How to build Brand Awareness digitally ?

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising. Branding is a set of marketing and communication methods that help to distinguish a company or products from competitors, aiming to create a lasting impression in the minds of customers. The key components that form a brand’s toolbox include a brand’s identity, brand communication ( such as by logos and trademarks ), brand awareness, brand loyalty, and various branding strategies. Many companies believe that there is often little to differentiate between several types of products in the 21st century, and therefore branding is one of a few remaining forms of product differentiation.

Brand awareness refers to the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand. Brand awareness is a key consideration in consumer behavior, advertising management, brand management and strategy development. The consumer’s ability to recognize or recall a brand is central to purchasing decision making. Purchasing cannot proceed unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name, but he or she must be able to recall sufficient distinguishing features for purchasing to proceed. For instance, if a consumer asks her friend to buy her some gum in a “blue pack”, the friend would be expected to know which gum to buy, even though neither friend can recall the precise brand name at the time.

Brand awareness is related to the functions of brand identities in consumers’ memory and can be measured by how well the consumers can identify the brand under various conditions. Brand awareness is also central to understanding the consumer purchase decision process. Strong brand awareness can be a predictor of brand success. It is an important measure of brand strength or brand equity and is also involved in customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and the customer’s brand relationships .

Brand awareness is a key indicator of a brand’s market performance. Every year advertisers invest substantial sums of money attempting to improve a brand’s overall awareness levels. Many marketers regularly monitor brand awareness levels, and if they fall below a predetermined threshold, the advertising and promotional effort is intensified until awareness returns to the desired level. Setting brand awareness goals/ objectives is a key decision in marketing planning and strategy development.

Brand awareness is one of major brand assets that adds value to the product, service or company. Investments in building brand awareness can lead to sustainable competitive advantages, thus, leading to long-term value.

Since we have already known what brand awareness is and the importance of brand awareness, these are few tips from us to build your brand awareness digitally:

1. Constant Digital Campaigning. You have to adopt a constant digital campaign modus operandi. Constant campaigning is not simply relying upon broad organic advertisements with a brand or a slogan that appear in very direction, rather a campaign with context, which is constantly targeting your existing customers and potential targeted customers. Constant digital campaigning is much better than one big bang digital campaign on the first launching of your brand or company or product. You can use mix of different digital platforms to do your digital campaigning, such as digital advertising on online news portals, digital advertising on social medias, social media engagements, blog articles, etc.

2. Utilizing Marketing Research Report. Marketing Research Report can help you to know your brand awareness level on the market and how your brand position compared to your competitors’ brands. Marketing research report is also needed to evaluate your digital campaigning periodically.

3. Referral Program. Family and friends of your existing customers are your best potential customers. You can do a referral program on your digital platforms by giving certain discounts or giveaway gifts to existing customers who refer their family or friends to buy your products or services.

4. Community Content Platform. When it comes to brand, you can let your customers speak for you. By leveraging social proof through customer generated content, you can driver your brand growth online. You can deploy a community content platform that not only allowed you to engage with customers in social channels, but also repurpose their contents across marketing programs such as email.

5. Engaging Video Contents. Today’s customers, no matter business-to-business or business-to-consumer, is extremely time poor and overwhelmed with advertising. To cut through the noise, you can start to communicate a lot with video contents that should not be longer than one to two minutes. The contents need to catch the viewers’ attention within the first seconds. If you keep it short and to the point, you will see great engagement with your contents.

6. Value Proposition Alignment To Customer Needs. When it comes to building a brand, it’s all about getting very clear on your company’s value proposition as it aligns to what customer find relevant and critical to their business. If you are not making a difference to their biggest challenges and their bottom line, your brand is going to be meaningless to them. Once you are clear on the value you provide, and you are the best at providing it, building the brand has to do with persistent, consistent messages, visuals, and proof points that emphasize your value.

iMarketology is a Digital Marketing Specialist company which can help you to build your brand awareness digitally. iMarketology can help you from the stage of brand building strategy development to the execution stage.

Happy Branding !

– iMarketology –