It takes up to seven interactions for people to start recognizing your brand.
And in a world where the smallest advantage is crucial to success, even small companies have to do their best to make their brand memorable and ingrained in their audience’s minds.
But unfortunately, with the competition as steep as ever, making your brand stand out from the large crowd of competitors can be challenging. Consumers are already overwhelmed with choices, and even though they want an authentic brand experience, they are very picky who they listen to.
Luckily, even though building brand awareness is becoming more challenging, there are still proven methods that deliver excellent results, no matter what industry you are in.
With that in mind, let’s explore five strategies for building brand awareness that you should consider in 2020.
Increase Your Social Media Presence
It’s almost impossible to imagine a brand succeeding online without having a strong social media presence. There are countless ways you can use social media to make your brand more visible, but many companies still struggle with getting their social media strategy to work.
Today, merely having profiles on different social media platforms is not enough. Users won’t follow a brand just because they might be interested in their products, and you have to show how your brand is uniquely positioned to help solve your audience’s problems.
Therefore, when thinking about your social media branding strategy, your first goal should be to determine what your brand is about and how you can separate yourself from everyone else in your market.
That’s where finding the right social media management company becomes a crucial choice. You need to carefully weigh your options and select an agency with the right type of experience and an understanding of how to build a brand’s profile to quickly establish yourself as a prominent company on social media.
You should also consider how you can emphasize the unique qualities of your brand on different platforms. Each social media site has its own best practices, so you need to know how to adjust your voice and your posts without losing what makes your brand stand out in the first place.
Another crucial aspect of building brand awareness on social media is making your efforts a two-way conversation. Instead of just posting updates, you should actively engage your audience, answering questions, tagging people, and even hijacking unhappy customers from the competition.
Finally, you should get familiar with the hashtags, tags, and other ways of displaying your content in front of the right people. Getting the ball rolling on your social media posts is essential, as the early performance plays a huge role in how successful they can be.
Use Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is on the rise, with the majority of marketers planning to increase their spending on influencer marketing this year. And considering the types of results that it can offer, that’s not at all surprising.
With the help of influencer marketing, you can not only provide an immediate boost to your sales but can put your brand in front of an eager and responsive audience that will be preconditioned to respond to your messages.
Today, you can find influencers in even the most obscure niches, so you should have no problem finding people to partner up with. In fact, even if you can’t afford to work with some of the more prominent influencers in your market, there are probably hundreds of micro-influencers that have fewer followers but a very loyal fanbase.
To start your influencer marketing campaign, you should first determine what type of audience you want to get your brand in front of. That way, you can determine where they are the most likely to hang out, and then pursue influential figures operating on that social media platform.
Once you have a list of potential candidates, reach out and offer a partnership. Remember, if you have more than one candidate, you will have more options for negotiations and can evaluate the people you’re considering based on their suggestions.
After you reach an agreement, just come up with a specific post or series of posts around your brand and your products, and wait for the flood of prospective customers who will be coming to your website.
One thing to consider when using influencer marketing for brand awareness building is that you must find a way to make your brand a central part of the post. Use the spotlight to tell your story, talk about how your products and services are different, and why prospective buyers should choose you and not others.
Use a Referral Program
If there’s one way to quickly spread the word about your brand with little to no marketing budget, it’s leveraging the potential of referrals.
Many companies have launched themselves on a shoestring budget by turning their current customers into their brand ambassadors. And the best news is that all it takes is a commitment to excel at your services and a willingness to sweeten the deal for those willing to share your message.
Dropbox is an excellent example of a company that was built from the ground up using referrals. People who could get their friends to register would receive additional cloud storage. That caused an almost-viral chain of events that quickly skyrocketed the number of users and made the company a leader in its field.
Whatever industry you may be working in, you could probably find a way to follow the same process if you figured out how you could incentivize referrals.
The most crucial part of success is 1) making sure that your customers know that the referral program exists and 2) that the incentive you offer is appealing enough, both to your current customers and to those that are invited.
In the end, people just love to get free stuff, so if you can provide a good value proposition on top of your primary service, or somehow enhance what you offer, you’ll never run out of new customers because your entire customer base will be a part of your sales team.
Final Words
Breaking through into any industry is becoming increasingly difficult. And for smaller companies, the only way to compete with more established rivals is to have an effective branding strategy that cuts to the very heart of the issue that their audience is facing.
Using the strategies listed above, you can achieve steady results in raising your brand awareness, even if you have a limited budget.
