to the market, you won’t be able to rely solely on your name to generate revenue and build consumer trust. To make matters even more challenging, you will almost certainly compete against well-established companies with loyal customer bases. Therefore, to break into these markets, you need to work on building your brand right out of the gate.
In short, brand awareness represents how well your target audience identifies and familiarizes with your brand. A brand can sometimes be crafted so effectively that a company’s brand name becomes synonymous with the entire product category. Take Kleenex and tissues, Coke and cola, and Google and online search.
The importance of brand awareness
One of the primary challenges that business owners and marketers face with brand awareness is that it is unquantifiable. In other words, there are no metrics that can be used to accurately determine how aware consumers are of your brand. However, brand awareness is still critical for commercial success. Here’s why:
- Improves trust and loyalty – 81% of consumers said that trust is the deciding factor for their final buying decision. Once a consumer becomes more familiar with your brand, you will begin to create trust easier. Branding gives your company a personality and makes it seem more human, which in turn leads to loyalty.
- Creates association – Like the Kleenex, Coke, and Google example we used earlier, building brand awareness also creates the chance for your brand to become associated with the product or service you offer.
- Positive brand equity -Brand equity represents the value of your brand. This is usually determined by consumer experiences and the overall perception of your company. Therefore, growing your brand awareness increases brand equity, allowing you to drive higher prices for your products, among other benefits.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at a few methods you can use to build brand awareness.
Make outstanding guest content
Guest blogging is an excellent way to get your brand name out there. Since your website is unlikely to be pulling in massive amounts of traffic, securing guest posting spots on popular publications in your industry will give you a great platform to promote your brand and its products. However, make sure the content is of high quality. Many people mistake creating half-hearted content for guest posts since it won’t be uploaded to their websites. Do not make that same mistake.
Referral programs
Many people out there would be happy to spread the word about your brand, product, and services if you incentivize them to do so. On top of this, referred customers have a 37% higher customer retention rate. While you will have to give up some of your revenue for referral fees, getting other people to do the heavy lifting makes smart business sense (especially when you are already operating with limited resources).
Email signature branding
The importance of email is frequently underestimated. Even in this day and age, when we have a plethora of sophisticated communication technologies at our disposal, the humble email remains the preferred method of interaction. With this in mind, it’s critical that you and your employees effectively represent your brand while sending out correspondence online.
WiseStamp’s company email signature can do wonders for your brand awareness. It ensures that all of your outbound emails contain key information and relevant branding materials for your organization. Moreover, establishing a uniform and unified email signature throughout the company will assist in making your business more memorable while also making it appear more professional. As a result, this increases familiarity and trust, which leads to increased sales.
Infographics
Infographics are some of the most shareable content on the internet. Thus, creating a high-quality, helpful, and informative infographic (branded) is an excellent way to get your name out there. When executed well, infographics can quickly become viral, establishing your brand as a thought leader in the space.
Get advertising
Organic marketing and SEO are becoming more competitive by the day. While you should still pursue these avenues, it’s important that you find something a little more immediate. In light of this, PPC advertising is a great strategy for increasing brand awareness and getting news about your products and services. Using the right targeted keywords, you can have your company name right at the top of the SERPs whenever somewhere search for it. Of course, PPC advertising is far from cheap, so you have to consider the associated costs.
Give your brand a personality
A great tip is to treat your brand as a person. Nobody will remember a company that comes across as robotic and impersonal. Therefore, try to inject a bit of character and fun into your brand. It’s entirely up to you which way you take this. In addition, it’s important that you take your industry and target market into deep consideration before establishing a personality that does not resonate well. For example, if you run a funeral home, you may want to ease off on the humor. Some examples of brands with personality are Red Bull, Old Spice, and Nike.
Wrapping up
While there are undoubtedly a million things on your plate as the head of a start-up, it’s important not to overlook the importance of brand awareness. The good news is that you are starting with a clean slate. That means there is no bad publicity you have to overcome and no previous consumer expectations. From this perspective, you have all the more reason to get your brand name out there so you can start building trust and familiarity with consumers in your market.
