Running a business could be an exciting adventure. You’re your own boss, you have flexible hours and the potential to be a Fortune 500 company. As promising as all these sound, 90% of startups fold up in the first year.
Why?
Well, it’s a result of many factors, one of which is a lack of brand awareness.
Without
proper awareness of your brand, people won’t be able to like or trust your brand, your business won’t have the required patronage to survive, and eventually, your business will collapse.
Don’t panic, though; there are ways to still realize your dreams of rocking the world with your products and services. Here, we’ve highlighted creative ways to create
awareness for your brand and grow your business. Come along.
First, what is brand awareness
A proper discussion on promoting awareness for your brand will be incomplete without first having a clear understanding of the term. Brand awareness is a test of how aware people are of your brand. How easily do people recognize your brand? Do they even know it exists? The
level of awareness your brand has is an indicator of your brand health.
What is brand health
Your brand health is basically how you know whether your brand is doing well or not. Knowing your brand health lets you see where it is strong and where it needs intervention. If your brand is healthy, you’ll see the results in your business. If it’s unhealthy, the outcomes will show that it needs help.
Why measuring brand health is important
Measuring brand health is one of the essential steps to take in this journey. To boost the awareness of your brand, you must first know how healthy your brand is at the starting point. This helps to set realistic goals. Constantly tracking your brand health as you grow helps to know if your strategies are working and if you have to improve or change them.
It looks like brand health is an abstract concept that cannot be measured but that’s not true; there are metrics that enable you to know how healthy your brand is. These metrics include:
- Unprompted brand recall
- Purpose intent
- Share of voice
- Preference in category
- Time of search
- Social reach
Levels of brand awareness
Branding is like a pyramid; it has stages. To promote awareness for your brand, knowing the levels of awareness a brand goes through is vital. This will give you the proper perspective, help you know your brand’s status, and guide you to make the right decisions.
Zero awareness level
The zero awareness level is where no one is aware of your brand (except you and your team, of course). This is the bottom of the pyramid. You’re just starting out here and instead of worrying about the lack of awareness, consider it a fresh start, with great potential to grow.
Brand recognition level
In this phase, people are just starting to be aware of your business. They can easily identify your brand through your marketing campaign, logo, colors, slogan, business stickers and other symbols. This shows you’re beginning to register your brand in people’s consciousness. This is a very important and delicate stage.The awareness might appear to be slow but your strategies are having an impact and you should keep at it.
Brand recall level
This is where your brand comes to mind when someone needs a product or service in your business category. People can now easily recall your brand name in relation to the product or service you provide. Your brand name jumps out in conversations regarding your product or service category.
Top-of-the-mind awareness level
At this level, you become the first brand that jumps into people’s mouths when they talk about your product category. They even interchange your brand name with the product category. For example, many say ‘Mac’ when referring to a computer; it just comes instinctively to them. This is because the Apple product has reached the top-of-the-mind awareness level.
5 creative ways to boost your brand awareness
1. Build a viable brand
There won’t be any awareness if there is no viable brand in the first place. The truth is, what many people call a brand is actually not a brand. Before talking about creating awareness for your brand, ask yourself if you have a brand at all. So, how do you know if you have a brand? Check if your business ticks the following boxes:
Brand values: your business must have brand values. These are essential principles that guide how you operate as a company. These are not what you have at the back of your mind; they must be clearly spelled out in black and white. It is a summary of what your business stands for, how it achieves its goals and makes profits.
Brand values are a summation of how you get your products or supplies, how goods and services are delivered to your clients, how your customers and employees are treated and so on. To boost awareness for your brand, be sure your brand values are in sync
with those of your target audience.
Brand aesthetics: aesthetics in branding has to do with how your content looks to your
audience. The components involve colors, fonts, designs and so on. There has to be
consistency in your aesthetics such that as soon as your target audience sees these
elements, they know it’s you.
Brand voice: your business must tick this box. What is your brand voice? Is it formal,
casual or semi-formal? Is it playful, cheeky, fun or strict? While you can be flexible, depending on the channel you’re using to pass a message, ensure your brand voice is easily recognizable by your target audience.
There are other boxes your business needs to tick to become a viable brand. Further research on the subject is necessary to ensure your brand is well-grounded.
2. Use effective storytelling
Everyone loves a good story. Telling stories of why you started your business and how your brand is making a difference in the world increases awareness for your brand. People who read your brand story and can relate to it will keep you in mind. Doing
this
regularly across your messaging will help you connect better with people and put you on top of their minds.
3. Leverage social media
Any brand not maximizing social media is missing a lot. Over 4.2 billion people are on
social media. That’s a large number that your business has the potential to reach. Therefore, ensure you use social media to the fullest. Learn social media strategies and best practices to harness this invention’s immense benefits
4. Create content that is easy to share
Using social media to improve awareness for your brand is not enough, take a further
step by creating shareable content. Social media is driven by content sharing, so if
your content is not in a format that will not enable it to be easily shared, you might not be able to maximize the platforms. Shareable content like infographics, short quotes and others make it easy and faster for people across social media platforms to know about your brand.
5. Take advantage of SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves increasing the visibility of your website and, therefore, your brand. When your website ranks higher on search engines, your brand becomes more visible to your target audience. Use SEO to boost awareness for your brand through
content marketing,
link-building strategy and focus on your core audience.
Benefits of creating awareness for your brand
So, what happens after putting all this work into your brand? What are the advantages of promoting awareness for your brand? Read on to learn a few of them.
Better brand perception
By creating and boosting awareness for your brand, you’re improving your brand perception. When you build awareness for your brand, you determine the perception you want people to have of your business. The more aware of your brand people are, the better their perception of it becomes.
Client loyalty
When a client becomes aware of your brand and gets to the top-of-the-mind stage of awareness, they reward you with loyalty. That’s why you’ll see people say they cannot use any other product except for their favorite brand. They become addicted to the brand and would even deny themselves until they can access their favorite brand.
Easy integration of new products
A strong awareness of your brand makes it easy to introduce new products and services. As a result of the trust built via creating awareness for your brand, customers become open to any other product or service you introduce to them. They know your brand to be a strong and viable one and therefore trust that any product or service you bring forward will align with what your brand is known for.
Boost your brand awareness and stay ahead of the pack
Brand awareness is an aspect of business that is often overlooked. Little wonder many companies have brand health issues. The first steps in boosting awareness for your brand include knowing what the concept is about, knowing the levels of awareness and measuring your brand health.
Next, employ strategies to improve awareness for your brand like, building a feasible brand, using the art of storytelling, leveraging social media, creating shareable content and taking advantage of SEO. Once these are done, you can begin to enjoy benefits like improved brand perception, client loyalty, easy integration of new products and expansion opportunities.