How to increase brand awareness? Don't sell, but build relationships

How to incorporate the brand into the daily lives of your customers? Have you ever met people who call themselves "Apples"? Not gardeners, but Apple technology fans who never think about where to buy a new laptop or phone. How to achieve something similar in your company?

What does brand awareness mean?

As Hubspot describes in detail, so-called brand awareness shows how far people recognize your brand in the market and how they identify with it. High awareness companies are generally referred to as "trends" or popular. Do you want to be one of them? The Blue Spirit will help you gain a broader understanding of how brand awareness works and how to manage and spread it in a targeted way among your audience.

Brand awareness may seem like a vague, elusive concept. In an offline environment, this may indeed be the case, but in digital marketing virtually all activities are measurable and even this metric can be successfully evaluated using properly set KPIs for digital projects.

Why build brand awareness?

Have you ever researched how interpersonal relationships are built? Friends make themselves known and at the same time interested in the lives of others. Awareness-raising activities include storytelling, individuality, the freedom to be honest, and to receive feedback. And the relationship between a person and a brand is no different in this respect.

In a world where many consumers rely on extensive searches, surveys, discussion forums and other resources before making the slightest purchase, brand popularity is everything. If the customer is aware of the brand, he usually trusts it more, but that does not mean that he does not buy from the competition. For example, Lamborghini probably evokes a feeling of trust in you, but that does not mean that you will automatically buy a new Reventon. On the contrary, if a customer identifies with your brand and keeps it in high grain, they usually don't even think about buying from someone else. You have built a bridge from trust to loyalty, so there is a high probability that he will spend money with you repeatedly and without thinking. Brand knowledge is exactly what causes and encourages this behavior in the first place.

Creates added value

The more popular the company is in the eyes of customers and the more often they use their services, the more likely the market value and overall influence of the company will increase. Extensive awareness is the basis of high value. How to achieve it? By constantly promoting the positive experiences that are associated with the brand. Create pleasant associations, build invaluable benefits that go far beyond a simple transaction. The consumer then spontaneously searches for the product or service without the need for a campaign, begins to prefer it to the competition and becomes loyal not only by repeated purchases, but also by recommending it to his family and friends. And that's the main reason why brand awareness is so important - it saves money in the long run.

If you expect that interest will only increase by doing a few product campaigns on Facebook, you will not get too far. Not only will the customers gained in this way focus only on the product and not on the brand as such, but the ads will also lack the aforementioned overlap.

How to build brand awareness?

Here are some tips on how to imprint a business in the minds of customers and ensure a lasting impact on your audience.

Behave like a personality, not a sexless corporation

When you meet someone new, what is the first thing you want to know about them? What his hobbies, interests, what he likes and dislikes and much more. Surely you also emphasize what he is talking about and what he is excited about. These are exactly the same characteristics that your brand should have. This is exactly what she should communicate to the world through her activities, not just trying to sell immediately. There will be time for that later. If you only hear about you when you are hungry for transactions or support, no one will remember you except as a company with one sole purpose - to sell at all costs. Just as people don't like you to call them just when you need something, customers don't like it when you always show up on the pretext of forcing something on them.

Be aware that your clients are at different stages of the purchasing process. Only a fraction of them are ready to draw a credit card immediately. A much larger percentage takes varying lengths of time to get acquainted, make a mental note that you exist, and gradually "mature" to use your services.

Find out what's going on around you

Just as people benefit from interpersonal relationships and personal contact, your brand will do well. Taking an interest in others and spending time together is the way we stay in touch with the world around us, learn new things and spread information about who we are and what we do. This behavior again works in branding. Take care of the groups of people you want to be associated with. Organize for-profit and non-profit events, sponsor events or interesting personalities. There is simply a proportion that whoever gives more receives more.

In order to non-violently increase brand awareness, you need to keep in touch continuously and smartly at the same time. Post on social media. Share whatever interests you and is relevant to your focus, and keep in mind that not all posts may be necessarily related to your product or service. Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting, answering, or republishing someone else's interesting content. Treat your profile as a person who wants to make new friends, not as a company trying to make money. Depending on the focus of the company, up to 50% of the reputation may stem from its activity in the online environment. While engagement does not lead directly to sales, demand, or leadership, it certainly ensures greater awareness that leads customers to conversions by detour.

Tell a story

Why is the boulevard the most read newspaper slice and the roses from the Surgery do not dry out even after the thousandth series? People simply love other people's emotions and lives. Our mind is made for storytelling, fairy tales are what we remember, what we live and what we look for. Storytelling is a well-known and very powerful marketing tactic, regardless of whether you are promoting the product or the brand itself. Creating a story around your brand gives it humanity and depth.

What should your story be about? About anything, if true. It can be the life journey of your founder or an adventure about how you came up with the first business idea. Even conquest in the style of the American dream, or how a small business has made a hole in the world, is dull, but still popular.

Let people share your content

Make everything you publish or offer easy to pass on. Whether it's blog articles, ads, videos, social media posts, or product pages. Whatever you "give out" must be easy to adopt ideally with one click. Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful and effective ways to build a trustworthy brand in the eyes of customers. So don't complicate things for them when they already want to spread your content.

If those interested can share your services publicly, you have a real chance that people from the person's family and social circles will find out about you. And a friend's recommendation carries a hundred times more weight than if you're just being chased by advertising.

Create free content

Expert articles, funny videos, e-books, podcasts and more. Creating anything is easier today than ever before in the digital age. Most people look for answers and entertainment especially on the internet. This way, you can easily spread the views, attitudes and overall mood of your company, which makes what makes your brand human and unique.

The outputs do not only have to be written within the blog (although Blue Spirit strongly recommends this form), you can also create videos, infographics, audio materials and more. As a brand, you have a chance to attack more of the customer's senses. If you do not create any content or limit yourself to only one channel, you are missing out on many opportunities to reach new target groups who prefer this or that channel of digital communication.