We find ourselves in a rapidly changing digital environment, where consumers are increasingly exposed to new brands and information. This means that building brand awareness is becoming increasingly crucial for online marketing to be successful. Discover in this blog what brand awareness is, why it is so important, and what key factors are for building brand awareness.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness refers to the extent to which your company and/or product is recognized by your target audience. Brand awareness is an important part of a marketing strategy because it forms the basis for other marketing goals such as attracting new customers.
Building brand awareness takes time and is also known as a long-term strategy. Brand awareness is all about establishing a lasting position in the minds of your target audience. Once that brand equity has been built up, you can build on and benefit from it with the rest of your marketing.
Once you are known to your target audience, they are more likely to take you into consideration when they need to purchase a product and/or service. The image below shows that only a small part of the market has a purchase intention. Most of the market (60%) is not even aware of the problem they have.
The 6 benefits of brand awareness
Precisely because brand awareness is an investment that only pays off in the long run, many companies are inclined to skip this step or only work on it for a short time. And that’s a shame, since it is the basis for online marketing goals. Here are six benefits of having good brand awareness:
1. Convey reliability
Having good brand awareness causes your company to evoke recognition and trust. This ensures that your target audience includes your company in the information-gathering phase and is then more likely to make a final purchase.
2. Competitive advantage
Ultimately, a potential customer is more likely to choose a company that they’re already familiar with and have a good feeling about, rather than a company they don’t yet know. This makes strong brand awareness advantageous, especially in a market where there are more and more competitors.
3. More effective marketing
High brand awareness ensures more effective marketing across all your efforts. As your target audience has already become familiar with your company before you start lead generation, the lead generation phase is often more effective and leads are of higher quality.
4. Improved loyalty
If you, as a company, have high brand awareness among your target audience, this also creates stronger customer loyalty. Customers are familiar with your company and have good experiences with your company. This strong loyalty makes customers more likely to remain customers for longer, but also provides more opportunities for cross- or upselling.
5. Successfully launch new products
If you have already built up good brand awareness, this gives you an edge when introducing new products/services. Existing customers already trust your company and it will be easier to interest them in a new product or service. But brand awareness can also help get you on the radar of prospects earlier in the purchasing process.
6. New employees, partners and investors
High brand awareness makes sure that not only future buyers are already familiar with your company, but also possible new employees, partners and investors.
Key factors for building brand awareness
As mentioned earlier, building brand awareness is a long-term strategy. It is a process that requires time and consistent efforts. Its duration can vary depending on several factors such as industry, company size, budget and chosen strategies. In most cases, it takes months to years for people to properly recognize and trust a company.
These are the various factors involved in building brand awareness:
The target audience
Who exactly is your target audience? The better you know your target audience, the better you can build brand awareness. When you know which channels your target group can be found on, what their interests and needs are, what ‘problems’ they have and what message you can reach them with, building brand awareness will go faster.
The market sector
In which industry (or industries) do you want to build a reputation and be known? Depending on the competition in this industry, the process may take more or less time. The lower the competition, the faster building brand awareness can be.
The budget
What budget do you have available for building brand awareness? When you have a higher budget, you reach more people and you generally build brand awareness faster.
The marketing channels
Which channels and instruments do you want to use to promote your company? This can be done, for example, through paid channels such as LinkedIn Advertising and Google Ads, but also through organic social media channels or organically through Google. You can also consider using emails, events and content marketing. By using different channels and tools, you create more touchpoints where the target audience can come into contact with your company. The simultaneous use and integration of multiple channels and tools also has a strengthening effect. The more touchpoints you create, the faster you build brand awareness.
The quality of content
What kind of content will help you reach your target audience? When you provide valuable content that matches the interests of your target audience, you ensure that your company becomes relevant to them. Also, make sure that your message is clear and consistent.
A consistent, visual identity
How recognizable is the visual identity of your company? When you provide a recognizable logo and consistently use your color scheme and corporate identity, it creates recognition among your target audience. Consistency is crucial for building brand awareness. Standing out with your company in a positive way and being distinctive from the competition can help you get noticed faster by your target audience.
You can measure the various factors using KPIs. For example, how many people are searching for your company online (branded searches), the amount of website traffic and where this traffic comes from and the amount of social media interaction (followers, likes, etc.). Based on this data, you can decide what to focus on to grow your brand awareness.
Do you want to work on the brand awareness of your company? We’re happy to help you devise a strategic marketing plan in which we achieve your marketing goals by using brand awareness, demand generation and more.
