You are exposed to thousands of brands every single day, whether you see or hear them, they are there. Do you find yourself using Spotify instead of Pandora? Or going to Target instead of Walmart? This is what brand awareness does for a company: it embeds itself into your audience’s everyday life decisions, most of the time, without them even knowing.
Brand awareness is a concerted marketing effort that extends beyond one campaign to sell a product. When you better understand brand awareness, it can be a guiding force for your marketing efforts.
Let’s establish the basics of brand awareness and how it helps grow your business!
How to Establish Brand Awareness
Frequency + Consistency
At Kudzu, all of our clients have heard the “sermon”, that the number one rule of brand awareness is frequency and consistency. Once you’ve established your business brand guidelines, stay fiercely true to them and use them in everything that you do. Being consistent doesn’t only apply to your logo and brand colors, it extends to things like your company tone of voice and what style of photography you choose. These important consistencies help establish your brand in the market and dictate how your audience perceives your brand.
An important aspect of brand awareness is that it’s a consistent strategy. The more times your audience is exposed (frequency) to your brand, the more likely you will come to mind when your solution can solve their problem. This magical recollection is called TOMA, or Top Of Mind Awareness. A high TOMA is the epitome of brand awareness and what we strive to create for all
Building the Trust
Just like human relationships, building trust is important. It is easier for your audience to create a meaningful bond by giving your brand a face and personality. Be a “real” person and address your friend’s pain points instead of dancing around them. As the marketing wizard himself would say:
“Build on the foundation of a common perspective. Try to see your customer’s needs as they see their needs. Walk a mile in their shoes before you talk to them about how their feet feel.”— Roy H. Williams, The Wizard of Ads
Once you’ve established the trust of what your brand promises, the easier it will be for your audience to choose you, every time.
How Does Brand Awareness Grow My Business?
Market Competition
The brand you establish for your company is a huge differentiator between you and every other company within the market. When customers start recognizing you over another brand, it leverages a new competitive edge to your company. The more frequently customers start noticing your brand and choosing you, the more your brand will elevate over others in the market.
Establish Loyal Customers
It’s easy to become friends with someone when you share a bonding experience. Your marketing efforts are that experience for your audience, whether it was that strategically written commercial or on brand social media post, if your audience felt connected, they will likely stick around. What happens when they stick around and have a good experience with your brand? They tell their friends. Who will tell their friends. Which leads to our next point.
Enhanced Credibility
As your brand awareness increases, your brand reputation enhances your credibility with your customers, the industry, and the marketplace in general. You’ll discover that your brand credibility goes hand-in-hand with your customer’s trust in your products, which makes it easy for them to purchase your brand over a competitor. We enjoy and feel good about purchasing from brand that we trust and have a positive experience with.
What’s the Take Away?
If you are like most of today’s readers and skimmed through this blog post, here are the major takeaways that we hope help you and your business increase their brand awareness:
- Don’t give up on your brand awareness efforts. Even when it feels like it’s not working, it is increasing your audience’s TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness) to think of you first to solve their problem.
- Brand awareness is a powerful concept with a huge impact on your business’s reputation and perception.
- Follow these guides for a basic understanding, but don’t be afraid to dig deeper into tactics that can help your efforts.
And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, lost, and exhausted, give Kudzu a call, we’d be happy to help!