Information for this blog post was obtained from HubSpot, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite.
Do you remember when you first became aware of the brands you are most loyal to today? Maybe you came in contact with them through an advertisement, social media, or a celebrity endorsement. Likely, you come back again and again to your favorite brand because you are familiar and comfortable with them.
Branding awareness is crucial for branding success and goals. It fosters trust between the business and the customer. With this said, creating a brand that is consistent and recognizable is important. In this blog post, I will cover how to build a strong brand, specific strategies for brand awareness, and also how to measure branding awareness when you want to improve.
How to Build a Strong Brand
Be Personable and Recognizable
When building a strong brand you have to be personable and recognizable. Your business is about more than just selling products. The HubSpot Blog recommends asking “What words would you use if you had to introduce your brand to a new friend?” (Decker, 2022) To help your brand’s personality come out, Sprout Social recommends asking before you hit "post," to ask, “Does this sound like something a bot or human would say?" (Gomez, 2022).
It’s also important to be recognizable. The customer needs to have a clear idea of what your brand represents. With this, comes the importance of brand voice, athletics, and values. Many brands stand out because of their tone. Is your brand tone witty or serious? Hootsuite recommends adopting several key phrases and keywords in your style guide to become more recognizable (Newberry, 2022). For brand aesthetics, use a consistent font and color. Create a logo and tagline that you will stick to.
Lastly, defining your values as a brand helps you know what your brand stands for and what everyday interactions will be based on (Newberry, 2022). Your values should align with your target audience. According to Hootsuite, “The Edelman Trust Barometer states 58% of consumers buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values, while 60% of employees use beliefs and values to choose their employer” (Newberry, 2022).
Make Shareable Content
Secondly, when creating a strong brand, shoot to make shareable content. Whether the content is a video, blog, or social media post, make the content simple to share. HubSpot points out that word-of-mouth marketing is a super effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers (Decker, 2022). When a friend or family member shares a post, potential customers are more likely to consider it.
HubSpot claims that friendship and branding awareness are similar, you have to be authentic. Don’t ask for participation, money, or loyalty (Decker, 2022). Be helpful to them first and make an impact. Hootsuite backs out this by stating, “Create content that your followers will want to share. Provide value in your content rather than always trying to make a sale.” (Newberry, 2022).
Create a Narrative
Thirdly, you can build a strong brand by creating a narrative. A narrative humanizes your brand and gives your audience something real to latch onto (Decker, 2022). Your narrative can be about anything as long as it’s true. People can relate to stories, which in turn helps others remember your brand more (Newberry, 2022). A narrative can be showcased through customer experiences and marketing key milestones in your growth (Newberry, 2022). Narratives help market the product because they show the initial problem and how the company’s product is solving it.
Brand Awareness Strategies
Branding awareness is the extent that your audience is familiar with your brand’s identity (Decker, 2022). What is a branding awareness strategy? A branding awareness strategy aims to create familiarity and brand recognition so that customers think of your brand when they want to make a purchase.
Develop Your Profile
To help with brand awareness and recognition, there are many tips and tricks out there. According to Sprout Social, “Recognition is a key element of building awareness” (Gomez, 2022). One way you can help others recognize your brand is by optimizing your profiles. Make sure your profile images, bios, and overall social media presence look polished. Profile and cover photos are telling. You can also create a short slogan that is catchy and will stick in customers' minds to put in bios.
Collaborate
Collaborating with other brands helps your brand name get out to more people. This benefits both brands since they are introduced to new audiences. Collaboration also leaves a positive impression on customers. HubSpot recommends guest blogging on other niche websites (Decker, 2022). It is a great way to take advantage of traffic that is already happening on another website. It helps because you’re not just trying to sell your product, but you are presenting yourself as a person with knowledge about the industry. Also, consider co-marketing with other brands that are similar to yours.
Another big way to create brand awareness is by partnering with creators. Sprout Social states that partnering with creators is “the online equivalent of getting introduced to someone through a mutual friend” (Gomez, 2022). Through this, you can connect with more people and get an “in.”
Post Content That Stands Out
Part of having a great branding awareness strategy is making sure that your content strategy is good too. Make posts that stand out in their use of colors and designs. There are many social media post templates out there to help with design, such as Canva or Kittl.
Use hashtags to expand your reach on posts. Hashtags are still widely used today. People oftentimes search for specific topics and the use of hashtags will help your post show up for that topic. In addition, stay engaged in the comments section for your social media and on similar accounts.
At the end of the day, it’s important to show up consistently and put the work in. Not all customers will respond to your posts or campaigns. However, if you continue to put in the work, you will get more customers than not over time. HubSpot talks about the importance of doing a ton of advertising. For example, a few years ago not many people knew about Grammerly, but now they are very recognizable due to how much they advertise their product.
Measuring Brand Awareness
So far, this blog post has covered how to build a strong brand and branding awareness strategies. However, after putting these strategies into place, how do you tell how effective they are? Branding awareness can be difficult to measure, however, there are some key metrics you can look at.
Website Traffic
First, you can check your direct traffic, which is how many people are typing in your URL and visiting your website (Decker, 2022). This is an important metric since you know anyone visiting your website already has knowledge of your business and didn’t just click on an advertisement. Google analytics will help you track this metric (Gomez, 2022).
Social Media Engagement
Another big one is social media engagement. You can look at the amount of likes, followers, and comments you are getting on social media. Marketing products on social media has become relevant these days. If you have a significant increase in social media engagement, it’s fair to say that your brand awareness has increased.
Social Listening
A qualitative way to measure your brand awareness is by social listening. Setting up Google Alerts helps you get up to speed with how much your brand is being talked about online. There are also social media monitoring tools out there like Social Mention to help you keep track of who is tagging your brand or mentioning you in comments. Sprout Social also has a social listening tool that gives you the rundown on the total amount of messages shared about your brand, measures how people are feeling, and compares your brand's market share on social media to its top competition (Gomez, 2022).
Surveys
Lastly, surveys are very helpful in getting an idea of who knows about your brand, but also what they think about your brand. Sprout Social also backs up the idea of doing brand surveys. You can do them biannually to see what your audience thinks and feels about your brand (Gomez, 2022). Over time, your business can be shaped positively by getting this feedback.
Conclusion
In conclusion, strong branding awareness is key to making your brand known. The use of strategies like collaborating with others, creating shareable content, and telling a story through your brand will help to maximize your brand strength. As you get into a routine, review key metrics to test your effectiveness. With these tips, you will become a branding awareness expert.
For more information about personal branding, check out my colleague David's post here.
Resources
Decker, A. (2022, December 27). The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/brand-awareness.
Gomez, R. (2022, October 25). Brand Awareness: What It Is and Strategies to Improve It. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brand-awareness/.
Newberry, C. (2022, August 11). 9 Creative Ways to Improve Your Brand Awareness. https://blog.hootsuite.com/brand-awareness/.
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