Building Brand Awareness
What is Brand Awareness? Brand awareness is the familiarity of consumers with a particular product or service. Brand awareness is valuable when it comes to marketing or promoting a business, especially if it’s in its early stages. Whether you own a start-up or a well-established business, your brand needs to be out there, and people need to be familiar with your brand name. That awareness or familiarity is fundamental to your business, especially in these times when we shop more online than in stores. No need to go to a store to purchase goods or services. A consumer can easily find or discover new products when going through an aisle at a supermarket; that way, a product is identified and made known to most people who go to the supermarket. However, it isn’t the same when trying to purchase a product online, as people only search for a specific brand name. Creating awareness to make your brand a popular household name would be best. There is just so much competition online. It would help if you made your way to the top. However, if you like to gauge with numbers, to know the statistics, brand awareness isn’t measured in standard numerals. It is what you could call a vague concept. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value. On the contrary, it has much significance, like search engine optimisation or content marketing. For your business to grow, you need all the possible available tools to help you market your brand. Trust and Loyalty – Why Brand Awareness Is Important The business world is now where consumers strongly depend on research and other consumers’ opinions on a product before making purchases. Their findings will eventually build trust, which is everything. That trust, once established, builds loyalty. So your customers keep coming to you without second thoughts. Once you’ve established that trust, give your brand a personality, tell a story behind it, and make it fit for business and worth patronising. What It Does Brand awareness associates actions and products with particular brands. For instance, when buying sneakers, you say that you are a Nike person or an Adidas person. See what happened there; you associated your sneakers’ purchase action with a brand name. Another example, which is common in Nigeria, is calling any brand or kind of mayonnaise ‘Bama’ because of the famous brand, ‘Bama’ or all brands of toothpaste called ‘Macleans’ because of the renowned brand. We often do it subconsciously because that awareness and familiarity have been established already. You can do that to your brand as well. Make it so popular it becomes a ritual for people to call your brand. That awareness becomes your marketing tool. It creates brand equity. Brand equity describes a brand’s value determined by consumer experiences and overall brand perceptions. It is then your job to create positive experiences to get positive notions. Positive brand equity leads to Higher prices due to higher perceived value. Higher stock price The ability to expand the business through product or service line extensions More significant social impact due to brand name value Brand awareness creates recognition by a customer without assistance, leading to a product or service purchase, and that customer begins to prefer similar brands. It also establishes loyalty that a customer recommends your products or services to family and friends. Now, To Build Brand Awareness To build a brand awareness that will have a long-lasting impact on your customers: Be a person, not a company. You should define it as more than just a company that sells things. Let your brand show traits that will determine your success. To become famous, you should promote even things that aren’t related to your brand. You’ve got social media to do that. Interact with the audience, comment, post, and ask questions. Operate your page like it wasn’t meant for business. Show yourself more on social platforms. Research shows that over 50% of brand reputation comes from online interactions. Being social leads to greater awareness and being known. Tell a narrative. Creating a story around your brand gives something for the audience to relate to. It connects you and your brand with why the market should choose it. It’s a good marketing strategy. Here is a short read on Social Media Marketing. If you ever need someone to create your brand stories, we at Raven and Macaw will create those stories and even market your brand for you. Whatever product you are offering, make sharing your products easy for your customers. Whether blog posts, videos, sponsored content or social media posts, make them shareable for your audience. Word–of–mouth marketing is a very effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers. Very sure this applies to you too. When someone sees a family, a friend, or even a trusted person sharing and recommending your products, services, or brand, they will likely try you. It creates a chain-like market. One shares clips with another, and it grows longer. Imagine how far a ‘click to share’ can take your brand. Let it be your aim in business to make an impact. How you impact your customers’ lives will determine how far you want to go in a part of their lives, gaining their loyalty. Here are some Brand Awareness strategies to help you: First, try to co-market with another brand to build an audience and, along the way, use the other brand’s audience to market. Advertise everywhere possible. create a presence that will not let you disappear Hire a face or a mascot for the company. If you can afford a celebrity’s face, it’s ok. Go ahead. Choose an image or symbol that represents you Create a short, catchy slogan Now you can build your brand and start creating awareness for your brand. Let people know that you are open for business. Click here to learn about Digital Marketing, its types, and its benefits to your business.
A Simple Bit about Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent Content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action. If you are reading this, you are a digital marketer with marketing needs, or maybe you need a re-education on content development and marketing. Uncountable times we hear “content is king” and “content is what makes your business more relevant”. As cliché as that might sound for those of us already in the e-commerce world, it is essential and crucial to any online business. For example, 59% of marketers say their content marketing ROI is excellent or very good, helping them increase leads, conversions and brand loyalty. Instead of selling or offering your products or services, your Content is what will define that which you are giving. Content represents what type of business you are into and what kind of products or services you offer customers. Content tells your brand story, and that’s why you must do whatever it takes to make it relevant, valuable and worth selling. Even Leading Brands Use Content Marketing Don’t think that you must keep trying hard to get there because your business is not on the top list of leading companies. Brands like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Pepsi, Airtel, Piggy Bank and many other top brands use content marketing to boost their products and services. Why Use Content Marketing for Your Business Content marketing is cost-saving. It saves you all the extra money and funds you may initially spend on marketing. It increases sales. Of course, it does! More Content equals more visibility on Search Engine Result Pages and users’ social media pages. More popularity will lead to an increase in the purchase of your goods and loyal customers. The more they like your products, the more they stay loyal and even refer more customers to you. Then the most basic of all primary reasons for marketing is profit. Content is a profit centre. More sales, higher purchases and increased customers all lead to profit. These are just fundamental reasons to use content marketing. Types of Content Marketing There are many different types of content marketing, including: Blogging Video Podcasting Infographics Email Visual Content EBooks Lead magnets Whitepapers Slide share presentations Quizzes/tools Checklists Courses Webinars Slide decks Free apps Social media posts And many more to use in marketing your business. What you’re reading right now is content marketing. The key is that the Content provides information or entertainment, usually for free, in support of a business goal. Yes, we have a goal. Utilizing Different Types of Content Marketing/Platforms Now, let’s talk about why you need to use different types of Content Marketing. The first thing most people would think of when it comes to content marketing is Blogging, which is excellent. But there’s no disagreement that other means of marketing content also work wonderfully. For instance, podcasts have become widely popular, with episodes and listeners growing to millions. Likewise, YouTube has made its mark in the social media world, growing even better with billions of viewers. Writing an excellent piece for your blog is good and will have many reads and views plus likes but add your Content to another platform. Having your Content on multiple platforms builds your big kingdom of audiences, and publishing many different things allows you to be everywhere your audience is present online. For example, someone may not see your article but could be listening to your podcast on his way home. a young lady may find it easier to understand how to create logos by watching a “how to create Logos” video on YouTube than actually reading a 16 pages guideline on how to do that while someone would prefer to read the “details”. Also, some things fit better in specific formats. So, understand the different benefits of the other platforms and learn how to use them. Finally, don’t stick to just one type of content marketing. Utilizing the many available content marketing types or platforms will also require you to decide on your content type. Then, find the appropriate format for your Content. For instance, you cannot teach pottery on a podcast. It has to be on video. Likewise, you cannot teach mathematics in just theory; there must be examples with workings and solutions. Use platforms that your audience already consumes. By now, you’re thinking of what kind of Content to create. That is why you need to play around with your strengths! Know what your strengths are, know what you can give your best when developing, give your consumers the best Content they can consume and even come back for more. Then, when you see that what you are doing is going great, you can branch out SLOWLY. Do not make the mistake of venturing to other platforms abruptly because you feel you can do great; instead, slowly, slowlyly, see how it works for you and your audience, check out consumer experiences, analyze and if it works, continue. Finally, don’t forget about consistency! Always start what you can continue. Don’t chicken out or lazy out midway, especially if your Content is selling. Start Marketing Content or Just Carry On Now that you have read through and understood what Content Marketing is, you can start creating great, irresistible Content and market them to the fantastic world of digital marketing. We would like you to know that marketing your business online doesn’t have to be so difficult becaue tat is what we do. So why don’t you consult with our digital marketing experts at Raven and Macaw for a long term gains without the pains.