Building Brand Awareness: The Importance of Brand Awareness

What do Vaseline, Velcro, and Band-Aid have in common? Well, they are all brands that are often mistaken for products. Vaseline is a brand that produces petroleum jelly-based products, but how often do you hear someone asking for petroleum jelly? This is the result of effective brand awareness.

Understanding the importance of awareness will help you effectively market your product. Becoming a proprietary eponym like the brands above may not be obtainable for smaller businesses. However, you can still increase your brand’s reputation.

Here is all you need to know to develop an effective and comprehensive awareness strategy.

What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness portrays how familiar your target audience is with your business. This awareness is not just about how many people recognize the company from your logo or name. It also includes having customers recall a feeling around your brand and details of your products or services.  

When a brand has a robust brand awareness, customers are more likely to feel an emotional connection with the company. These customers become loyal followers and will choose the brand’s products and services over competitors.

For example, if you have an Apple iPhone, Macbook, iPad, and iPod, then you have likely connected with Apple more than other digital companies.

Ultimately, awareness is how consumers feel when hearing or seeing elements of the brand. For example, Coca-cola usually invokes feelings of joy and happiness when customers see marketing material from the company.

The Importance of Brand Awareness

Enhanced awareness of your brand is important for business not only because it leads to sales, but it also helps obtain loyal customers. Successful awareness around your brand will complement your marketing strategy and the quality of your products.

Increased Trust

Trust is an important factor in consumers’ buying habits. Awareness of the brand helps foster this trust. When choosing products or services, consumers generally rely on word-of-mouth, reviews, and recommendations.

Creating a persona for your brand will give customers a reason to trust you. This is why so many brands use a well-known face for their brand, such as Herbalife being promoted by Cristiano Ronaldo. A fit and healthy sportsman using this product instills trust that it will help consumers become fit and healthy.

Improved Brand Equity

Good awareness of the brand leads to positive brand equity which speaks to the value of your brand. When speaking of brand equity, it is not only the number of tangible assets of the company but also higher prices and better stock value.

When consumers become more aware of your brand, they’ll likely buy more products and recommend your services. All these factors will increase your overall brand equity.

Promotes Customer Loyalty

Loyal customers lead to an increase in sales. Good awareness tactics create confidence in your brand. Customers who are confident in your brand will promote your products and services to others. This is more beneficial than simply having repeat customers.

This makes your brand marketing a lot easier as your customers become loyal ambassadors for your brand. If you reach eponym status even those who aren’t direct customers will unintentionally promote your brand.

For example, asking for a Kleenex rather than asking for a tissue will place the brand name into people’s minds.

Four Ways to Build Brand Awareness

Developing an awareness strategy is essential if you want your business to succeed. When developing this strategy, you need to speak directly to your chosen target audience in a unique way. These tactics will help increase the overall awareness of your brand.

1. Personify the Company

Adding a face to your company will help develop relationships with your customers. This creates a trusting relationship and leads to loyal consumers. You can personify the company by crafting brand messaging that allows the business to interact as a human would. 

Another method is to find someone to be the face of the company. This person will begin to embody the brand in all that they do. Adding a face to the brand allows potential consumers to see who they can aspire to be.

For instance, Charlize Theron is the face of Dior. This allows customers to see who they can aspire to be when using the brand. This form of personifying the brand is highly effective and is a tool used by many leading brands.

2. Tell a Story

Storytelling is another effective strategy to improve brand recognition. You can connect with your audience on an emotional level, through engaging narratives. This tactic also bolsters the personification of your company.

You can get creative with the story you tell, as long as it’s true to your brand. You can tell the story of the founder(s) or how your business got its first customer. You can also create stories of customers who use your brand and how it’s improved their lives.

3. Use Reviews, Referrals, and Testimonies

People trust your customers more than they trust you. People can easily see through marketing messages that are aimed to draw in customers. This is why many people look to unbiased reviews and testimonials. Even better is a referral from someone who they know and trust.

Entice people to leave a review on various platforms by offering an incentive or simply reminding them to review. The more reviews you have, the better it is for your awareness strategy.

4. Social Media Contests

Social media is a goldmine for cheap marketing. Creating contests on platforms such as TikTok can help to increase your brand’s popularity. Create a contest that encourages people to share them using your product or doing something related to your product. 

As people share to get more likes and votes, your brand will be marketed to more people. This will help your brand name become more popular.

Final Thoughts

Increasing brand awareness through various marketing strategies will help your business in many ways. Your customers will trust your brand and become loyal customers. This will result in increased sales and customers which will help grow your business and increase your brand equity.