Edward Boatman • May 11th, 2022
Learning how to build brand awareness is an essential part of creating a successful business. After all, if two products are the same price and the only difference is that you recognize one brand and not the other, you’re more likely to purchase from the brand you’re familiar with.
But building brand awareness can be difficult. There’s a lot of competition between brands clamoring for the attention of potential customers through advertising on TV, billboards and social media. This means that to establish a strong brand, you have to be creative with your brand awareness strategies.
To learn about how to increase brand awareness and set yourself up for success, check out our full guide below.
Table of Contents
Brand awareness is the degree to which your audience is familiar with and able to recognize your brand. The more brand awareness you have, the more likely customers are to engage with your product.
Successful brand awareness campaigns can establish a new business or save an existing one from irrelevancy. Brand awareness is part of the reason why someone would buy a more expensive item like a Patagonia fleece over the less expensive generic brand.
While brand recognition and brand awareness are often used interchangeably, they’re slightly different.
Brand recognition is the measure of how well customers can visually identify a brand based on its visual and auditory cues such as product packaging, logos, slogans or jingles.
Brand awareness is a measure of audience familiarity with a brand’s visual assets, reputation, culture and values.
This means that brand recognition is just one component of brand awareness.
Brand awareness can drive product sales and give your company an edge over competitors. A great example of this is Patagonia. While Patagonia offers clothing that’s more expensive than its competitors, many customers buy the former because they are familiar with the brand, believe in its mission and trust its quality.
Here’s how increasing your brand awareness can help your business:
These are just a few of the reasons why it’s essential to create a brand awareness strategy.
Increasing your brand awareness requires time, effort and strategic thinking. Before you create a brand awareness strategy, here are some things you need to consider:
Once you figure out what you’re trying to say and who you’re trying to reach with your message, you can identify the strategies that will be most effective for your business.
For example, if your product is catered toward an older audience, you might place advertisements on Facebook. If you’re targeting a younger audience, you might create content on TikTok. If you’re just starting out as a local small business, you may want to begin with word-of-mouth marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
To successfully increase your brand awareness, you’ll need to be persistent and think outside the box. Here are some tried-and-true strategies to help you get started.
To build brand awareness, it’s helpful to partner with influencers who have an established following with your target audience. They can help spread your brand messaging to new potential customers while lending their authority to your product.
However, be mindful about the influencers you choose to partner with. Do your research to make sure they’re a good fit for your brand positioning and are able to reach your target audience.
One of the best ways to increase your brand awareness is to create engaging content for your target audience. Common types of content you can create include:
The more unique and useful your marketing collateral is, the more likely your audience is to share it with others. And the more people engage with your content overall, the more recognizable your brand becomes.
If you create content tangentially related to your company, you may want to include relevant calls to action that encourage people to buy your product. Just be sure that your content doesn’t come off as inauthentic.
Storytelling is a valuable tool to generate consumer engagement.
Relevant topics you could create stories about include:
One of the best ways to engage your audience is to tell customer success stories. Go into detail about what your customer’s issue was, how your product or service helped and how it impacted your customer’s life afterward. This way, you can engage your audience while communicating how your product works and what problem it solves.
A 2021 survey found that 88% of respondents trust recommendations from people they know over any other channel. This means that when you utilize your existing customer base using word-of-mouth marketing, you can reach new customers who might be unreceptive to traditional marketing tactics.
Some common word-of-mouth marketing tactics include:
The more you incentivize your customers to spread the word about your brand, the more your brand awareness will increase.
Freebies help get your product in the hands of people who wouldn’t normally purchase it. From there, your product’s quality becomes the sales pitch that determines whether or not you earn a repeat customer.
Studies show that in-store free samples produce an immediate and sustained increase in product sales, proving that giving away free products is an investment that pays off.
Ad blocking has been steadily increasing since 2014, which shows that users are sick of disruptive banner ads and pop-ups. Native advertising is an alternative strategy that seamlessly integrates with the app or website it’s featured on.
An example of native advertising is when Spotify and Netflix teamed up to market “Stranger Things.” The campaign integrated an option where you could enable a Stranger Things mode that caused your screen to flicker and glow with spores floating across the screen in a creepy aesthetic that matched the show.
The power of this campaign was that the marketing tactic added something new to the user experience instead of being disrupting like a traditional advertisement.
Podcasts are a great way to inform, engage and connect with your audience. You can create a podcast where you interview leaders in your industry, share your own insight or talk about anything else your audience would be interested in.
A good example of a branded podcast is the .future podcast by Microsoft. The show explores possible futures of society based on advances in technology, gaming, data and more.
To generate traffic to your website or blog, it’s crucial to practice proper SEO.
First, you need to figure out which keywords your audience is most likely to search. From there, try to create content that ranks high on search engines such as Google or Bing.
Here are some tips to help make your content rank:
Understand that SEO is a nuanced practice and it can take time to rank. This is why many companies opt to hire agencies or in-house marketing experts for SEO optimization.
Unique brand personalities help companies communicate and build emotional connections with customers. Your brand personality is an accumulation of your digital brand guidelines, communications and any marketing materials you use.
Your brand personality should depend on your industry, customers and your brand identity.
If you run a snack food company that targets a younger audience, your branding might be more colorful and your personality more upbeat. If you run a luxury watch brand, you might implement minimalist brand colors with a personality that’s more sophisticated.
When you sponsor an event that interests your audience, the positive associations they have with that event can transition to your brand. This creates goodwill with your target audience and improves brand positioning.
Some benefits of event sponsorship include:
To reap these benefits, you need to sponsor the right event. Do your research about an event to make sure it attracts the right audience for your brand.
In a recent survey, 73% of respondents said they’d most want to learn about a product or service through a short video over any other channel. This shows that video can be an effective tool for capturing your audience’s attention.
Below is a great example of branded video content created by The Zebra to explain the different types of car insurance.
Video can also perform better at packaging complex information. Some customers are more likely to understand your message or product tutorials when there are visuals to help them along the process.
Whether you create animations, have a representative speak to the audience or use B-roll with a voiceover, video content adds another dimension to your marketing strategy that helps engage users.
If you post content sporadically, it’s going to be difficult to build a loyal following. To help stay consistent, create a content calendar in advance. Try to post at least two or three times a week at the same times each day so your audience knows when to expect new content.
But being consistent is about more than frequent posting — it’s also about maintaining a consistent brand voice and visual assets across channels. This is something that Lingo’s digital asset management platform can help with. See what digital asset management is and how it can help you.
Analyzing the successful brand awareness strategies of other companies is a great way to fuel your inspiration. When you see strategies that could work for your business, take note of them.
Try to examine the top competitors in similar industries to your own. From there, you can take aspects of their strategy and apply them to your own campaign.
During the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, IKEA played its part to encourage its audience to stay home. IKEA’s #StayHome campaign successfully engaged its audience, spread an important message and encouraged customers to shop with IKEA online.
Brand awareness strategies used: Social media, video content, storytelling
While many people were rightfully concerned about the lockdown, IKEA invited its audience to view their homes from a different perspective. The company released a minimalistic ad that highlighted the sentimental value of our homes.
The video also told a relatable story in just 30 seconds, which made it highly shareable.
For the 2007 World Series, Taco Bell promised that if any player from either competing team could steal a base, it would give free tacos to everyone in the United States. Sure enough, Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox stole a base and Taco Bell handed out free tacos later that month.
Brand awareness strategies used: Free giveaway, event sponsorship
This strategy was effective because it brought in new customers to Taco Bell who were looking to redeem a free taco. By giving away free products, Taco Bell built rapport with new customers while adding another dimension of entertainment to the World Series.
Red Bull’s brand awareness strategies range from creating humorous video advertisements to deploying employees to hand out free Red Bull to college students. One of their most notable marketing tactics, however, is to sponsor extreme sports events.
Brand awareness strategies used: Event sponsorship, video content
In 2012, Red Bull made headlines when it sponsored professional skydiver Felix Baumgartner to free fall from the Earth’s stratosphere from a helium balloon.
The event aligned perfectly with Red Bull’s mission to “Give wings to people and ideas” when it enabled Baumgartner to become the first person to break the speed of sound during free fall.
The video has received almost 7 million views since it was first published and continues to provide video and photographic assets to the company’s social media and website today.
Before you launch a brand awareness campaign, it’s best to identify metrics by which you can measure the success or failure of your efforts.
Some helpful metrics you can use to measure brand awareness include:
The metrics you use will vary depending on your brand awareness strategies. For example, if you host a social media giveaway, you’ll want to measure social media impressions. If you’re creating a video campaign on YouTube, you’ll want to measure views. And if you’re launching an email promotional campaign, use UTM codes.
Using these metrics, you can create goals to determine whether or not your brand awareness strategies are effective. If a tactic isn’t seeing results after a long period of time, don’t shy away from trying something new. Different strategies work well for different companies.
Increased brand awareness can attract new customers, build brand loyalty and drive sales. Use the strategies outlined above to spread the word about your business.
Remember, when you’re preparing your brand awareness campaign, your messaging needs to be consistent. To align your digital assets and establish a brand style guide, check out Lingo’s pricing options.