Without brand awareness, there is ultimately no business. No matter how well thought out and developed your branding is, none of it matters if no one knows about it.
Brand awareness is the key to connecting your exciting branding ideas with your target customers. But brand awareness doesn’t just happen, it takes time and effort to build.
While some brand awareness can happen by osmosis, as your products and services become better known. If you’re serious about building brand recognition and loyalty, you’ll need a brand awareness campaign.
What is a brand awareness campaign?
A brand awareness campaign is a targeted and strategic effort to broaden and deepen the recognition of your brand. It aims to develop some of the positive benefits that strong brand awareness can bring to your business.
A campaign will focus on closing the gap between trust in your brand and customer loyalty, helping to give your brand a recognizable personality that is familiar and reassuring to customers.
Companies that have high brand awareness will outperform those that don’t and ensuring that there is a particularly high awareness of your brand among your target audience is key to any campaign.
How to create a brand awareness campaign
A brand awareness campaign will involve a range of different tools and techniques to increase brand awareness. A benchmark will need to be set to enable the success of any campaign to be measured.
Some of the elements that a brand awareness campaign may include are:
Media monitoring
Building brand awareness requires you to be aware of what your target customers expect from your brand. Media monitoring will be one means through which to do that and in today’s terms that will usually mean social media. This can be done with a simple search of different social media channels. What are people already saying about your brand, if they’re saying anything about it at all?
As well as your own brand, take a look at how people talk about your competitors, particularly the more established ones. What are the main plus points people mention about a competitor brand? What are some of the more persistent problems and complaints? The latter can help you better hone your offer to meet the issues that your target customers have.
By monitoring both your mentions and broader trends in your niche you can find conversations that you can jump into, helping to shape your marketing strategy going forward. Often what people say about your business is very different from your own self-perception. Media monitoring helps to bridge that gap.
Building brand awareness on social media
Social media is now an essential component of any brand awareness campaign. It makes it easier to share content but the competition can be fierce. Using social media will be a part of your ongoing brand marketing so how do you use it specifically for building brand awareness?
A brand awareness campaign on social media will be a targeted and more concerted effort with the aim of spreading awareness of your brand. It will carefully select which social media channels you use, perhaps based on where your target audience appears to be (as discovered through media monitoring).
You may wish to make use of targeted social media advertising, or want to partner with social media influencers. Customer testimonials are also effective and you may want to create new video content to use as part of your campaign.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is essential for increasing brand awareness. According to Search Engine Watch, if your website is the top listing on Google’s organic search it will receive 33% of all traffic, with the second position getting 18%. It decreases rapidly from thereon in.
Any brand awareness campaign will take a targeted and pro-active approach to improve the SEO performance of your website and blog. It will be based on what people are actually looking for and will include both keyword and technical elements.
Other brand awareness campaign elements will reflect the nature of your business and your target audience. It might include partnering with a local business, paid print or TV advertising, special sales and offers, along with other creative and marketing elements.
How long should a brand awareness campaign last?
A brand awareness campaign will have a definite beginning and end. They will typically last around three months for a comprehensive brand awareness campaign. Specific aspects of your overall campaign such as sales, offers and events will usually run for a shorter period of time within your overall campaign.
There are no hard and fast rules regarding the length of any campaign and it will usually reflect your business, the elements of your campaign and what you’re hoping to achieve.
How to measure brand awareness campaign results?
The success of brand awareness campaigns will usually be measured by the most relevant range of key performance indicators. These might include social media mentions, visits to your website and sales. It can also involve specific paid research into whether or not your target audience has noticed your campaign and can recall aspects of your brand identity.
The metrics you will use to measure your campaign performance will be decided at the outset and will reflect your goals for the campaign. How to Boost Your SEO Campaign
How Dawn Creative can help
A brand awareness campaign can be a significant undertaking so it’s important to get it right. At Dawn Creative, they work with clients to create effective and targeted brand awareness campaigns that deliver real results.
Don’t hang around wondering how you can improve your brand awareness.
