Building Brand Awareness

You may very well have the best products or services compared to what your competitors offer. However, your brand isn’t going to get the attention it needs to be successful if you’re not actively building brand awareness. Let’s take a moment to go over some brand awareness basics so you’ll have a better idea of what’s involved with this process and why it matters.

What Is Brand Awareness?

Simply put, brand awareness is anything you do to generate awareness and interest in your business and what you offer. It can include such things as:

• Traditional advertising
• Online advertising and marketing
• Promotional offers
• Social media engagement
• Your brand’s style, values, tone, and image

Do You Need a Logo?

Absolutely! A logo, whether it’s basic and straightforward or colorful and creative, helps people recognize and identify with your brand. Think about all the brand logos you instantly recognize. Many of these iconic brand logos have the power to attract attention because they are so familiar and easily identifiable. A well-designed logo can have a similar impact on your brand.

What Makes Your Business ‘Special’?

The way you answer this question will serve as the basis for your brand awareness efforts. Go a step further and use your awareness-related marketing efforts to answer the following questions:

• What do you want your brand to be known for? – e.g., expertise, affordability, quality, etc.
• What unique traits or qualities make your brand different from similar businesses?
• How do your customers or clients already perceive your business?

What Can You Do to Build Brand Awareness?

Building brand awareness isn’t a simple one-step process. There are several steps that need to be taken to increase awareness of your brand in a way that’s beneficial for your business. Some of the more common steps involved in this process are discussed below.

Online Reviews and Feedback

If you already have other aspects of your marketing plan down pat but you’re still not seeing a boost in brand awareness the problem may be with how you are handling reviews and feedback. Ideally, you want to encourage people to leave reviews after they interact with your business. This can be done with follow-up emails or links to review sites on your website. As far as feedback goes, you can boost your brand’s awareness and reputation by:

• Responding promptly to comments and feedback
• Responding even when feedback is negative
• Having a fully completed business profile on review sites to make it easier for customers leaving feedback to learn more about your company
• Claiming your business on Google My Business (GMB) to make it easier for local customers to provide feedback

Every business is going to have customers who aren’t happy. But if you have a policy in place that include active responses to whatever customers are saying, potential customers will be more likely to view your brand favorably.

Content Consistency

Inconsistency with content can sabotage your brand awareness efforts. Whatever message and image is appropriate for your brand needs to be consistently conveyed in all your content. If, for instance, you have emails that have a more professional and practical tone and social media posts that are more casual and humorous, you’ll be sending mixed messages that could end up confusing anyone that comes across your business.

Take some time to get everyone who will have a hand in producing or obtaining content related to your business on the same page. Brand consistency encompasses many aspects of your business, including:

• Blog and email content
• Profiles on your social media platforms
• Content on your website and in your ads
• NAP (business name, address, and phone number) info

You also want to be consistent with the values and missions related to your brand expressed in your published content. In order to achieve this goal, you may also have to get everyone associated with your brand on the same page. A good starting point is to fine-tune your mission statement so it becomes clear what your brand is all about.

Building Trust

Once you establish a consistent brand identity, go a bit further and work on building trust related to your name. As mentioned above, having a good feedback policy in place is an excellent starting point. But there are other things you can to become a brand that’s considered trustworthy.

For example, you could present informative videos on your YouTube channel to visually respond to common customer questions. Even simply getting into the habit of regularly presenting reliable and useful online content can effective boost your trustworthiness level. Additional trust-building methods include:

• Starting and contributing to conversations about your brand
• Encouraging customers to submit content
• Actively reaching out to online influencers interested in what you have to offer
• Letting customers know about your community involvement and social responsibility efforts

Lastly, another important part of building brand awareness is evolving your brand. In other words, periodically refresh your company’s image as your brand grows and evolves. When you do this effectively, you’ll develop an identifiable and relatable image that can serve you well in all your marketing efforts.