What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is how familiar people are with a brand. It is different than brand recognition.
Brand recognition involves a consumer’s ability to recognize a logo. Brand awareness includes being able to recognize a logo, but it also involves the ability to recognize characteristics that make a particular brand different from others. For example, brand recognition means being able to recognize Apple’s logo. Awareness means knowing they offer stylish, innovative technology, like the iPhone.
Why build brand awareness?
Building awareness is important. It can do many things for a business including:
- Promote products and services
- Successful introductions of new products and services
- Build a reputation in the community
- Competitor differentiation
- Find and retain loyal customers
Consumers have to know a brand exists in order to consider purchasing goods or services from that business. By building brand awareness, a company can ensure they are known for something unique in their industry. Businesses that engage in awareness strategies can increase the perceived value of their brand, which provides the company with the ability to increase prices and increase demand.
Tips for building awareness of a brand
There are many ways to build brand awareness. A few actionable steps include:
- Create a memorable logo
- Use the same colors online and on all business materials
- Use the same voice in all online and offline communications
- Post on social media regularly
- Update a blog regularly
- Create an app
- Participate in local events and trade shows
The brands with the most recognition and awareness among consumers are the ones that position themselves more like a person than a company. They show customers they care about their daily lives, and they make the company more approachable by telling personal stories.
In addition, building brand awareness includes repetition. At least five touch points are needed to make an impression on a consumer. That might include being active on social media accounts, email newsletters, face-to-face interactions, or phone calls– the more, the better. Brands that are best remembered are the ones consumers see and hear about on an almost daily basis.
Measuring brand awareness
Measuring brand awareness is important, even though it can be difficult. Instead of getting a single piece of data that shows how effective an awareness strategy has been, multiple metrics must be considered in order to paint a broader picture of success.
A few things to measure and consider include:
- Direct traffic to a website by consumers who know the URL of the company’s website.
- Site traffic numbers of consumers who have been spending time on the website to get to know the brand.
- Social engagement includes followers, likes, retweets, and comments that show the amount of people interacting with the brand.
- Google Alerts can help a business to determine how their brand is being talked about online.
- Social media management tools can help a business uncover who’s tagging the brand regularly and talking about it online.
- Awareness surveys enable businesses to get direct feedback from customers about what they think about the brand.
Tip:
Participants for your online surveys can be found at clickworker
Information from just one of these sources is not enough to tell a business about how aware consumers are about their brand. Information must be combined among all these sources to determine a brand’s popularity.
Examples of businesses that do brand awareness well
Brand awareness is something that must be built over time. Businesses that have been around for decades have more recognizable brands than businesses that have only been around for a few years. In addition, national brands get more recognition than small, local stores.
Band-Aid is a good example. Not only can people quickly and easily recognize this brand, it has become so well-known that people refer to all bandages as Band-Aids, even though many different brands make them.
Nike has a logo that is instantly recognizable by people around the globe. Beyond logo recognition, Nike demonstrates exceptional brand awareness because most consumers know that this brand produces top-quality tennis shoes and supports athletes in nearly any sport.
