Brand Awareness: Definition

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Brand awareness dictates the popularity of your company.
• Better awareness efforts lead to more conversions.
• A brand management strategy helps set you apart from other businesses.
• Branding is more than just your name and logo.

What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the degree to which a consumer knows about a product or service. In other words, it’s a brand’s familiarity among customers. Moreover, consumer awareness means recognizing things like brand name or logo.

It’s also important to note that trust is at the forefront of customers’ trust in a brand. However, brand awareness is not the same as a consumer’s opinion of a brand.

You can have high brand awareness without caring much about a particular brand. Someone who is highly aware of Nike but doesn’t much like Nike probably isn’t able to persuade you to buy running shoes.

You can probably think of at least 50 different brands that you are highly aware of that you either don’t like or have never used. That’s the power of a brand awareness campaign that drills advertising into your subconscious mind throughout the day.

You see the brand on billboards, TV commercials, internet ads, and more. So while you might not buy the brand, you certainly know what it is. The flipside to this is that a customer with limited options will likely turn to the brand they know due to brand awareness.

How Brand Awareness Works

If you’re not familiar with the concept of brand awareness, you may not know that it’s not a new idea at all. For decades, companies have gauged their brand awareness to determine their place in the market.

These days, brands with high brand awareness can achieve and sustain greater profit. When a company wants to build and improve its brand awareness efforts, it uses a variety of marketing strategies.

For example, a company might choose to place an ad in a magazine that has a slightly smaller readership than other magazines. But is generally read by those who have an interest in its product or service.

More common strategies include plastering a brand image all over social media and every corner of the internet. But this visual content is only one part of the bigger picture of brand awareness. To ensure a successful marketing campaign, companies have to utilize real-world options, too.

This includes billboards, flyers, bulletin boards, newspaper ads, and more. The lengths and depths of brand awareness marketing are endless. And companies that want to make their brands household names will stop at nothing to use every available marketing concept.

Special Considerations Regarding Brand Awareness

There are a few factors you should consider when evaluating brand awareness. For one, recent research has indicated that a brand’s awareness can change on a daily basis. Even successful brands can experience faltering business success.

There’s no real evidence to suggest that a brand will reach a set level of awareness. But there is a noticeable increase in awareness as the months and years pass. Another consideration is the type of consumers reaching brand awareness.

Generally, those with high levels of income and education tend to reach higher awareness levels. In addition, marketing studies indicate that awareness of a brand is directly related to how much a consumer trusts that brand.

In other words, consumers who trust a brand are more likely to be aware of it, and those who aren’t aware of the brand aren’t likely to trust it. This may seem like a pretty simple concept, but it’s absolutely present in modern-day consumerism.

Benefits of Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a big part of the equation that comes with effectively marketing your products or services. It’s the process of making customers aware of your business. This is often achieved through word-of-mouth marketing and marketing communications. And how customers respond to your marketing reflects the effectiveness of awareness campaigns.

Customer acquisition and retention are the primary goals of all marketing efforts. However, there’s always the chance that you can improve the conversion rate of your leads. This is especially important in a B2C or B2B company, where a certain percentage of customers may never make it to the point of purchasing. 

Boosting brand awareness efforts can also be an effective way of building your company’s reputation as well as your own personal brand. This will help you to build your credibility. Credibility you can use to help you negotiate better fees with partners and clients.

Increase Visibility and Grow Your Brand Awareness

The first benefit of running a brand awareness campaign is the obvious one: it lets your customers see your name, logo, and other brand elements. You can make your business name, logo, and website more visible, and your customers can see it when they’re out and about.

This visibility can have several benefits. One, it can increase brand recognition, which is the first step to expanding your customer base. It can also help to build your brand’s reputation and its name recognition, which could be useful if you’re looking to expand your business’s revenue. 

Most importantly, though, visibility can help you grow your brand awareness. Your customers will get to see your name and logo on storefronts, menus, and advertising materials. This will help them to become familiar with your business.

Create a More Consistent Brand Presence

Another benefit of running a brand awareness campaign is that it can create a more consistent brand presence. You can keep your branding consistent. This means you maintain a consistent brand presence wherever you have branded elements.

This could mean maintaining the same logo and color scheme, but it could also mean maintaining a consistent location and message. Consider if you have multiple storefronts or spaces around your specific demographics. You can keep them all branded in the same way and can give your brand a more consistent presence.

This could particularly be helpful if your brand is new and/or relatively new to the market. This consistency can also be helpful when it comes to up-selling and down-selling.

Consistent branding can help reinforce certain themes and messages in your brand’s vocabulary. These can be things like benefits and prices. This can help to make those points stick out in a customer’s mind and make them easier to remember and follow.

Encourage Customer Engagement and Build Trust

The third benefit of a brand awareness campaign is that it can encourage customer engagement and build trust. With your customers seeing your name and logo more often, they’ll start to associate your company with positive feelings.

This means that you’re likely to be more likely to receive repeat business or referrals from them. And it also means that they’re likely to be able to trust and rely on your brand. This is particularly important for businesses that deal with sensitive topics, like healthcare.

Trust is another key element that you can use to build a brand awareness campaign. When customers see your logo more often, they’ll remember it, they’ll associate it with your company, and they’ll trust it.

Utilize Up-Selling and Down-Selling Strategies

The final benefit of running a brand awareness campaign is that it can help to utilize up-selling and down-selling strategies. We’ve already discussed how these strategies can be helpful in building trust. But you can also use them to help to up-sell customers and get them to buy more.

If a potential customer sees your logo frequently, they’re likely to remember it. And they’ll remember that you’re associated with the brand, and be easier to up-sell to. This applies to B2B and B2C businesses, as well. Here, each customer may not represent a one-time sale but instead represents a potential up-sell.

Making those potential customers more likely to become repeat customers is vital for growing your business.

Strategies for Achieving Brand Awareness

There are a number of strategies that businesses can use to increase their brand awareness. These options are dependent on several factors, such as the type of product or service your business offers. How much effort you want to put into advertising and marketing, and the budget you have to spend is also relevant.

A/B Testing: Companies that want to increase their brand awareness can try A/B testing. A/B testing is a statistical technique. It allows companies to measure the impact of various marketing strategies on their audience.

Plus, businesses can determine awareness measures this way. This awareness tactic allows companies to gauge their marketing options. They can see which ones are most likely to get the audience’s attention and increase their brand awareness.

Contextual Advertising: Contextual advertising is another way to get a brand name noticed. Contextual advertising refers to advertisements in environments where they are noticeable. This includes grocery store checkout displays or newspaper stands. 

Research and Analysis: Conducting R&A helps determine which consumers are aware of products. This data can help businesses craft their advertising strategies so that they reach the right audience.

Social Media: Any social media platform can be a great way for brands to reach their audiences. Social media platforms help brands raise their brand awareness. They can also help companies keep their audiences entertained.

PR and Advertising: PR and advertising are also important ways to boost brand awareness. Public relations activities can help promote awareness of your brand. Advertising, on the other hand, can be a cost-effective way to reach a large audience with your message.

Other Ways to Create Brand Awareness

There are a number of other ways that brands can increase their brand awareness. For example, businesses can create a brand identity that consumers can recognize. A brand identity can include logo designs, color schemes, and images that help consumers recognize a brand.

Businesses can also maintain a consistent presence. This can mean staying in the same location or using the same logos, colors, and designs in every advertisement.

Credibility and Trust

While brand awareness is important for many businesses, it’s even more important for those that hope to build trust among consumers. For brands to build trust with consumers, it’s necessary for them to have credibility.

Consumers will only trust a brand as much as it has proven that it can deliver quality products and services. Brands need to gain a level of credibility and trust among consumers. So they are likely to rely on the same strategies mentioned above, such as social media marketing campaigns and A/B testing. Studying awareness through dedicated awareness campaigns gives businesses critical awareness metrics.

They can then use these awareness metrics to adjust their marketing efforts. With the right approaches to awareness, companies can raise their current brand awareness levels.

Credibility is a crucial aspect of building trust with consumers. It is the degree to which people believe a source when it provides information. In other words, it’s the ‘whole truth’ of a brand’s existence. There are many ways that businesses can increase their credibility. This can be maintaining brand identity, making engaging content, or excellent customer service.

Summary

For businesses to achieve high levels of brand awareness, it’s important for them to understand what brand awareness means and how to achieve it. There are several ways that brands can increase their brand awareness, such as contextual advertisements and A/B testing. It’s also important for brands to have a level of credibility and trust among consumers.