Tips & Guides — 20 Dec 2022
Guide to Starting Awareness Campaigns
Running effective brand awareness campaigns is key to success in a digital world full of competitors and ever-demanding customers. They remind existing and potential customers who you are, what you provide, and why you’re the best choice.
The biggest and most successful companies implement brand awareness. Ever been thirsty on a hot day and imagined a nice cold glass of Coca-Cola or a crisp Budweiser beer?
Clever brand awareness campaigns make specific brands come to mind when the moment calls. The familiarity of the brand’s name and reputation draws customers in who require their services.
After all, how can a brand operate effectively if no one has heard of it?
Getting started may seem overwhelming and confusing, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s why we’ve put together this guide on how to run a brand awareness campaign. So, read on to find out more.
Brand awareness refers to the marketing efforts that go into creating the familiarity and recognizability that people have with your brand. The more awareness created around your brand, the more likely existing and new customers are to choose you.
Effective brand awareness results in a trust with your audience who are more likely to engage with your brand and hopefully make a purchase. A strong brand image also offers a chance to promote new products to existing customers.
There are several methods of creating awareness of your brand. From social media touchpoints, online ads, videos, blogs, email marketing, influencer partnerships, and more. And with partnership marketing platforms like Affise, it’s easier than ever to run and monitor brand awareness campaigns with data-driven results.
Brand awareness is vital for reminding your audience who you are and what you do.
Your ideal target demographic must think of you first when they come to research and purchase a new product. Quite simply, brands that are well-known will outperform those that are unheard of.
With a strong brand identity and loyal customer base, this marketing strategy is great for retention rates, building brand awareness, and repeat purchases. If a previous customer loves the brand and their experience, why go elsewhere? As they say, “if it ain’t broke…”
Brand awareness is commonly viewed as the first step of the marketing funnel. You capture potential buyers from your intended audience who can then be funneled down to the stages of consideration, conversion, and loyalty.
There are many benefits when you’re looking to increase brand awareness marketing campaign. Let’s take a look.
Top-of-mind awareness is when your brand is the first that comes to the mind of those who need your services.
Ever needed new running shoes and automatically thought, Nike? Yep. They have top-of-mind awareness mastered. Their ads and the resulting word-of-mouth have etched the brand into our minds so that we go to them first. This reduces the number of customers visiting competitors.
We all shop around, it’s sensible. But effective brand awareness could win “on-the-fence” customers.
Customers who have looked elsewhere might be tempted by your rivals who, while aren’t as amazing as you, of course, but are offering promotions like free delivery and discount codes.
Win these customers over before they even decide to shop around. Brand awareness reminds them of the benefits of your brand to keep them from needing to look elsewhere.
Brand awareness strategies offer a useful platform for increasing customer loyalty.
People trust brands that have mastered brand awareness. Are you likely to trust a brand you’ve never heard of with little information about them around? Probably not.
For example, let’s say you’ve previously owned an Apple iPhone and it did everything you needed. All of a sudden, an unknown phone manufacturer claims their latest phone is even better, but you haven’t seen their ads anywhere and your friends haven’t heard of them either.
Are you likely to go with them and ditch Apple? Nope, you’ll stay loyal to the popular brand that has already proved its worth and is already popular with the masses.
Bonus – loyal customers that return cost less than acquiring new ones.
You need to monitor metrics to find out whether your brand campaigns are meeting their goals. Future investment may depend on it.
That’s why having demonstrable data to show shareholders your brand awareness efforts are working could be crucial. And in the digital age with tools like Affise BI, KPIs are easier than ever to collect and will inform future decisions.
Having a strong brand identity could help you gain wider investment into the business.
If investors see value in your brand, they’ll see you as less risk and more reward. This could be great for pumping out future products and further developing brand awareness.
Having a reputable and recognizable brand makes it easier to launch and promote new products. New products become part of the brand family, ready to be welcomed by interested customers who already trust you.
For example, a protein company could have success with a new line of gym clothing thanks to a positive awareness of their wider brand. Hence, brand awareness is super-effective when it comes to promoting and launching new products.
Now that we’ve seen some of the benefits, it’s time to explore how to run a brand awareness campaign.
This should go without saying, but if you haven’t already, you’ll need to create a memorable brand identity and tone before you embark on a brand awareness campaign.
This doesn’t just entail fancy visuals like designing a cool logo and an eye-catching color scheme. No, we need to go beyond. Your brand identity sets the tone of your business. Soul-search for who you want to be for your customer base.
Using the three Ps is a good place to start when creating your brand identity and tone, consider:
Answering these questions will get you on the way to creating a unique brand identity.
For example, if you were in the software coding industry, your purpose would involve helping people learn to code. Your promise could be to provide the training and materials they need to learn the job. For your personality, perhaps you don’t want to sound formal and authoritative and prefer a more modern and personalized brand voice, like, “Hey, you. Wanna learn how to do exploratory tests? Say no more. We got you covered.”
The choices you make about your brand identity will depend on your niche, target audience, and content marketing goals. If you’re stuck, it can be useful to check out any well-performing competitors and take inspiration from them. Remember though, don’t simply copy, you need to stand out from the crowd with your own brand personality.
Once you’ve settled on a brand identity, make sure to draft a document explaining it to your whole team so they can get on board and refer to it in all future campaigns.
A successful brand awareness strategy needs you to identify your audience and work out their typical persona and what social media channels they use.
While it’s tempting to reach as far and wide as possible when creating brand awareness, there’s a good chance you’re wasting time and resources on people who aren’t interested. You need to identify your ideal customers to tap into their pain points and satisfy their needs.
Once you’ve identified them, it’s time to work out what social media channels they use (if any).
Social media has become a go-to tool for reaching the masses and letting them connect with your brand.
If your target audience is young, there’s a good chance they frequent Instagram stories or TikTok. On the other hand, you may seek to target LinkedIn if you sell cloud-based software solutions to professionals.
The point is, understanding what platforms your prospects use allows you to connect directly with them in ways not possible ten years ago. This method will also help them feel part of a wider family community where they can share and comment with others. So, identify your target audience so that you can niche down and get connected with them.
There are multiple ways of promoting your brand in 2022. We’ve already seen that social media has become a key platform, but there are other ways to get your brand out there. Let’s take a look.
Firstly, you should have your own blog where people can come and learn about your brand and available products or services. But this will only take you so far – and that’s where guest blogging comes in.
Here’s how it’s done:
2.Fix your SEO with search-intent related keywords
Search engine optimization is a simple solution that can increase traffic and exposure. It involves carefully selecting keywords to make your brand awareness content appear higher in search engine result pages.
Follow these steps to get your brand awareness content SEO-ready:
Note – don’t just spam your landing page content with overly-repeated keywords. Search engines will actually penalize you for this and you won’t appear on SERPs (search engine results pages) at all! It’s all about striking a balance.
A great way to achieve your brand awareness goals is through referral schemes. In today’s landscape, referral schemes are effectively ‘word-of-mouth’, gone digital. So, use your loyal customers as brand reps and spread the word.
An example of a referral scheme could be a 20% discount on a first purchase when referred by an existing customer. To double up, offer a discount to the original customer too so that everyone’s a winner. Referrals can come in the form of emails, SMS messages, social media messages, or through the mail.
Referral schemes not only increase exposure and brand awareness, but they also bring a greater level of trust as they’re coming from a source that people have confidence in – their friends and family. In fact, 93% of people trust their family about brand recommendations.
Podcasts have become very popular and endearing amongst the waves of listeners who tune in to their favorite shows.
There’s a personalized feeling attached to podcasts. We listen along while eating breakfast, driving the car, or getting ready for bed. It can feel like you’re actually in the conversation.
Podcast Statistics for 2021 – Charts and Data – Convince & Convert
Podcasts offer a great opportunity to get your brand promoted in an engaging way whether it’s your own team’s podcast or product placement in somebody else’s. Listeners might spread the word to friends and family too. Win.
You should avoid salesy podcasts that merely boast about the amazing features of your latest product. Instead, get creative, invite and engage users with interesting topics, interview guests, make a community, send tweets with hashtags to get people involved and spread the message.
Podcasts are entwined into many people’s daily routines. Use them to your advantage.
Social media has become one of the best avenues for promoting ads and promotional content in recent years. Not only is it often free and accessible, it takes advantage of the massive amount of worldwide users. An estimated 57.6% of the world’s population uses social media for an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day.
Whether it’s instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube, these platforms provide huge potential for increasing your brand exposure and awareness. Before you increase your social media presence, you’ll need to:
Influencers are a staple part of social media platforms today. Getting them on board to promote your brand can be hugely advantageous. It’s exactly why 75% of brand marketers are dedicating a budget to influencer marketing in 2022.
After locating which social platforms your target audience uses, it’s time to identify influencers who could help your campaign.
The idea of reaching out to influencers might be daunting, especially for small businesses with a new brand. You could always get the help of an influencer-marketing agency, but if you decide to go it alone, here are some things to consider:
Don’t just reach out to an influencer because they’re popular. You must ensure their values and image align with your brand or you risk confusing your audience. You wouldn’t hire a make-up tutorial expert for your virtual telephone service business.
Once you’ve found some options, you’ll have to weigh them up with regard to your budget and the type of content you want. From here, you can begin reaching out to the influencers that can help your brand! Tools like Affise CPAPI will help you here by automating affiliate offers and allowing you to scale and grow quickly without the manual work.
How are you supposed to know whether your brand awareness campaign is working if you have no way to measure performance?
Some of the most common data collection methods come from:
Brand awareness is an integral component of success in 2022. Running effective brand awareness campaigns can have a huge impact on your marketing success, customer opinions, and revenue.
Hopefully, this guide has given you some pointers on why brand awareness is important and how you can begin to implement it and monitor your performance. If you aren’t up to speed already, your competitors will be. As the saying goes, fail to prepare…prepare to fail.
Remember, you can always outsource your digital marketing tasks if you need extra support, but give it a go for yourself now and boost your brand awareness.
Written by
Kate Priestman is the Head of Marketing at Global App Testing, a trusted and leading end-to-end functional testing solution for QA challenges. Kate has over 8 years of experience in the field of marketing, helping brands achieve exceptional growth. She has extensive knowledge on brand development, lead and demand generation, and marketing strategy — driving business impact at its best.
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