The Beginner’s Guide to Building Brand Awareness

Have you ever wondered how some consumers make it a habit to purchase products from the same store again and again — without thinking twice?

This is the power of brand awareness and what it can do for you. 

This comprehensive yet easy to understand guide will help you understand the importance of building brand awareness better, how to build it among your target audience, and how the lack of it can drag your business down. 

Importance of Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness represents a person’s ability to associate and recognize your brand, products, and services. This may be demonstrated when someone successfully recalls your slogan, recognizes your logo, or remembers a message. In other words, brand awareness refers to how familiar the market is with your brand and how easy they can recognize it. 

When someone identifies one’s self as “Apple person” or “Adidas person”, this means that a brand has already embedded itself into the lifestyles and purchase habits of its customers. This is because brand awareness builds positive feelings and beliefs about a brand, product, or service. It also establishes an image of the brand that causes people to speak about it with knowledge and familiarity.

This is why brand awareness is crucial to the success of the business. When people are aware of your business through its brand, logo, and other marketing materials, you will gain more traction and sell more. People are more likely to become customers from a brand they know. In fact, brand awareness increases conversion rates and click-through when marketing online. Also, a strong brand awareness leads to increased sales and loyalty from your customer base. 

How to Build Brand Awareness

When people walk around the city and associate your business with a jingle they randomly heard, a logo they saw, or a slogan they read, that means you have achieved a strong brand awareness.

As such, establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing your company, especially in the early stages of the business. 

Here at Ripple VAs, we support businesses and their journey towards success. Here’s four (4) tips how you can build brand awareness for your business:

• Establish the brand. For you to start building your brand awareness, your business needs an easy-to-remember logo, slogan, and even a jingle. Take note, it should be recognizable, catchy, and unique at the same time. 

• Socialize. The world is already full of snobs. Differentiate your brand by interacting more with your existing and potential customers. Ask questions, comment on posts, and share content. The goal here is to establish the sociability of your brand as someone making friends, not a business trying to generate money.

• Tell a story. Storytelling remains a powerful marketing strategy and a good tactic in humanizing your brand. Share anything real and relevant because people love hearing stories, real ones. Remember, authenticity is impactful and through good storytelling, your brand awareness can skyrocket. 

• Start across multiple channels. Once you have decided to establish a brand, be sure it’s accessible through a lot of platforms, such as radio, online, and print advertising. This way, you can potentially reach a lot of people and reach the right market. Also, when building your brand across multiple channels, make sure to create and deliver a consistent message

But it does not stop there! Brand awareness is about impact and establishing it is never enough. So, here’s another four (4) strategies to help you increase brand awareness: 

• Engage in co-marketing. This strategy of increasing brand awareness entails taking advantage of another brand’s existing audience. Through co-marketing, your brand awareness strengthens with the help of another brand and it can also highlight your identity and offers in the marketplace. 

• Advertise anywhere. With the global pandemic shifting and mixing the ways how we do things in 2020 and 2021, there is a need to invest in advertising through various channels and platforms. After establishing your brand through traditional print media such as billboards and posters, you can start with online advertising through social media and video campaigns. You might want to consider paid social media advertising as well. 

• Choose the right symbol for your brand. Apple is no longer Apple anymore. It’s a bitten apple. Just by seeing that symbol, you already know it’s Apple. 

But we’re not talking about logos alone here. It’s about creating a symbol that you can incorporate in your marketing and other organic campaigns. This symbol can also be used in your packaging and other designs. 

• Think of a catchy slogan. Creating an easy-to-recognize slogan is the foundation of a strong brand awareness strategy. Although it could be difficult to come up with a good slogan or motto since we have a lot of brands in the marketplace, try to brainstorm and just do it. That’s also a reference to a top footwear company and you know who it is – and that’s how a catchy slogan boosts your brand. 

Albeit a broad concept, brand awareness is an impactful marketing strategy that plays a vital role in your marketing efforts. 

Follow these strategies to establish and increase your brand awareness, and you will see a growing population of loyal customers that can recognize your brand among the others.