Brand awareness is that magical ingredient which completely transforms your business. Everyone knows you and perceives you as the best in your category. So think about how powerful brand awareness is for business growth in the long run.
But, how do you create such an iconic brand that everyone remembers? For that, you need to run brand awareness campaigns. So, let’s understand brand awareness and strategies to boost it.
Table of Contents
- What is Brand Awareness?
- Elements of Brand Awareness
- New-age Strategies to Increase Brand Awareness
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is all about how well your target audience knows and recognises your brand. Think about Amul. It dominates the cheese and butter market in India with a market share of above 70% and 85% respectively.
When you want to buy butter or cheese — it’s always on top of your mind. That is what brand awareness is all about.
Your brand should come to their mind whenever they are thinking about buying the product.
But where do you start? First, you need to know the elements that affect brand awareness.
So, let’s explore the elements of brand awareness in the next section.
Elements Affecting Brand Awareness
Even before you start with brand awareness efforts, it’s important to have the following elements in place:
- Consistent branding
- Memorable tagline and logo
- Storytelling
If these elements don’t align — your brand awareness efforts might become futile. So let’s understand each one of them in detail.
1. Consistent Branding
Consistency in branding means making sure all aspects of your brand, like your logo, colours and messaging, look and feel the same wherever people see them. Remember, your aim is to make your brand familiar among people. For that, people must recognise it at least. And how will they recognise it if it looks different everywhere?
That’s why identify your brand’s personality and set a voice accordingly. Additionally, choose the brand colours that align with the same.
Once that is done, focus on maintaining that uniformity across all platforms. Take Coca-Cola for example. Whether you see their ads on a billboard, in newspapers or on social media, the red and white logo and the classic bottle shape are always the same.
Plus, the tone that they use in the communication is also the same. You will never feel that they are talking differently. This consistency makes Coca-Cola instantly recognisable, no matter where you are in the world.
See these images for a better understanding.
Billboard Ad Source: Ads of the World
The brand colours, logo and brand voice are consistent. Right? That’s what you need to practise for your brand as well.
Take help from an expert branding agency if required to hit the right spot with branding and maintain brand consistency across all platforms.
2. Memorable Tagline and Logo
Another factor that matters the most for brand awareness is a unique logo and a catchy tagline. If people don’t even recognise your logo or your tagline, how will they know your brand?
Think about the “swoosh” logo. You immediately know it’s Nike. It’s simple yet iconic. And the tagline of course “Just Do It” is inspiring and memorable. Together (logo & tagline), they perfectly capture the essence of Nike’s brand and make it easy for people to remember and recognise.
3. Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with your audience. Moreover, it makes you stand out from your competitors.
Let’s say you are in the electronics business. There are a lot of players out there in the market. Why will a customer come to you? That’s when storytelling and branding come into the picture.
Take Apple for instance. When they launch a new product, they don’t just talk about the features—they tell a story about innovation and creativity.
These stories resonate with their audience, making Apple more than just a tech company; it’s a brand that inspires.
See this iPhone 15 Pro launch video and you will know why Apple is remarkable when it comes to storytelling.
New-age Strategies to Increase Brand Awareness?
Let’s say all the elements of branding are in place, what’s next? Well, now it’s time to reach people. Imagine, you are telling a fantastic story with your product but how will your potential customers listen to your story?
That’s when you need to conduct brand awareness campaigns. There are different ways of doing this. For example, billboard ads or sponsoring an event, newspaper ad etc.
But, we all know how expensive it can get especially when your marketing budget is limited.
As a result, we will share some new-age brand awareness strategies that cost relatively less than traditional ways of expanding brand awareness.
You can leverage the following channels to expand your brand awareness:
1. Social Media Marketing
You recognise a person only if you have come across them. If you have never crossed paths, it means you are strangers. Now, think of your brand as that person. You are unknown to them as they have never seen you.
To be seen — focus on expanding your reach on social media. It is the most cost-effective way to reach more people and constantly nurture them.
Take Zomato for instance. Their content strategy is so on-point that they have gained 900K+ followers. They were able to do this by leveraging meme marketing in their social media strategy.
So think it this way — their 900K+ followers are their potential customers. Since they follow the brand already, brand awareness is high. They are constantly engaging with their content, sharing their posts, liking it etc.
This way they are constantly leaving an impression on their followers and staying on top of their minds. Next time they want to order food, they will immediately go to Zomato.
To achieve immense reach like Zomato, partnering with a social media marketing agency is a good idea.
The investment will be worthwhile as the content will stay on your page itself. Instagram won’t remove it if you decide not to post for a month for whatever reasons.
However, billboard ads need to be removed at some point if you run out of budget.
2. Influencer Marketing
If you are on social media, you must have seen different influencers promoting certain brands. It’s because brands like you pay them to promote their products as they have a huge following.
As their reach is immense, we want to capitalise on that and be in front of their audience. Strategy is important here as well. Because again, you cannot collaborate with random influencers. You need to know whether your target customer consumes their content or not.
Additionally, you need to pick the right influencers and use your budget optimally.
Take Nykaa Beauty for instance. They collaborate with beauty influencers who create excellent content. They post collaboration reels with these influencers on their Instagram handle.
3. Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can be done in any form be it display ads, Google ads or social media ads. But first, analyse your current requirements. It’s possible that meta ads might not work for you but Google ads can do wonders for you.
So, it all boils down to which industry you are in and who you serve. Have a clear-cut strategy if you want to see results. Partner with a digital marketing agency in Mumbai and get expert help.
Nevertheless, here’s a sneak peek into some paid advertising mediums. So, you can get an idea about what each platform holds for you.
Google Ads: Run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to appear at the top of search engine results.
Social Media Ads: Use Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn ads to target specific demographics and interests.
Display Ads: Place banner ads on relevant websites to reach a broader audience.
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
When you want to spike your brand awareness, be out there on every platform. Suppose you’ve grown significantly on social media — Now it’s time to grow on Google. And to grow on Google, you need to optimise your website for the search engine.
This means that Google should show your website in the top search results when users are searching for relevant products/services in your category.
So, they will come across your brand every time they search for the product. Now, they will visit your website, learn about your company and maybe remember it if your website content impresses them.
That’s why web development is also equally important when it comes to SEO. For best results, hire an SEO company. So, your brand awareness will be much more integrated. But why do you need to boost brand awareness if your business is just working fine?
Conclusion
Maximising brand awareness is crucial if you are aiming to be the biggest brand in your city or country. Online platforms have made it easier than ever to boost brand awareness.
With social media marketing, influencer marketing, paid advertising and search engine optimisation — you can raise your brand awareness in a very cost-effective manner.
However, simply having a presence on these platforms is not enough. You need an appropriate strategy for measurable growth.
So, connect with us —- let our expert brand-smiths develop a robust strategy to skyrocket your brand awareness.
Frequently Asked Questions
Vasim Samadji is a partner at Flora Fountain, where he leads the Business and Marketing Strategy divisions. In a world where everyone is used to sugarcoating, his directness is often considered rude. But that shouldn't be a problem if you like the no-nonsense approach. Because he is a seasoned professional...