Brand awareness is central to every business marketing activity. It is the fulcrum around which business campaigns revolve. Brand awareness aims to create a visual identity that the target audience can easily recognize. This strategy is so influential that 46% of consumers gravitate toward brands they know. Brand awareness would help expand your reach if you run a small business. When done right, it can help you move past the competition while remaining relevant for a long time.
- Stick with consistency
As a business, you want to be recognized among the competition. And brand awareness success thrives on consistency. It is the main ingredient in your branding activities that registers in the target market’s minds. Consistency builds familiarity and recognition. These two elements foster customer loyalty. The most effective way to ensure brand consistency is to ensure that your company presents itself in a unified manner across all marketing channels. Communication is of utmost importance here.
In other words, the business message, tone, and everything else representing the company must roll into one. Any division or contradiction can steer you away from consistency, which is not good news for your brand. It helps to bear in mind that everything the customer sees forms part of your brand. Furthermore, their ability to recognize you from the lot determines the impact of your brand consistency. This is why even though color and logo are important in brand consistency, there is more that determines its success.
- Turn employees into brand ambassadors
Employees are your internal customers, and you want to turn them into brand advocates. It would be good to look at it from this angle; who better than staff has a deeper understanding of your brand? You will have a deeper impact when the people you work with understand and believe in your dream. As internal customers, their view of the business will determine how well the market accepts it. If your employees have a cold reaction to your brand, it will be impossible to turn them into brand ambassadors.
The question now is how to turn employees into ambassadors. The first thing to do is provide them with the necessary tools to create and improve brand awareness. This is where your employees can push the visual identity aspect of business branding. Customized T-shirts, baseball caps, and other branded apparel can do the trick. Using this approach, it would be best to rely on branding techniques that make these apparel last longer, so keep this in mind. For example, custom embroidery, embossment, plating, and so on can ensure the longevity of various branded items.
- Focus on creating partnerships with relevant businesses
The point here is to create purposeful partnerships with relevant businesses. It is not a matter of going into partnerships simply for the sake of it. Targeted alliances grow brands, can increase profit margins, and help businesses tap into new markets. These connections are meant to be mutually beneficial for the short and long term. The secret to these partnerships is to select companies with a wider reach, better marketing strategies, and more financial power. Admittedly, many small businesses may be apprehensive of the power dynamics concerning finance because of the increased risks of acquisition or buy-out.
Fortunately, there is a way to go around it. In drafting the contract for a partnership, your company attorney must quickly identify clauses that may turn around to shoot your business in the foot. When that is out of the way, the only thing left would be to merge forces and ensure that communication channels are solid. The last thing you want is for your brand awareness to add to the long list of failed alliances like Apple and PayPal, HP, and Compaq, among others.
- Make optimum use of influencer marketing
The influencer market always uses an emotional appeal element. This technique has produced high results for many businesses and can do the same for yours. Influencer marketing may require handing some aspects of your brand to a known and trusted face. In other words, content creation will have to come from the influencer, but of course, with your consent and approval. To avoid handing over the full reigns of your brand to an influencer, it would be advisable to draw up terms and conditions. This way, both brands (influencers and your business) have their interests protected.
So, how does the influencer–business marketing agreement propel brand awareness? First, the influencer has the audience and following you want for your brand. Many small businesses find it productive to involve influencers because they are easy to reach. Statistics show that over 60% of the younger generation is likely to commit to a product because an influencer recommended it. This is an excellent opportunity for businesses looking to increase their brand awareness. You can explore the feasibility of affiliate marketing here.
- Be the brand everywhere but be wary of overbranding
How can you become the brand everywhere without adding to the list of overbranded businesses? This will involve strategic positioning and has nothing to do with indiscriminate branding or confusing your market with contradicting logos. Becoming the brand everywhere means making use of all your business marketing channels. Both physical and digital channels add meaning and depth to your marketing activities. It is a balancing act that gets your brand in the public’s minds.
Overbranding, on the other hand, crams too many ideas into one space. For example, when your business has different products, there is a high risk of overbranding. While trying to create distinct identities for each product, entrepreneurs end up with different logos. This creates confusion, overwhelms your customers, and does not augur well for brand awareness. Experts believe that bringing everything under one umbrella will make more of an impact than separating them.
As a business, brand awareness is relevant to advertisement, publicity, and all marketing activities. Without a firm grasp of it, everything you do with or for your company will remain unseen by the target market.
